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The purpose
of this lesson is to show you examples of how other
people capitalized on their unique qualities. When it
comes to your own essay, only you can identify the
optimal strategy for making yourself stand out. One way
to start is to look over your answers to the
brainstorming questions and try to find aspects of your
background that separate you from your peers.
Ultimately, however, what will make the difference is
your ability to assess yourself honestly and
thoughtfully.
The examples
that follow are not meant to be exhaustive. Rather, they
represent the efforts of particular individuals to
recognize the unique elements of their background and
use it to their advantage. You should notice that these
unique elements often have nothing to do with medicine,
but can still be tied effectively to the applicants'
goals or integrated with their character and background.
1.
This applicant is a
woman from a military background. Notice that her first
paragraph grabs the reader's attention by emphasizing
extreme experiences to which the average person has
never been exposed. Don't dilute the power of your
description with premature, forced connections to
medicine. Your first task is to convince the reader that
what you're describing is indeed unique on its own
terms. In fact, this applicant never forces an explicit
connection on the situation, but rather simply notes
that she can finally apply to medical school because her
term of military service is ending. The reader can
easily deduce for himself how the rigor and intensity of
her military background have prepared her for the
challenge of medicine.
2.
This applicant
describes his experiences performing in a Las Vegas
show. Again, he does not try to argue that his work as a
performer will directly help him in handling dental
operations, but instead makes the following point about
his character: "Working each night, for a total of 42
hours a week, has forced me to structure for myself an
educational schedule that has required more time in
college than most spend. However, as a result, I will be
emerging from my university experience with greater
maturity, self-knowledge, and certainty about the
professional direction I am choosing to follow than many
of my peers." The one mistake this applicant makes is
his continual emphasis on how he's different from his
peers. In general you should try to let uniqueness speak
for itself; if it's noteworthy, the reader should pick
up on it without having to be told.
3.
This applicant
describes the unfortunate circumstances of his
childhood. He does so without seeking pity, instead
focusing on how these circumstances shaped his
character. Here a connection to medicine is natural: "I
spent a great deal of time trying to care for my mother,
a fact of my young life that I think later on may have
subliminally drawn me toward a career in medicine.
Besides instilling within me a desire to help others who
are ill, my experience with my mother also heightened my
sensitivity to other people and the difficulties with
which they sometimes must cope." The writer goes on to
back up his heightened sensitivity by describing his
work assisting a doctor in rural Mexico--itself also a
noteworthy experience.
4. The
uniqueness of
this applicant is
multidimensional. He comes from an international
background, he experienced discrimination, and he
immigrated to the United States only to face numerous
new obstacles. The strength of this essay lies not in
these unique barriers but in the active manner in which
he overcame them. The writer does not take a
self-pitying tone, nor does he make his disadvantaged
background a primary focus. He goes on to describe many
of the same types of volunteer and work experiences as
other applicants, which we view as all the more
remarkable because of the early challenges through which
he persevered.
5.
This applicant details
her commitment to martial arts. In this case, the
activity itself is far from unique, even among the
specific population of medical school applicants.
Nevertheless, the qualities she has cultivated in her
experience and the way she ties them to medicine provide
a new dimension to her candidacy. This essay is an
effective example of how you can turn even a standard
extracurricular activity into a unique strength by using
illustrative personal details and an insightful
perspective.
Again, these
examples are only a few of the possible routes you could
take. There are even more obvious routes for which we
did not include examples, such as extraordinary talents
in athletics or the arts, or extensive work experience
in another career. One particularly delicate issue is
how to approach diversity. If you are, for example, a
minority, foreign, or older applicant, you should not
hesitate to use this to your advantage. To do this
effectively, however, you need to show how your
background has shaped your life in some tangible way and
possibly tie that in to how you plan to contribute to
the school's community. You should not mention it for
its own sake and suggest--even implicitly--that you
expect some kind of special attention, because you risk
offending the reader or coming across as manipulative. |
