Tips for Writing the Medical School Personal Statement

On today’s episode, Farouk and I share tips that worked for us when it comes to writing the medical school personal statement (PS). We’re not experts, but these are strategies that helped us, and we hope you find them useful in some way.

P.S. Farouk is the new co-host of the show, which is very exciting!

Note: I used different devices to record, so the volume may fluctuate at times. Please start with your volume low and adjust as needed—LOL.

Timestamps:
2:01 – Understanding the personal statement
4:26 – Strategies for writing the PS
6:12 – Formatting/structure
7:45 – Avoiding common pitfalls
9:18 – Highlighting relevant experiences
10:27 – Final thoughts (honestly, we’re just rambling at this point lol)
12:48 – Farouk and I are still joking around and yapping somehow—feel free to turn us off

Feel free to reach out to us via email. We’re always happy to help!

Farouk: faroukalajam@gmail.com
Tyria: tyria.heath@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

This is Stories from the Medicine Wheel, and in Mohican, One Mbetone Och Mowaganon. This podcast is hosted by me, Tyriya, an enrolled member of the Stockbridge Muncie Mohican tribe and descendant of the Menominee tribe, and my dear friend Fruk Alajam, who is Choctaw. Together we interview healthcare professionals and share their struggles, triumphs, and resilience throughout their journey in healthcare. On today's episode, we're discussing tips for writing your medical school personal statement. Fruk and I are not experts, but we hope this information is helpful for those interested in a career in healthcare. Thanks for listening. Welcome back to Farouk. Today we're talking about uh Fruk and I are gonna start doing tips for applying to med school personal statements, etc. etc. I guess. Yeah, we're just gonna start doing episodes on that, kind of in between the storytelling episodes. I think these episodes need to be taken with the grain of salt. Fruk and I are just med students. We're successful med students so far. Um but yeah, these are all just things that worked for us. Anything to add?

SPEAKER_01 1:23

I don't I don't think there's anything to add, but I think if you're listening to this, you're you're on the right track. You're reaching out to people who have uh gone through this route before. I I think it's really important that you reach out to real people who've gone through this process and can give you some feedback. I I think you know, once you start going online, you can hear so many answers and you can get so many different perspectives, which is good, but that can be overwhelming. I think agreed.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Um, so today we're gonna talk about personal statements. Um we can just kind of start with what is the personal statement. I would say that it's probably one of the biggest components of your med school application. It is basically your love letter essay as to like why you want to be a doctor. So yeah, I don't know if you want to add to that. I think it's pretty straightforward, but then we can get into tips, what do you write about, how do you start writing it, etc.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Oh, I I I think you're you're spot on uh what you said. It's why you want to go into med school. You know, that's what your personal statement is, and it it comes, it can come across as a love letter for sure. You know, it can come across as a poem to some people too. It's it's um a culmination of your life in a way, and why you want to pursue a lifelong journey in medicine.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Fru can I applied to med school slash Y East 20 22?

SPEAKER_01 2:53

22, yeah. We were way back in 22.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Our journey is a little different. We didn't apply to a ton of med schools. We applied to the Y East program, which included OHSU, UC Davis, and WSU, but it was still it went through the med school um application committee at OHSU, so it was screened the same way everyone else's applications are screened. It was just minus the MCAT score, because that was something that we were gonna be doing during Y East. So everything else about our experience is normal, I guess. Formatting for the personal statement that I kind of followed when I was writing mine during that time was your personal statement, I think is like 10,000 characters. It's like a page and a half or something like that, is what you have to write about. Um and mine was kind of broken down this way, which was like five, six paragraphs. First section is sort of like the, you know, catches the reader's attention. It's about the seed. It's when you first sort of realize that maybe being a physician was something you were thinking about. And then the body paragraphs are revealing who you are as a person, and then also some of that will reflect your clinical understanding, like what population you worked with, a specific story that made you even more sure that you wanted to be a doctor. And then the last portion is just a conclusion that sort of ties in the beginning of your essay, gives a brief summary of like who you are, and then ends with maybe aspirations or hopes for the future as you become a doctor. Other tips, other formatting ideas?

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Yeah, I I don't think I have any any formatting ideas uh to add. I I think what you said just makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

Great. Um, well then, why don't you tell us about your strategy for writing your personal statement?

