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Quotes by members of our
panel of admissions officers are in italics.
The great challenge of the
medical school application essay is how to discuss
common themes in a fresh way. Later sections of this
guide will provide you with tips on how to make your
essay stand out, but for now we will outline the key
qualities and abilities that the excellent essays
demonstrate.
As we will stress
throughout, the essay is meant to convey the personal
characteristics that the rest of your application cannot
communicate. So we will preface our list with a warning
about what not to include: anything that is fully
covered by another part of the application. For example,
do not tell the reader your GPA or name the awards that
you won in college. Avoid simply listing your
extracurricular activities. If you bring any of these
issues up, you should have some significant insight to
add that is not evident from another part of your
application.
Sincerity
Believe it or not, admissions officers rank
sincerity highest in importance, above any quality
seemingly more specific to medicine. Ultimately, they
just want to know who you are, and in that sense, the
best way to sell yourself is to be yourself. Don't focus
too heavily on what you think they want to see at the
expense of conveying your own message in your unique
way.
My own feeling is that
the essay has been more a cause of people getting
downgraded than being favorably judged, usually because
it is too contrived or patently insincere. As an
admissions committee member, after you've gone through
thirty or forty such applications in an afternoon,
you're so grateful for somebody who just says something
simply and straightforwardly. -- College of
Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University
Sincerity is important to
stress because it's hard for most of us to achieve,
despite its apparent simplicity. The pressures and
anxieties of the situation have locked us into a mindset
that prevents us from writing honestly. Further, because
we are not used to writing about ourselves and being so
close to the subject, it can be difficult for us to
assess the sincerity of our own writing. Thousands of
students every year will read this same advice, whether
in a guidebook or even in the application instructions
themselves, and yet they just cannot put it into
practice. If you can be one of the few who truly
understand what it means to be sincere, then you will
already have separated yourself from the pack in one
crucial way.
You might question how a
reader who doesn't know you can judge your statement's
sincerity. The basis for judgment usually lies in the
context your reader has developed from reading hundreds
or thousands of other essays. Assessing your essay
against others is one essential way that EssayEdge can
offer a more critical eye than your friends, relatives,
or teachers, who have not accumulated expertise specific
to the personal statement. Moreover, our perspective in
reading your essay is just as objective as your
application reader's perspective will be.
Writing Ability
As with sincerity, you must
focus on demonstrating solid writing ability before you
even start worrying about the specific issues you will
tackle.
I think the important
thing is for the essay to be a reflection of the student
and demonstrate good written communication skills.
-- Harvard Medical School
The reasons for this
emphasis on good writing are evident enough. First is
the important role that written communication skills
will play throughout your career, as they do in most
other professions. Second, a well-written essay makes
its points clearly and forcefully, thus strengthening
whatever content you include.
Good writing means more than
the ability to construct grammatically correct
sentences. You also must create a coherent structure and
ensure proper flow as the piece progresses. Because the
process of developing ideas and putting them down on
paper is so intimate and personal, all writers end up
needing editors to assess the effectiveness of their
product. You should consult people whose writing you
respect for advice or even more hands-on help. Trained
specifically in the nuances of admissions essay writing,
EssayEdge editors are the best equipped to provide
assistance in this crucial area.
Motivation and Commitment
While there are some
admissions officers who will insist that you can write
about anything as long as it's revealing, a safer bet
would address the fundamental question: "Why medicine?"
You do look for
motivation because the Personal Comments [section] is
the only place the applicants have to indicate this. In
other words, why are they interested in medicine? I
don't think there's anything else specifically that we
look for, other than whatever the applicant wants to
tell about himself or herself. -- UCLA School of
Medicine
An effective explanation of
your motivation actually accomplishes two purposes.
First, it shows the reader that you have thought your
goals through and have significant, worthy intentions
behind them. Second, in the process of detailing your
motivation, you can illuminate your most significant
values and qualities.
If you discuss motivation as
a more abstract element of your interest in medicine,
your discussion of commitment should provide the hard
evidence. For example, if you use compassion as a reason
for your decision to pursue medicine, you should be able
to offer concrete evidence of how you have exercised
compassion in specific instances.
Specific Personal Qualities
Doctors must have the
ability to work with patients as well as other medical
professionals, particularly because the stakes are so
high and go far beyond his or her own personal success.
The reason you should make certain personal qualities
your focus is that they provide balance to the academic
abilities you demonstrate in objective measures like the
MCAT.
Many applicants make a
mistake by discussing their intellectual capabilities as
a major factor in being a good candidate for medicine.
The applicant is reviewed at other levels in terms of
his or her capability, so this should not be the focus
of the personal statement. -- School of Medicine,
University of Washington
You should not try to
include everything from the following list, because it
would be difficult to treat each one in sufficient
depth. Moreover, the goal should be to illustrate your
qualities through concrete details, instead of merely
writing them as a list. We will go into this lesson in
more depth elsewhere in the course, but it's a lesson
worth reiterating: Show your qualities through
concrete evidence.
I tend to be put off by
too many self-congratulatory statements, such as, "I'm
an excellent candidate for medical school; I have great
compassion"--that kind of thing. One person wrote, "As
part of my personality, I radiate a high degree of
warmth and sincerity," and that was not good. --
College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University
Here are some of the
qualities that make good physicians, but again, you
should not treat them as buzzwords. Invoke them only if
you have the evidence to back up your claims. We have
grouped them roughly by the specific medical duties with
which they are related:
Treating patients:
compassion, empathy, sensitivity, integrity,
communication skills.
Solving problems:
creativity, initiative, independence, curiosity,
critical thinking skills.
General: perseverance,
dedication, maturity, honesty, sincerity, motivation,
energy, diversity.
This applicant
describes a specific problem he has observed in the
hospital where he volunteered:
"But I also saw many ways
[the American health-care system] can be improved. For
example, uninsured homeless and immigrant people would
often come in, complaining of problems they had been
having for a long time. Although we would treat these
people as best we could, a health-care system that
intervenes in such sicknesses earlier would have
minimized costs associated with treating diseases in
their later stages."
By discussing his ideas
about a specific problem, the applicant demonstrates his
ability to think critically and independently. He does
not even need to cite these qualities explicitly,
because he has conveyed them through concrete details.
Personal Details
Personal details are the
means by which you should to demonstrate your strengths
in the preceding list of qualities. Always aim for
specific, personal statements rather than grand
generalizations.
One very common mistake
is to write a statement that is too generic--that speaks
about what the ideal physician should do or be, rather
than what the applicant wants to do or feels he or she
should be as a physician. One has to bring it down to a
personal level. -- The Pritzker School of
Medicine, University of Chicago
Avoiding generalizations
applies not only to your field but to yourself as
well--hence our emphasis here on personal details. Not
only are details more interesting to read than hackneyed
generalities, but they also provide a concrete basis
that helps your reader grasp your insights.
This applicant
demonstrates perseverance and dedication through very
concrete examples. Note how his introduction effectively
sets up the obstacle: that he was "denied the
possibility of admission to medical school because of
his religion." The rest of the essay goes on to describe
specific sacrifices he made, so we can see him in active
pursuit of his career.
Because the essay relies on
showing rather than telling, the applicant never has to
make the cliched statement, "I learned the value of hard
work." His detailed writing stays close to his personal
situation and therefore makes a much more powerful point
than any abstract generalization could. |
