The personal statement accomplishes a variety of goals:
- It explains why you are choosing a career in medicine.
- It personalizes your application.
- It helps medical schools understand your experiences, interests, and values.
What Medical Schools Look For
Common Pitfalls
- Writing only about medicine and not about yourself.
- Not giving yourself enough time to revise multiple drafts.
- Cutting and pasting the statement from a Word document into the application, which introduces formatting errors. Make sure to write statement in a text-only program like notepad or directly into the online application.
- Not proofing the final draft carefully.
- Not being aware of the tone of essay; coming across as arrogant or entitled to a career in medicine.
- Relying only on your ideas of medicine and not showing how you tested your decision with experiences.
- Writing a personal statement that could apply to any applicant.
- Repeating information that can be found elsewhere in the application.
Tips
- Start early. If you procrastinate on a personal statement, you delay the whole application process.
- Overwrite at the beginning of the process. Any extra material can often be used in secondary applications and preparing for interviews.
- Edit the final draft to 5,300 characters (including spaces) for AMCAS statements (usually a page and a third single spaced).
Resources
- Personal statement workshops are held in the spring semesters. They are designed to help you begin the writing process. See our Events Page for upcoming workshops and other events.
- Individual advising appointments are available for preparation and feedback. Book an appointment to meet with an advisor.
- Check out Essay Workshop 101 on the Student Doctor Network website for tips and considerations.
- If you need additional support, The Communications Center can help with grammar and expression.
- AAMC Personal Statement Resources
- ADEA Go Dental Resources
- ADEA GoDental Webinar (2018)
- PTCAS