Revising: Taking it Up a Notch! Personal Statement Revising: Taking it Up a Notch!

former student: Phuong Huynh! Acknowledgements: CollegeBoard.com, UC Santa Barbara, UCLA, and former student: Phuong Huynh! Stand out—med schools get thousands of applications and everyone looks the same on paper. This is a way to put a personality with the name Work for you—your personal statement may be the difference between an interview or a rejection letter

Did you answer these? Are there any gaps or discrepancies in your academic record that you should explain (great grades but mediocre SAT scores, for example, or a distinct upward pattern to your GPA if it was only average in the beginning)? What skills (for example, leadership, communicative, analytical) do you possess? If you already know your intended major, when did you become interested in this field and what have you learned about it (and about yourself) that has further stimulated your interest and reinforced your conviction that you are well suited to this field? What insights have you gained? Explain yourself!! Not having the highest GPA or MCAT score doesn’t have to keep you from interviewing or getting into the school of your choice. The committee has seen your stats, now explain why they are the way that they are.

Does your Statement have? Beginning Engage readers’ attention. Provide background information necessary for understanding the experience. Hint at the significance of the experience. Middle Use narrative and descriptive details to relate the events that make up the experience. Include thoughts and feelings and concrete sensory details. Continue to hint at the meaning of the experience. End Bring your telling of the experience to a close. Reflect on the experience; explicitly reveal its significance for you or its effect on you. Identify the insight into life the experience gave you.

Gather Details Use interior monologue – the words you say to yourself in your head – to describe your thoughts and feelings about your experience. Use concrete sensory details – details of sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste – to describe the actions, movements, and gestures of your experience, places/settings, feelings.

Talk the Talk Include the actual words (“dialogue”) spoken by people involved in the experience This helps your reader to imagine a complete picture of your experience.

Personal Statement Don’ts Do not use the same answers as other applications. Do not include middle school achievements Do not touch on controversial or political topics. DO NOT LIE!!! Avoid clichés. Write the statement first, then look at the samples… this will help prevent your statement from sounding like all the others.. Some secondary applications will have an essay question which will take the place of your personal statement. Even if you have seen the exact same question on another school’s application DO NOT USE THE SAME EXACT RESPONSE! HS—Reaching back to high school achievements will make you look like you are doing just that…”reaching!” Unless you did something absolutely remarkable that no one else has ever done in high school (like create a program that has gone national and afforded you the opportunity to meet the president) then don’t mention it. They will think that you have done nothing worthwhile in college. Topics—You don’t know who’s reading these so you would hate to mention how you are absolutely against abortion because the person reading your ps may be avidly pro-choice. Don’t mention how you despise George Bush because the person reading your ps may be his biggest fan (or worse his cousin). Lie—again, you don’t know who is reading your ps, so don’t say that you know all about GABA receptors from your research if you don’t. The person reading it may be a professor of neurobiology and may just want to interview you so you two can talk all about it.  Clichés—remember you want to stand out! Don’t use sayings that people hear all the time.

Final Tips: Draft, rinse, revise, repeat: Make the introduction POP. You want to draw them in! Use the funnel approach in your introduction. Spell check AND be sure your grammar is correct and your essays read smoothly. “You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.” Once you are satisfied with your essays, save them in plain text (ASCII) and paste them into the space provided in the application. Proofread a friends’ statement, then have them proofread yours. In fact, do this with three smart friends! Grammar, punctuation and spelling are important.