a step-by-step guide to writing your medical school personal statement
Did you know that one of the top reasons for medical school applicants not getting into medical school is because they didn’t stand out in their personal statement?
Your personal statement is one of the most important aspects of your medical school application. Knowing that, it’s especially important that you really take the time to reflect on your reason for entering medical school and present your story in a way that really shows the Admissions Committee (AdComs) an authentic and unique version of yourself. Remember, they are going to look at a lot of data when they review your application, which will likely be comparable to a number of co-applicants. Your personal statement is that one place where AdComs will be able to really see you as a person that has spent the time to help others and start to carve your path towards becoming a doctor. That’s where the AdComs could find the difference between what you and another applicant could offer, thereby leading to an interview for one of you, but not the other.
Let’s do a deep dive into what it takes to stand out in your medical school personal statement!
Brainstorming
When you start thinking about writing your personal statement, there are a number of things you want to think about, but the two most important questions you need to answer, for yourself, and then within the personal statement are:
What are the attributes that are needed for the kind of physician you want to be?
What are the specific examples where you learned and/or showed these attributes?
These are important questions to answer before you start writing your personal statement as the answers to those questions will help form your overarching theme, or throughline, that will make your essay into an engaging story. When you think about how many attributes or characteristics you want to convey, choose 2-4. In choosing this number, you have a lot of room to talk about important traits that you want to be able to show your patients (and the Admission Committee), but also not so many that you’re naming every possible characteristic that you can think of just to fill up space.
After you have answered the above questions, start free-writing or crafting answers to the following questions:
What draws you to medicine?
Was there a meaningful experience, clinical or from your life, that impacted your decision to choose medicine?
What kind of doctor do you want to be? What kind of attributes do you want to have? You don’t have to know right now whether you’re going to be a surgeon or an oncologist, but think more broadly about the kind of physician want to be.
What is an important part of who you are that is not on your CV?
Who are your role models and why?
If true, how did COVID influence your decision to go into medicine?
What are your most meaningful extracurricular activities and why?
What was a profound moment in your life that impacted your life, and why?
What are current issues in the news and/or policy issues that you care about and how does becoming a physician allow you to serve those issues?
Once you’ve answered a lot of these questions, go back to those 1st two important questions listed above, and think about what it is that you want to get across to the Admission Committee (AdCom). The answers to those questions are what is going to become your theme or throughline for the entire essay. A throughline is It is the central theme of your personal statement. It’s going to be the basis of the arc of your personal statement.
A note about what experiences to choose
A lot of applicants aren’t sure if they should limit their chosen experiences from college or even go further into history and talk about encounters from their childhood. While there is no rule about what time of life you can choose to write from, it is preferred that you stick to examples from your time in college. If you want to highlight an important event from your childhood, that is perfectly fine, but limit your discussion to a paragraph at most and then transition to more recent experiences. AdComs really want to understand you are today not who you might have been 10 years ago.
Additionally, there is no “perfect topic” that the AdComs are looking for. Any topic can stand out based on how compelling your story is. Don’t spend time hours searching on the internet for sample personal statements or try to figure out what the AdComs want to hear; we promise you, there isn’t any magic answer! Find those experiences that had a lot of meaning to you and will showcase who you are and what you can bring to your future self as a doctor in training.
I have personally read some amazing personal statements on very sensitive issues such as a mental health crisis, adoption, sexual assault, and many others. What matters most is how you approach these topics and the sensitivity in which you write about them. If you’re worried about writing about a delicate topic, get some guidance from your pre-med advisor about how to approach it. If you find that it’s causing you a lot of stress and turmoil, it might be best to consider another topic.
What Does It Mean To ‘Show’ and Not ‘Tell’?
Remember how everyone tells you to ‘show, don’t tell’ in your personal statement? Answering those two important questions that I mentioned in the beginning of this guide, and having a good throughline is what helps you do just that. Let’s examine a sample so that you can see what it means to “tell” vs “show”.
Example 1: After 4 weeks on my surgery rotation, I learned to appreciate the patience and attention to detail it takes to suture a lacerated finger.
What do you notice? In this sentence, the applicant has told me what they learned without providing any examples of how they learned these characteristics. Also, the sentence is simple, unengaging, and doesn’t tell me anything about the applicant.