SPEAKER_01 4:42

For for me, you know, I'm a I'm a non-traditional student, and so I I think I had more stories I could potentially write about over the course of my life, you know. So it was kind of like, okay, what story do I pick? I I didn't know where to start and I just I just wrote. And I I think that's the key wherever you are in your journey, you know, whether you're a freshman, whether you're a senior, whether you've been out of school for a couple of years, just write. And I I think if I were to if I were to do it again, like let's say I started when I was um, you know, I was I was a freshman in college. I think I wish I would have had like a running journal of just like unedited thoughts. Oh, this happened. I'm gonna write that down because in a couple years, you know, or however however long, I want to be able to say, Oh, yeah, I remember that instance. I remember that moment.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

That's great. I had a very similar strategy, I would say. Sort of followed that outline which I got from just Googling and researching how to write a personal statement for med school and kind of just combined all the tips I found on Google. And then I just opened up a word doc and just started kind of word vomiting. I think before that I had a sort of list of ideas I could write about and what was the seed, really drove me to want to apply to med school and like different experiences that I had, which I just pulled from like my resume. And yeah, just started word vomiting. And I changed up, I think, like the stories and the specific examples I had a few times just because each one meant something, but like they weren't exactly tying in perfectly with my thesis of the uh draft. And so yeah, just wrote a draft, no AI. Yeah, yeah, literally just me and my brain as it should be. But yeah, I think I ended up writing over five actual drafts, and I just kept rewriting things and adding in things and taking out things, and then according to this word doc that I haven't opened up in years, I wrote five drafts before I submitted this one as my final personal statement.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

So you kind of figured out like what a personal statement is, you kind of got some ideas of like how to format this, and then you you had an activities uh section as part of your like your med school experience, and then you picked one of those um to kind of write about. At the end of the day, you were just word vomit, just get it out. And I did the same thing as in terms of word vomit, just get it out, find what resonates with you the most.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Which I think is probably a better strategy than trying to put down the perfect first draft right off the bat. I feel like it's better to have all those ideas on the page where you can see them and kind of work through them. And I think that was probably the biggest thing that helped me was just throwing all that on a page, seeing that it was it was ugly, like some of it didn't make sense, but at least it was all there. And then from that point on, I could try to figure out what sounded good, what I wanted to keep in. Um no AI to be like, can you make this sound crisp and clean? Even for editing, I feel like you shouldn't use AI. I know it's nice you can be like, oh, can you just look through this, make sure it makes sense? But I think it's better to have it read by people who are in med school, who are doctors, your mentors, etc. Um, but then the thing you have to be slightly more weary about with that is that sometimes people will add their voice to your story. So you kind of have to take advice, take what you know resonates with you and leave what doesn't.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

I think that's a good point. You know, I've I had people look over my essay, and I know when my sister was applying and some of her friends were applying to med school, we we all took turns like looking over stuff. But I I think it's okay to say, you know what, I I don't agree with that suggestion. You know, I I think this is what I want to write about. So yeah, I agree with you on that. That's a good point.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Could talk about like maybe specific stories if you wanted. I just read so much from Google.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

And so it sounds it looks like I mean, I'm looking at your screen and I see just how big is this 22 pages.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

So, I mean, really, this is this is part of the process too, is you're gonna figure out different strategies and you don't want to lose them. You know, you don't want to lose a good resource. So having a Word document where you can just chuck your good strategies in, I think that's important too.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

Yeah, agreed. Some things I'm seeing just from different links. Um, so I can't cite where everything comes from. Sure. But some general tips that I'm also seeing, starting with like a great visual and then moving into the story. And then there's like the 15 competencies that you're supposed to highlight throughout your application. Some of the core competencies I remember, so service-oriented, cultural competence, teamwork, resilience, uh, capacity for improvement, all things that doctors need. A lot of your personal statement and the activities that you choose should highlight those things. And then discussing direct-to-patient interactions are really important, and those might be the best experiences to write about. That is from Dr. Gray, who I believe does his own advice website, whatnot. Those are general tips. I think one of the biggest pitfalls I was told about for writing a personal statement is to like be cliche. And sometimes all of our stories are gonna be cliche. Like we all want to help people, that's the whole point we're doing this. Um, but I think when you're applying to medical school, that's kind of a given. People reading it are like, yeah, of course, this person wants to help people. So if you start off your personal statement being like, I did this because I want to help people, it's gonna be like yawn, boring, throwing application out, right? So like loving science, wanting to help people, those are sincere passions, but they're also what everyone else is thinking about and writing about. So it's important to be really personal, really specific, and then sort of find your angle. What makes you you kind of deal.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Uh so I I think you were hit uh heading on like what do you write about? So don't write about we talked about some things that you don't want to do. Uh you don't want to write about cliches, you kind of want to um write about something that's meaningful to you. And we've talked about writing about activities briefly. Um, and then I I think you write a story that's true to you too.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

