Hi, Bryan. Outstanding advice all around, as usual. I think you may even have persuaded my about not including the STEP failures. Two additional comments to share: 1. DO NOT under ANY circumstances plagiarize your work. It's fairly easy to recognize when the style of the personal statement does not match the writing in the remainder of the application. It's also really simple to google a sentence and find the source that it came from. 2. Before submitting applications to medical school, I was forced by my family to sit with the closest distant relative who was a doctor. He told me that my personal statement (which was indeed personal) would not appeal to all interviewers. He insisted that I rewrite it more generically, to include one paragraph on patient care, one on academics, and one on research, to appeal to everyone. I did, but then rebelled and submitted the one I preferred to half of the schools and the one he liked to the other half. In the end, it didn't seem to matter which one I submitted. I was accepted to the schools I should have been accepted to, and rejected from those who should have rejected me. What am I saying? I agree with your assertion that a well-written statement that is logical and organized is much more important than creativity or standing out. Don't try to do too much. Keep it simple, logical, and well written, and don't obsess too much more than that. Hope these additions to your thoughts are helpful!
Everything I learned about personal statements I learned from my 11th grade English teacher. Thank you Mrs. Schultz. Dr. Carmody, I distinctly remember considering which literary devices I’d use to write my PS and I selected Cold Open and Extended Metaphor. “The air is thin at 14,000 feet” was the setup to an extended mountain climbing metaphor that I weaved into my motivations for becoming an ObGyn and my goals for the future. The program I ended up matching at was the one where the director told me the PS was the reason I got an interview. Hooks aren’t necessary but they’re really helpful. As a fellowship program associate director now, I read the PS first. I’d be interested in knowing if you would make DIFFERENT recs for fellowship PS?
Mrs. Schultz did a good job. And I don’t know that fellowship personal statements are fundamentally different… but I’d say there should be even more focus on the future (e.g., what you want to become). And I definitely wouldn’t waste any ink explaining away an old Step 1 score for that audience.
Sound advices, very systematic and persuasive. It’d be really helpful to give real personal statements from some applicants, good and bad, as examples. By the way, how could I have my messages in your Mailbox? 😢😂
Thank you for the kind words! I thought about using real essays as examples… but then I decided against it because I didn’t want anyone to stumble upon a video of me dunking on the essay they wrote. But I may write some myself as examples if I update this video in the future. If you want to get in touch by e-mail, you can use the contact form on my site: thesheriffofsodium.com/contact/
Regarding using real personal statements for US residency programs, I was very impressed by a video from Dr. Lijia Xie who shared her Personal Statement: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dKrTvw2ODQQ.html If you could write and share personal statements, that’d be wonderful and inspiring.
Hi. Thanks for the great video! Do you have any opinions regarding writing about the subspecialty/fellowship you are interested in further down the road when applying to residency (eg talking about the field you want to go into within internal medicine or ob/gyn when applying for residency)?
Should I explain a gap between preclinical and clinical years in the personal statement, even though we still have to write it down in the eras application?
Maybe. Some of the points about discussing a USMLE failure apply here. It certainly is something that programs will notice, and some may be scared off by it. And obviously, you need to be prepared to discuss it at your interview (recognizing that programs’ concern will be whether you can handle the rigors of residency, or whether whatever issue necessitated a medical school LOA might necessitate a gap from residency training, too). So it really depends on whether the story you have to tell is one that can be adequately communicated in a personal statement, or whether it’s something that would be better of explained in person (when you get the benefit of tailoring your response to the other person’s human reaction). For instance, explaining a gap because you had a baby and you wanted to be a parent and therefore chose to pause your medical training requires less nuance than explaining how an academic setback or personal health issue necessitated some time off. And consider, also, whether you have a better story to tell in your personal statement that would be a better use of your airtime.
