Examples of Personal Statements and Commentary

Standard Editing Package Example

Medical School Sample Personal Statement

Original Essay:

Martial arts and medicine. They seem worlds apart, but they both have played significant roles in my life and for reasons that are surprisingly similar. They both offer challenge, require great discipline, and necessitate a goal-oriented approach.

I first became involved with the martial arts when I was only 13 years old. At that time I began studying karate in my hometown in northern California. Even then I was a goal-oriented individual who was attracted to the step-by-step progression involved in studying karate. Within a year I had earned a brown belt (the next-to-highest ranking) and was actually serving as an instructor at the karate academy where I had learned the sport. Dedication, discipline, and physical and mental prowess were behind my success, which included being the youngest person in the area to attain the brown belt.

In college I became involved in Tae Kwon Do, the Korean counterpart of karate. This sport, too, requires patience, determination, and a clear mind in addition to physical strength, endurance, and agility. Within a year I had become president of my university's 80-member Tae Kwon Do club, which ranks among the top sports clubs on campus. In assuming this position I began to have the opportunity to test myself as a leader as well as an athlete.

One of the reasons I became interested in medicine is that it, too, requires a meticulous, goal-oriented approach that is very demanding. Of course, it also happens that the substance of the profession holds strong appeal for me, both in terms of the science and the potential for serving others who are in need.

Most of my exposure to the profession has occurred within the areas of surgery and emergency medicine. After first serving as an emergency medicine volunteer technician at a northern California hospital (where I had a moving experience with a young girl's death), I acquired the EMT-1A/CPR certifications and then worked as an Emergency Medical Technician-1A during a subsequent summer. This job was a fascinating, educational, and high-pressure experience that exposed me to the realities of medicine as practiced in crisis situations.

My extensive involvement with cardiothoracic surgery research over the last three years, first as a volunteer technician and currently as a staff research technician, has further fueled my desire to become a physician. I have had to rely upon my own ingenuity and problem solving skills as well as what I have learned in the classroom, and this has been exciting. One of the more unusual aspects of my work has involved me directly in the procedure of heterotopic heart transplantation in rats. This precise and technically demanding procedure encompasses microsurgery and usually is conducted only by residents. In fact, I am the only undergraduate student doing this procedure, which has shown me the extent of both my manual dexterity and capacity for learning sophisticated techniques.
I have been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to participate and contribute in almost every way during experiments, from administering anesthesia and performing extensive surgical preparations to analyzing the data obtained and operating monitoring and recording equipment, ventilators, and the heart-lung machine.

I am a somewhat shy individual, but I have found that within the medical environment my shyness evaporates. The opportunity to help others one-on-one is so rewarding and comfortable for me that I feel very much at ease, regardless of with whom I am working. I think one of the particularly attractive aspects of medicine for me, especially within such specialties as internal medicine and obstetrics/gynecology, is the potential for forming close, lasting, meaningful relationships with a wide array of patients.

For me, medicine emerges as the perfect avenue for indulging my impulses to contribute, to be involved with science, and to establish important links with others at both critical and noncritical moments in their lives.

What’s Strong:

From the beginning, you link two of your interests by arguing that success in each requires many of the same attributes. By demonstrating that you have succeeded in Tae Kwon Do, you argue that you will also succeed in medicine. You also argue that your strongest qualities are determination, discipline, and goal-setting.

This essay uses a chronological approach. It’s great that you have experience with surgery and emergency medicine. Your work doing cardiothoracic surgery research is fantastic! I know the admissions committee members would love to hear more about this! It is impressive that you were doing work usually reserved for residents while you were still an undergraduate. Bravo! This demonstrates for the admissions committee members that others have trusted you with valuable work, so you are trustworthy, and you hold yourself personally accountable for your responsibilities. It does give evidence for your manual dexterity and your capacity for learning. It also shows your facility with medical machines. You really begin to light up when you talk about your research. This and your EMT work should be the cores of your essay.

You do give away one of your weaknesses, which is shyness, but you recover quickly, explaining that you enjoy medicine so much that you become outgoing in this environment. You come across as genuinely excited about the profession in this section. You give your two areas of interest, suggesting that these two especially offer opportunities for close doctor-patient relationships.

What’s Wrong:

On a first quick read, this essay seems solid, but on closer inspection, it doesn’t make a strong argument for why you should be admitted to medical school. You claim that you will make a good doctor because you possess discipline, determination, attention to detail, and are goal-oriented. However, you don’t give specific examples in the form of stories from your life that support these claims. Also, almost any career can be said to require these attributes, so these are weak reasons for an admissions committee member to admit you. Also, the essay is a little dry right now. The reader isn’t immediately drawn in to the essay because the stories are too general: “Within a year I had earned a brown belt.” It would be more powerful to tell a specific story that the reader could get into and get excited about. Specific stories will liven up the writing. So let’s dig deeper to find stories that argue that you will make a great doctor. For example, the paragraph on your cardiothoracic research is the strongest in the essay because the abilities you demonstrate are more specific to your chosen profession. Let’s expand this story and make it one of the anchors for your essay, since it provides tangible evidence that you like science and have already developed sophisticated surgical practices.

