Med School Application

Application Guides & Resources

Advising Bites

Personal Statement

  • You should answer, “Why medicine?” but specifically toward the focus of medical school or being a physician. Committees need to understand your motivations for pursuing medicine and why you want to be a doctor. Remember your audience.

    There are many paths to reaching this goal, but by the end of your personal statement, a reader should be able to clearly articulate your motivations for pursuing medical school and envision you in no other role. Be specific, and be genuine. “I love science” is not a moving answer.

    If you discuss healthcare or helping people in your personal statement, you must consider the physician’s role. Your personal statement should not sound like a generic essay that an applicant can apply for admission to a nursing school, physician assistant school, social work, or a research program. You are applying to a medical school. Why does your journey have to lead to becoming a doctor and nothing else?

  • Yes, they can. Good personal statements show, not tell. Stories are an excellent way to show your motivations and experiences rather than simply telling the admissions committee.

  • There is no strict guideline. However, the best personal statement will be clear and show who you are and why you wish to pursue medical school. Your personal statement should not resemble a creative writing project or a lab report.

  • Situationally, yes, but you must be careful. This is your personal statement, meant to embody your story and motivations. Other people can be discussed in your personal statement, especially if they are critical to your motivations or are particularly influential. However, their space in your personal statement should be limited. Remember, your personal statement is your story, not theirs.

  • Yes, but they must be done effectively. Reflections and takeaways should be specific to you and genuinely meaningful, not superficial or cliche. For example, learning that "Teamwork is important" or that "Good physicians need to treat the whole patient" are valid observations but are also evident and do not need to be stated in your personal statement. If anyone else can write the same reflections you have, then they are likely not sufficiently contemplative.

  • A good start for your personal statement would be to describe your first foray or experience in medicine that led you to want to pursue medical school.

    This represents your “seed.” A clear seed is essential since it demonstrates your intention to choose this path. It doesn’t need to, nor should, verbatim state, “This is why I want to be a doctor.” Instead, it should communicate, “This is the moment I realized it was interesting and made me want to dive deeper into the field and see if it’s for me.” For example, caring for a family member is a common yet legitimate reason to dive into medicine. Wanting money, to be thanked, or because your parents want you to be a doctor is not. Thus, your initial experiences should be clearly articulated since they set the stage for your later experiences and help reviewers understand your motivations. Without them articulated, a reviewer may assume poor motivations. They also help clarify “Why medicine?”

    Careful of going too deep into a “Hook” for your beginning. Ideally, your personal statement presents a narrative that keeps the reader engaged the whole time rather than relying on a superficial hook to “reel” them in. Hooks are often dangerously overdone, and with thousands of personal statements, no one truly has a “unique” hook.” What is unique will be your whole story.

  • There are many ways. A common but overdone method is to "circle back" to your introduction. However, doing so is often not an efficient use of your space. Remember, this is not a creative writing piece. Ideally, your ending should provide new information to your reviewer. A great topic to discuss in your conclusion is your aspirations as a physician. What do you hope to accomplish? What communities do you want to impact? How do you want to make a difference?

  • It depends. If personal challenges are part of your story and have a real place in your personal statement, then they should be included. They should not be included for no apparent reason. However, keep in mind that everyone has biases, which may cause certain stigmas towards certain issues.

  • Potentially. If a genuine explanation is needed, then a brief mention of application red flags could be included. However, they should not take away from the primary goal of your personal statement.

  • Contrary to popular belief, it depends. For most schools, the personal statement is critical to your application. Schools will examine your personal statement to see whether you fit the school’s mission and whether the school is right for you. However, schools aren’t blind to personal statements being often not “personal.” Many people usually have a hand editing one’s personal statement before submission and, thus, does not represent one’s wholly original work.

Activities

  • Write your activities in a way that shows your story. Showing is always more important than telling. Through showing, you demonstrate many innately important qualities to reviewers and have a strong chance to connect with someone. Showing is a powerful way to demonstrate impact on yourself and the people you interact with.

    Do not utilize the activities section to “tell” the admissions committees how awesome you are or to sell yourself. Be careful to include obvious/surface-level takeaways in your activity descriptions. Also, do not tie every activity back to why it’ll make you a great doctor. These mistakes will make your descriptions sound forced and reduce the chances of connecting with a real person. Your activities are not a resume. They are meant to be a genuine representation of yourself. If anyone can write the same description as you can, you are not writing your descriptions properly. Be specific, and be genuine.

  • Simply put, activities that you can reasonably write about and mean something to you. Activities that you spent very little time in and thus have very little to write about will generally not fit well into your application.

    Certain activities may be considered “necessary” depending on the school. Nearly all schools require applicants to have a certain amount of Clinical Experience interacting with real patients. Many schools also require some Shadowing, though not a lot. Certain schools, which consider themselves service-based, will require a notable amount of volunteering in a community or underserved setting. Research experience, while important for some schools, is rarely required.

  • Yes, these are great. Admissions committees love well-rounded applicants. No applicant exists exclusively in a hospital setting. Discussing things you do outside school is a great way to show who you are.

