In this post, I’ll share key medical school personal statement tips that will prevent you from making the same mistakes as those who applied before you. These costly mistakes could be the difference between an acceptance or rejection.
Arguably the most daunting and challenging part of the medical school application process is writing your personal statement. While your MCAT and GPA are already set in stone and are very objective measurements of academic performance, the personal statement is an expression of who you are as a person.
Having a memorable personal statement can be a huge factor in making you stand out to admissions committees. And unlike your grades or MCAT, you have complete control over your personal statement, even late into your college career.
Medical School Personal Statement Tips from Dr. Kevin Jubbal
Mistake #1 — Failing to Directly Answer the Prompt
Before deciding what you’re going to write about, it’s important to consider the reason you are writing the personal statement. The questions you should be answering are going to be some variation of the following:
- Why do you want to go to medical school and become a doctor?
- Why should a medical school choose you over another candidate?
Failing to answer these questions is one of the largest and most glaring mistakes you can make. Admissions committees want to know the real you beyond your grades and MCAT score, but through the context of the prompt. Each trait or important moment in your life you want to express needs to be demonstrated through the lens of the central question: why will you make a good medical student?
Everyone has their own reason for pursuing medicine and becoming a physician. Figure out your own reasons, and be sure that your entire personal statement is focused on supporting those reasons.
Mistake #2 — Taking too Long to Get Started
I still vividly remember how daunting starting my personal statement was. At first, it was tough to get anything down on paper. The most important thing to remember about getting started is that you can always go back and make edits. It’s never going to be perfect right away. It’s important to just write and not judge yourself in the process.
Just starting and getting ideas down on paper is the most challenging part, but it is also the most crucial part. Everything else will open up from there. Get started as soon as possible to give yourself plenty of time for editing, revising, and rewriting.
I found it incredibly helpful to go to my school’s career center and find example personal statements. There were several books full of medical school personal statements that served as a point of inspiration and brainstorming.
Here are some books to check out:
- Essays that Will Get You Into Medical School
- Successful Personal Statements
- Medical School Essays that Made a Difference
Check out our database of personal statements donated by successful medical school applicants and take a look at our article on How to Start Writing the Medical School Personal Statement.
Mistake #3 — Telling Instead of Showing
Admissions committee members are reading hundreds of personal statements—which is why it’s important to make yours stand out. One way yours definitely won’t is if you tell the reader how motivated, driven, and passionate you are about medicine. This simply isn’t effective, as every one of the students applying to medical school with you could describe themselves in the same way.
Instead, tell a story or an anecdote, and use that to demonstrate the desirable qualities you wish to portray. What moments and experiences in your past exemplify your motivation and passion?
I have a friend who wrote an amazing personal statement that centered around her experience playing the violin and how that made her an excellent applicant. It was memorable, engaging, unique, and it told a story of how violin would make her a great fit—she did NOT just list qualities.
Mistake #4 — Not Establishing a Cohesive Story
Your entire application should tell a compelling story. It should illustrate your journey toward becoming a doctor and spark interest in the reader. It’s not enough to check off the boxes of what makes you a stellar student—that’s what your grades and MCAT scores are for.
Your personal statement isn’t a rehash of your CV. It’s a well-told story that demonstrates to admissions committees who you are and why you would make a good doctor.
Treat your personal statement like any other English essay. In other words, frame it around a thesis; the introduction introduces the thesis, the body paragraphs support the thesis, and the conclusion brings it all together.
Without proper organization, admissions committee members won’t be able to follow your journey. Haphazard insights and vague character traits loosely thrown together will make you seem scattered and disorganized.
Tell a cohesive story to keep readers interested.
Mistake #5 Overcomplicating the Process
Don’t feel like you have to write the best personal statement the world has ever seen. Students often get too creative and end up with a personal statement that does more harm than good.
Focusing too much on convoluted sentence structure and extravagant word choice takes away from your end message. Readers can easily spot when you’re using a thesaurus, and it doesn’t reflect well on you. Overly creative or artistic endeavors are also more likely to turn the reader off.
Your main focus should be presenting a coherent piece on why you want to go to medical school and why you will be a good doctor.
Mistake #6 Not Investing in Editing
Reviewing is arguably the most important part of the process. Most everyone knows that they should have a few people read their personal statement for feedback. While sharing it with your friends and family is definitely useful, after writing both my med school and residency personal statements, I have learned that friends are inherently biased. They usually want to be nice and supportive, and they can give good general feedback and grammatical fixes. However, they aren’t the ones who will tell you your entire essay is garbage and you need to restart—and sometimes we need that.
First, a mentor should read your paper. Ideally, you want to find someone who has served on an admissions committee in the past. They truly understand what makes a good or bad personal statement because they actually reviewed the personal statements of real applicants. They know you on a professional level but aren’t as invested as friends.
I was lucky to find a faculty member who read through hundreds of personal statements every single year. He was also known for being somewhat of a scary person. And that’s a good thing. Many people told me that my essay was decent or good, but he was brutally honest and told me to rewrite the whole thing. And I’m glad he did because after rewriting it, the essay was much, much stronger. It’s important not to take harsh feedback or criticism personally, as this is usually the most useful feedback you will receive.
Second, use essay editing services. Again, I made the investment, and my essay came out much stronger in the end. Med School Insiders offers personal statement editing services.
In traditional Med School Insiders fashion, we focus on creating the best quality experience for you. Each essay editor is a real doctor who passed a rigorous screening and selection process to become an editor, and each follows a systematic approach to critically assess and help you mold a memorable personal statement. All of our editors have also served on admissions committees—this gives them a level of insider insight you won’t find elsewhere.