Example 2: My surgery attending gave me the opportunity to suture part of Mrs. X’s finger laceration. I carefully prepped her finger with betadine and then injected the lidocaine, talking her through every step of the process.
What do you notice? In two sentences, I have learned that this applicant may have shown his surgery attending that they can be trusted to be allowed to give the student autonomy to do part of this procedure on their own. Also, I can see that this applicant has a sense of good bedside manner because they are walking their patient though a very technical process which is a tenet of good patient care. Finally, these two sentences read more like a story and engage the reader; as an AdCom reader, I am able to elicit who this applicant is versus just reading what they told me. See the difference?
Let’s Start Writing!
Now that you understand the foundational principles of writing a personal statement and have done some brainstorming, it’s time to start the actual writing process of your essay. Go back to your answer for some of your most meaningful experiences that helped you make the decision to go into medicine and pick 3-4 experiences that you may want to talk about. While “3-4” is the traditional number of experiences to consider, some of the best personal statements I’ve ever read have used 1-2 experience that they referred to throughout the personal statement and still made it unique. It’s not about the number of experiences you choose but how you convey how those experiences influenced your decision to pursue medicine. It’s also important to highlight a limited number of experiences so that within 5,300 characters (5,000 for TMDSAS), you have the space to really explore these experiences and discuss why they are important to you as both a human being and a future doctor.
As you think about those 3-4 experiences that you want to highlight, think about a connecting theme that links them all together. While your experiences might be with different populations or in different settings, the one thing that links them together is that 1) they helped you become stronger in your resolve to go into medicine, and 2) they positively influenced or changed you in some way.
The Introduction
AdComs read thousands of essays each cycle, so it’s important for your introduction to steer clear of cliché phrases and instead, read more like a compelling story that draws the reader in. When crafting your introduction, think about one of those 3-4 experiences that you brainstormed and start your personal statement by inviting the reader into that experience.
Let’s take a look at two examples that show the difference between a cliché introduction and a compelling one:
Example 1: When I think about why I want to go to medical school, I think about the time that my grandfather was sick with metastatic prostate cancer. He had been hospitalized many times for various issues that had come with his disease process and I was overwhelmed with gratitude in how caring the nurses and doctors were. They listened to him and provided care according to his wishes, and respected him as a person. This is the kind of care I want to provide to my own patients, whether they are at the end of their life or just beginning their life.
What do you notice? In this example, we get some information about the applicant and how they were affected by their grandfather’s cancer and how well he was treated in the hospital. But why does this one experience call this applicant to go into medicine? If you think about it, if you had removed the words “nurses and doctors”, this could be a story about a caregiver or a friend treating the applicant’s father with so much compassion. What makes this story so unique to medicine? Also, the very first few words are not very inviting or compelling and appear to be directly answering the question of “why medicine?” instead of sharing a story that draws the reader into the journey of this applicant deciding that they want to become a physician.
Example 2: When “Jenny” walked into the exam room at Dr. D’s clinic, I could see the heaviness in her walk and hear the tiredness in her voice. While setting up the incision and drainage for Jenny’s abscess, Dr. D asked her how she was doing, to which “Jenny” initially gave a short response. With gentle prodding, she revealed that her son had committed suicide. As she recounted her son’s story, I felt myself freeze, wondering how I could stay composed while hearing such intimate details of the experience. However, I reminded myself of my duty as a scribe and quickly returned my focus to Jenny. But I still felt powerless. As much as I could offer her words of comfort, I couldn’t dissipate the physical pain she felt from her abscess and from the loss of her son. While I had a hunger for connecting with people through their stories, I wanted to do more than just connect. I wanted to heal.
What do you notice? This first paragraph reads like a story and not an answer to a previously asked question. If you didn’t know that this was a medical school personal statement, you would think this was an interesting story about someone who just had a devastating event happen in her life, but still had to show up for a painful procedure, like the incision and drainage of an abscess. Nowhere in this introductory paragraph do you see the answer to “why medicine”? You probably are intrigued to hear what happens next and how this relates to this applicant’s interest in medicine. Also, this introduction doesn’t just go into telling why they want to be a doctor, they set up a scene of something that likely had a very big impact on their decision to go into medicine. You can tell from the introduction that this applicant was very affected by this interaction and they acknowledge their humanness in not knowing what to say or do next to comfort “Jenny”. But this writer never tells you that, she shows it through her retelling of the story.