The links between martial arts and medicine here are tenuous. You haven’t yet fully integrated the determination you show in practicing martial arts with why you should be admitted to medical school. We need to work on giving examples of how your martial arts training translates into your pre-med training. Otherwise, the admissions committee readers are left to do this for themselves, and they don’t want to work that hard. We need to work on unifying the essay, so that the end ties in to the beginning.

The essay reads like a prose version of a resume. This means you are missing some wonderful opportunities to tell your own moving stories. Tell the admissions committee readers about the young girl’s death you say in parentheses was so moving for you. This will show (rather than tell) them you work well under pressure, that you perform well in crisis situations, and that you understand the realities of the profession. Merely telling the admissions committee members a list of extremely general benefits you got from the EMT work does not bias them in your favor. Stories provide logical evidence for your skills and abilities, but they also provide emotional appeals, which can endear you to the admissions committee readers.

I suggest you open your essay in the middle of a martial arts competition. Let the readers in on the concentration, poise, and practice that has gone into making you so good at the sport. What goes on in your mind as you are competing? Tell the reader that you started studying karate when you were 13 and were the youngest in the area to attain the brown belt. When (if you have) did you achieve a black belt?

In the next paragraph transition to your medical background by comparing the concentration you show in martial arts to the concentration you show in microsurgery. Give your readers a story about a problem in your cardiothoracic work that required your ingenuity to solve. Paint for us a scene of you doing a microsurgical transplant on rats. Tell us how this surgery is like and different from martial arts. Do you analyze your performance after both to see how you can improve in the future? You can transition from this into discussion how you analyze the data for your research.

Then tell us the story of the girl who died. Be sure to use this moving story of your EMT work to demonstrate your intelligence, self-confidence, leadership, communication skills, personal accountability, and compassion, among other attributes.

Conclude the essay with the fields you are most interested in and why you think X school would be the best place for you to study medicine. Use your last sentence to great effect.

Revision suggestions:

[Open in medias res with one of your thrilling martial arts combats in college. Give the reader insight into your mind and thought process as you compete. Show how the sport requires great discipline and a goal-oriented approach, in addition to patience, determination, a clear mind, physical strength, endurance, and agility.]

I first became involved with the martial arts when I was only 13 years old. Dedication, discipline, and physical and mental prowess have always been behind my success, which has included being the youngest person in my hometown in northern California to attain a brown belt in karate. In college I became president of my university's 80-member Tae Kwon Do club, which ranks among the top sports clubs on campus. In assuming this position I began to have the opportunity to test myself as a leader as well as an athlete. [Discuss how you helped others in your club work on the mental concentration and other skills you already possess.]

[Compare your martial arts mode to your surgery mode. Tell a specific story of doing microsurgery on a rat. Write so that the mood is somewhat tense but that you keep calm under pressure and the experiment goes well. Show, rather than tell the information in the following paragraph: "My extensive involvement with cardiothoracic surgery research over the last three years, first as a volunteer technician and currently as a staff research technician, has further fueled my desire to become a physician. I have had to rely upon my own ingenuity and problem solving skills as well as what I have learned in the classroom, and this has been exciting. One of the more unusual aspects of my work has involved me directly in the procedure of heterotopic heart transplantation in rats. This precise and technically demanding procedure encompasses microsurgery and usually is conducted only by residents. In fact, I am the only undergraduate student doing this procedure, which has shown me the extent of both my manual dexterity and capacity for learning sophisticated techniques. I have been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to participate and contribute in almost every way during experiments, from administering anesthesia and performing extensive surgical preparations to analyzing the data obtained and operating monitoring and recording equipment, ventilators, and the heart-lung machine."]

Most of my exposure to the profession has occurred within the areas of surgery and emergency medicine. [I first served] as an emergency medicine volunteer technician at a northern California hospital. [Tell the story of the moving experience with the young girl's death.] I then acquired the EMT-1A/CPR certifications and worked as an Emergency Medical Technician-1A during a subsequent summer. This job was a fascinating, educational, and high-pressure experience that exposed me to the realities of medicine as practiced in crisis situations.

I am a somewhat shy individual, but I have found that within the medical environment, as well as on the martial arts floor, my shyness evaporates. The opportunity to help others one-on-one is so rewarding and comfortable for me that I feel very much at ease, regardless of with whom I am working. I think one of the particularly attractive aspects of medicine for me, especially within such specialties as internal medicine and obstetrics/gynecology, is the potential for forming close, lasting, meaningful relationships with a wide array of patients. [Argue why X school is a good fit for you. Conclude with a powerful sentence referring back poignantly or humorously to one of your stories. This sentence will help make your essay feel unified.]

In order to protect the identities of our clients, this personal statement is taken from the public domain site docstoc.com.