  • No, they should not. Do not force connections to healthcare, especially for activities that have no relation to healthcare. Do not forcefully explain how your activity will be necessary to your medical school or physician experience. Do not use your activities as a place to sell yourself. Committee members will understand that many activities have soft skills associated with them that you do not need to tell explicitly.

  • They don't need to be. The "uniqueness" of the activities results from your personal experience with them and how you "show" yourself. If anyone can write the same description as you can, you are not writing your descriptions properly. Do not leave off activities out of fear that they are not unique.

  • Consider what is most meaningful to you as a person. What you choose as “Most Meaningful” will say much about you as an applicant. Choosing something as most meaningful simply because you want to impress an admissions committee will not earn you much favor. Instead, genuinely considering what has been most meaningful to you and channeling that feeling into your writing will guide you further.

  • Potentially, but it’s generally not recommended. Shadowing is a very passive activity that is very much about another individual, not you as an applicant. While you may have learned a lot from shadowing, such explanations are likely to fall under “telling” rather than “showing.”

  • This is usually unnecessary. There are many valid reasons for not doing something or taking a break. If schools are interested, they are likely to reach out and ask or include it as a secondary question.

  • It depends. Do not include activities that do not mean anything to you or that you cannot adequately discuss. If you have too many, consider combining certain activities that do not need longer descriptions. For example, many applicants combine all shadowing experiences or awards into a single activity.

Application Strategy

  • As soon as possible without compromising quality. Schools function on rolling admissions, and delays to your application will simply mean fewer seats for you. Once schools are full, they cannot accept you, no matter how perfect of an applicant you are. However, do not submit too early if it's not your best work.

  • It depends on the school. Some schools will send secondary applications to all applicants, some to applicants who pass an initial filter, and some to applicants only after they've reviewed their primary. It is possible to hear back in a few days or even a few months.

  • It depends on the school; thus, only a common method will be discussed. Many schools evaluate applicants using some kind of rubric or grading system. For example, they may take the individual parts of your applicants (MCAT, GPA, Letters, PS, Activities, Interview) and convert them into a weighted score. Different parts of the application are valued differently. For example, GPA and MCAT are often considered very important and more weight will lean towards that. However, to maximize your chances of acceptance, you should aim to be a well-rounded applicant.

  • Yes, you can. Doing so is often helpful, as it ensures your primary is verified and ready to send to other schools.

  • Not necessarily. Many applicants are repeat applicants. However, schools may expect a certain amount of growth and changes in your application materials in your next cycle.

  • Apply to the schools you want to attend while being realistic. Your school list should NOT be exclusively filtered by stats (GPA/MCAT). Stats may help you narrow down your school list, but just applying to a school because it is in your MCAT range is not a recipe for success.

    Go view a school's website. Talk to current students. Look at their curriculum. View their mission statement and see how much it aligns with your own. Pay careful attention to in-state vs. out-of-state acceptance. Applying to an out-of-state school that accepts nearly no out-of-state residents is usually inadvisable.

  • Look at the school's accepted student range. If your MCAT/GPA are in the range of accepted students, you can get in as someone else did. The burden of acceptance then lies in the rest of your application. Median/mean MCAT/GPAs only represent the center. Students above and below this can get in.

  • Observe the school’s policy. Schools will often explicitly state what they are looking for in recommendations (e.g., a physician, a science professor, etc.). If you cannot adhere to a school’s recommendation policy, often they are excusable if you have a valid reason (e.g., you have been out of school for a while).

    For all recommendations, look for individuals who know you well and can write a specific, realistic appraisal of you as a medical school candidate. Do not focus on the recommender’s prestige; focus on the connection you had.

  • Follow the school's guidelines. Do not submit more recommendations than they request. If they have no preference, remember, quality > quantity.

Secondary Essays

  • A general rule of thumb is within 2 weeks. Doing so shows interest. Holding off on a secondary is generally frowned upon.

  • The same way as you wrote your primary, with showing and not telling. Remember to answer the question. Many students will subtly provide an improper answer to the question asked or fail to follow directions explicitly. Do not exploit secondaries for your own agenda. Answer the question above all else.

  • Doing so is generally a good idea. Prompts are generally reused every year, letting you write them early. Depending on how many schools you apply to, you may receive a flood of secondaries that can overwhelm you with writing.

  • They are often available online, both through premed forums and websites.

  • It depends. Some applicants prefer writing the secondaries for their most-wanted schools first. Some applicants find that their writing tends to improve the more essays they write, and so would prefer writing the secondaries for their most-wanted schools last.

  • You can, but it should be done carefully. Often, questions that appear the same are not exactly the same. For example, one school may ask you what makes you diverse, whereas another school may ask you how your diversity will contribute to your class. Answer the question above all else.

  • Through a genuine, well-researched answer. A "Why Us" question requires you to research the school. A generic answer that can be reused for any school will do you no favors. Nor if your answer is verbatim from the school website.