Writing Your Medical School Personal Statement in 2022: 10 Best Tips

While an applicant’s test scores, grades, and extracurricular activities are important, the medical school personal statement (also called personal comments essay) is the number one way for applicants to stand out in hopes of receiving a prized interview for medical school. This is the time to let your personal story shine. 

What is the best strategy for writing a medical school personal statement?

1. Start with an outline

According to the AAMC, the length of your medical school personal statement must be no longer than 5,300 characters, including spaces. This is approximately one page in length. Start with an outline before writing your personal comments essay and make sure the most important pieces of information can be included in your 1-page essay.

2. Who are you?

This is what to cover in paragraph one. Tell the admissions team some key highlights in the lifelong story of who you are. Each of us has gems in our history that we can add to make this section sparkle.

 Did you have any significant struggles you have had to work through? Were you captain of the robotics team in high school? Pick some key highlights from your life and weave them in.

3. Why medicine?

Paragraph two. You have to dig deep for this one, because the admissions team is tired of hearing the same answers on repeat, such as “I really want to help people” or “I wanted to be a doctor since I was 5!” Those may be true, but you need to get to the root of why you are doing this and put it into one paragraph.

For some people, it was their own experience as a patient or a loved one as a patient. For others it was not having access to quality healthcare in their community. Each of us has our own unique why. 

Take some time to really think about this, not just for the sake of your application, but also for the sake of yourself. It is scary to ask ourselves these big questions, because sometimes we discover that maybe we don’t have a good reason why. It’s better to know this now while you’re applying than to be miserable and in debt in a few years. 

4. What do you have to offer?

Your final paragraph should highlight your key characteristics and experiences that will set you up to be successful in medicine. Medical school admissions committees want to know why they should pick you rather than the hundreds (if not thousands) of other applicants that are also applying to their program. 

This is also a time to briefly mention any plans you may have while in medical school or afterwards. For example, some people want to pursue certain kinds of research while in medical school or perhaps have ideas for service projects. Others have specific ideas of what specialty they want to pursue after medical school. 

Your final paragraph is your attempt to politely and humbly “close the deal” with them and create a call to action for them to choose you.

5. Address red flags

If you have any red flags that will come up in your application (e.g. bad grades, legal issues, a low step score), you must address these in your medical school personal statement. This is your opportunity to come out in front of any issues that a committee might see and otherwise dismiss your application without giving you the opportunity to interview. 

Many applicants are afraid to address their red flags in their personal comments essay because they think it will make them look like a worse applicant. The opposite is true when done tactfully.

When addressing red flags, make sure to use that opportunity to explain (without making excuses) why that happened and what you learned from it.

6. Turn obstacles into learning points

Medical schools love a resilient applicant. Resiliency is crucial to surviving medical school, residency, and on into medical practice. If you can turn your obstacles or red flags into moments of resiliency, medical schools will be impressed. 

It also shows them that you are willing to learn from your mistakes. You will make a lot of mistakes during your medical career, and having the ability to recognize them as mistakes and learn from them will take you far.

7. Always be authentic

It can be intimidating to write a personal statement, and it can be tempting to want to hide behind your accomplishments. You should highlight your accomplishments, but above all else it’s important to be authentic. 

Medical school admissions teams want to know what you are really like and they want to know if you would be a good fit at their program. They want to help shape human doctors, not robots. Don’t be anyone but yourself when you write your personal statement.

8. Use caution with humor or quotes

Going back to being authentic, it’s important not to use gimmicks to make your medical school personal statement stand out. If you are genuinely a funny person and you are confident you can add a little humor into your personal statement, be my guest. If you are an avid reader or writer and want to include a quote that seems fitting, go for it.

The key is to not come off as phony or fake. Be yourself and don’t try to add things to your writing that you wouldn’t otherwise do or say. 

9. Proofread and check grammar

Maybe one or two days after having finished your personal comments essay, be sure to go back over with a fine-tooth comb to look for any typos, grammatical errors, or awkward phrases. Beyond spell-check, you can also use tools like grammarly. 

Have several people read your personal statement to help pick up anything you might have missed. A fresh pair of eyes always helps!

10. You control your narrative

Remember that you are in control of your narrative. This is true in life as a general principle, but it is especially true when it comes to promoting yourself. While you should never lie on your medical school personal statement, you also don’t need to tell the entire story of who you are and what has happened in your life. 

You control the version of your life that you put forward for others to see. Don’t underestimate how much power you have. Your story is uniquely yours, and you are in the driver’s seat when sharing it with others.

Summary

Writing a personal statement doesn’t have to be intimidating or complicated. I hope in reading this article you realized that you can write a great medical school personal statement to help your application stand out. 

If you are wanting help with finding the best gems to highlight in your personal statement, fill out the contact form here and Dr. Jess will set up a time to meet with you to make your application the best it can be.