Um I think you brought up a good point before we started recording was um when you kind of start thinking about your personal statement and like you know you want to be a doctor or when you get into college, to start thinking about like how do I get the stories that I need in order to show that I want to be a doctor and like have those stories to reflect on and um talk about. I don't know. I think that's a good way to think about it. So, personal statement. We talked about what it is, things you can write about, things to avoid, um, a little bit of our strategy, and that you take our advice with a grain of salt.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

I wanna I want to circle back to what do you write about?

SPEAKER_00 11:28

And I I Oh yeah, do you want to share?

SPEAKER_01 11:31

I'm happy to share my personal statement. I will provide the context. It took me 10 years to make this story, and that's really hard to do. You know, that's and what I mean by that is I I kind of compacted my whole life into my into my personal statement. If you're a non-traditional student, I think it'd be worthwhile to look at my personal statement. If you are, you know, going the more traditional route, um, um, seeing what other people write about at your educational level, where you are in your journey, I think that's more appropriate. Agreed. Yeah. Um but what I really want to highlight is on this, what you write about is briefly talked about this when we first did a podcast, is I I picked up some books because I was like, I don't know what to write about. I think one of them was stories that matter from people who got into Princeton. And I think another one was personal statements from that people got into Harvard Medical School. And I read a bunch of these. And people wrote about so much stuff. People wrote about their volunteer experiences. Some people were able to go to places around the world, some people were more focused on what they saw in their community. People were sometimes focused on, you know, this is my own experience. I had to, I had to battle multiple bone surgeries because I keep on getting injured and in the sports that I played. And so, does that resonate with you?

SPEAKER_00 12:54

No, I've broken a bone once, and that was literally a year ago.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

So what this gets what we're getting at is um there's no right answer.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

And I I think that was the the hardest thing for me to be comfortable with. It was like, oh, I gotta be perfect. I gotta have the right story. And there isn't a right story, really. You know, there's there's a story that's right for you, and that's what you want to bring to the table.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

Absolutely. That was good. Yeah. I like that. We didn't even rehearse that. That was just fruk. Ad libbing, basically. Um straight from the dome. That's why he's a great co-host. He has such profound things to say out of out of the blue.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

I'm going to be an MC.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Cast fruk at your next pow wow. He's gonna be dropping some knowledge. Um no, thank you. I think that was really good. I think that's um huge that was good.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

That was good.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

It's because I'm eating the food, really. Got it locked in. The sugar specifically. Um, random aside, I'm trying to avoid sugar on a weekly basis because I have a really bad sweet tooth. Um, and so I I decided that I get one sweet treat a week, uh, which I'm eating right now, which is why I'm funny. I'm not funny the rest of the week because I don't get any sugar.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

It's just miserable to be around.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Exactly. Um, okay, but yeah, anyways, I think that was a real good sort of capture of what we're going for in this episode is that there is no right answer. This is just stuff that worked for us, things that we've read about that have worked for other people. But yeah, I think just having some good mentors, Fruk and I are here. If you want someone to read your uh read your personal statement, um, we'll have our information in the show notes. You can reach out to us via email. Um, we're here to help, but yeah, reach out to people you know. Anything else?

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Email works. Great. I like emails that way I can give a more thorough response. Um, you're just just reach out, you know. Really don't overthink the email either. Just send me like I need help with this.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

Yeah, it doesn't need to be all professional. Um okay, anything else? No, I don't think so. Cool. Thanks for uh chatting with me again. Of course, helping the youths. Of course. All right, all right, as I said, Katswaruka, your next local powwow. Um email us for business inquiries.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

We're repping, we're repping. Who are we repping today?

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Don't worry about it. It's expensive.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

Is this on backwards?

SPEAKER_00 15:46

Is it no? Okay. All right, bye.