Tips for Writing a Personal Statement
Updated December 28, 2020
.png)
Your personal statement answers two big questions: Who are you? And why do you want to be a doctor? The personal statement is a special platform to communicate your unique perspective to a group of folks who have never met you. Admissions committees are committed to learning about you beyond just GPA and MCAT. The better you communicate your style, essence, passions, and experiences, the better your reader can imagine your potential role in an incoming class. While there is no formula for a great personal statement, here are a few guiding principles that may help you write!
1. Everything You Write Is For Your Reader.
Take a moment to think about the personal statement from your reader’s point of view. Reading hundreds of essays is a really tough job. Treat your reader to a high-quality, unique, and authentic personal statement! After you submit your application, your essay will ultimately wind up in a real person’s hands. Your voice and your story should shine through to them. A subtle paradigm shift from “this part is confusing” to “this part might confuse my reader” or from “this sentence is not important” to “this sentence is not worth my reader’s attention” will inform your writing, ground your purpose, and humanize the process. Before you submit your application, get fresh eyes to read your personal statement drafts. Whether it’s a friend, acquaintance, or mentor, it is helpful to understand how your writing comes across to another person.
2. You are NOT a cliché.
There are a lot of awesome reasons to become a doctor. It’s a wonderful career! Find a way to gush about it that’s unique. Unfortunately, lots of perfectly valid reasons for going into medicine “sound cliché.” YOU are not a cliché, however. Spin it to win it! Put your own personal spin on your handful of reasons to make your message both clear and unique. For example, almost everyone who goes into medicine wants to help people. (It’d be very strange if you didn’t!) But everyone who goes into medicine has unique experiences that contributed to this desire, different ideas for how to best help others, different skills they can dedicate towards others, different passions, different goals, and so on. You can make it highly personalized and specific. Remember, your reasons for wanting to go into medicine are valid and should be communicated confidently to your reader.
3. Pick a Structure That Makes Sense for You and Stick With It.
Think you know what you want your personal statement to be about? Great! Before you start writing, pick a structure. Then write. Maybe you want your personal statement to be an impactful story. An aha moment? A loss? An achievement? Maybe you want it to be about multiple events organized chronologically or thematically. Maybe you want to organize your personal statement into ‘causes’ and ‘effects’; ‘failure’ and ‘redemption’; ‘before’ and ‘after’; ‘traits A, B, and C’; etc. Whatever you’re trying to say, commit to a structure that lends itself well to it. Challenge yourself to provide a roadmap in your first paragraph about what to expect from the rest of the essay and adhere to your roadmap faithfully. A well-structured personal statement provides your reader clarity. Feel free to get creative with it! However, avoid structures and literary devices that are too risky, gimmicky, or avant garde, like rhyming, curse words, far-out stories, etc.
4. The Good Stuff Happens in the Editing Process.
Give yourself ample time to write your personal statement. And by write, I really mean edit. Getting words on the page is the first hurdle, but the real work happens when you edit. Whether it’s small changes like word choice and sentence structure, or large changes like swapping paragraphs around or even picking a whole different structure, editing is a healthy part of writing. Be sure to save drafts of your personal statement in case you want to reverse any changes you make. Make sure you get fresh eyes to read your drafts and offer you constructive feedback. Finally, be sure to start your personal statement well before you want to submit your application so you can make your personal statement as awesome as possible.
​
Writing a personal statement is no easy feat. I hope these tips come in handy as you craft yours. No one knows your writing process better than you. Believe in yourself, you got this!
EVE MOLL
Hometown: Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Medical School: Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
Year: M1