Interesting Read: How to ace the personal statement

Ahh the personal statement, that daunting part of the application process where med schools ask you to write a completely open-ended essay about...yourself. No prompt, no criteria, no outline, just WRITE. I'm going to share a secret with everyone, I HAVEN'T EVEN STARTED MINE YET! Tip #1 in this post: Don't be like me and put it off, start it early and work on it over time! I'm started to get a little freaked out, knowing I have to start writing eventually (i.e. REALLY SOON), and on top of the time-crunch, I absolutely hate writing about myself. Nevertheless, it's something that needs to get done, and I know I'll get it to sometime soon.

One concern I had was, well, what exactly to put in my personal statement. Luckily, med school student Jae Won Joh wrote an excellent piece in his blog about writing a good personal statement. I really like it because he took out all the sugarcoated and overgeneralized BS you see on a lot of sites, and really gets realistic about how you should approach the personal statement. It should be noted, however, that he is not an admission counselor and has never sat on an admissions committee. That being said, he IS a med student and did get into med school. I agree with a lot of what he recommends, so I figured I would pass along the tips. It's kind of long (it took him about 10 days to write), but it's really worth it! At the end he lists 3 questions that your personal statement should answer to be awesome.

Be brutally honest and ask yourself:

• Would I want to meet me if I read this essay?
• Do I leave the reader believing in my potential to change medicine for the better?
• Do I seem to match a stereotype, or do I really stand out as awesome?

Jae Won's original post can be found HERE. Depending on the feedback and comments, he sometimes edits and adds to his posts, so check out the link for the most recent changes.

Good luck to ya'll who are finishing up finals! And PMH would like to give a big congrats to all the graduating seniors!

How to ace the med school personal statement [via Jae Won Joh]

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Comments

[Hafsa]

the links you give to his blogpost are broken.