The Body Paragraphs
As you write each paragraph, make sure to answer the following thoughts:
Illustrate what you learned and accomplished over the course of the experience
Share how the experience affected you on a personal level
Describe how the experience influenced your decision to choose medicine
If you don’t know what your throughline is yet, you will once you address these 3 questions for each of your experiences. As you write, you will naturally begin to see what your experiences have in common and how they have led you to the moment where you decided to apply to medical school.
Let’s look at another set of examples to show you how exactly to do this:
Example 1: When the physician and I walked into "Leo's" room, I saw a malnourished young boy, unable to stand up on his own. She explained how living in a food desert with inadequate resources put Leo's health at risk. I comforted Leo's mother as the doctor examined him, and I was deeply aware that she and her child needed emotional support in addition to medical care. Witnessing the impact of food insecurity on the health of those in underserved communities fuels my desire to become a physician who recognizes how health disparities disproportionately affect people from lower-income, disadvantaged communities.
What do you notice? In this example, while we do learn that this applicant has a passion for communities where health disparities are evident, we really don’t know how they came to this conclusion. We also don’t know why this applicant wants to go to medical school; why can’t they gain this same satisfaction around health disparities by becoming an advocate for a non-profit organization that focuses on health disparities or a social worker? Finally, we don’t really get to know who this applicant is; we just know that they seem to be a compassionate and caring person that is attuned to health disparities in the community.
Example 2: When Dr. D asked if “Jenny” had sought psychiatric help, she stated that she did not believe in such treatments. Dr. D educated “Jenny” by explaining the scientific basis behind such conditions and teaching her a simple anxiety management exercise. After trying the exercise, “Jenny” stated that it truly did give her relief and agreed to book an appointment with a psychiatrist. Reflecting on this experience, I realize how learning “Jenny’s” story had such a significant impact on her medical care. Dr. D did not simply view “Jenny” as a diagnosis that needed to be treated; instead, she saw her as a person who was complex and nuanced. By gently questioning her and taking the time to fully understand her hesitations, Dr. D treated both “Jenny’s” abscess and her unstated need for psychiatric help. I learned that there can be an interplay of complex issues going on at once, and that when a patient comes to their doctor for one issue, that other concurrent concerns could also be affecting the patient’s health. I felt joy in that I was able to connect with “Jenny’s” story, however, I’ve realized that it is not just connecting with people’s stories, but rather using this connection to provide medical help that I cherish most. And I know I can’t get to the place that Dr. D got with her patients without the rigors of training and earning my degree in medicine. Ultimately, like Dr. D, I want to be a physician who uses my understanding of patients’ stories to heal them with sensitivity.
What do you notice? In this example, we can clearly see the applicant’s passion for medicine and how just “connection” with patients in its most simple self is not enough for this writer; she wants to be able to heal through medical knowledge. The applicant shares an example with us that shows a physician practicing those things that the applicant wants in themselves as a future doctor. In addition, you are able to learn a little about who this applicant is through their observations in watching the interaction and bedside manner of Dr. D with “Jenny”. We also get to see how this applicant felt during their experience and how they reflected on this interaction to get closer to the decision to want to go to medical school.
Let’s take a look at another example of a generic vs a strong body paragraph:
Example 1: My motivation to serve marginalized communities burdened by health inequities led me to become an EMT. I was eager to serve a more active role in supporting patients, particularly those from lower-income communities who were at higher risk of chronic illnesses and needed to rely on emergency services for medical care. Whether dealing with high blood sugar levels from uncontrolled diabetes or an irregular heart rate from hypertension, I found that many of my patients were frustrated by the reality of recurring hospital visits for their long-term conditions. When I transferred them to the emergency room physician, I found myself not wanting to leave them. This experience solidified my goal to become a physician.
What do you notice? It’s clear that this applicant wants to serve marginalized communities and work with patients that are affected by health inequities. It is also clear that the applicant has the social awareness to understand that her patients needed care outside the confines of the hospital for their chronic issues and this applicant wants to be a part of their care as a physician. But it’s not clear why; why can’t they be a nurse, a physician’s assistant, or a social worker that would be able to provide continuity of care in various ways? Again, while we see compassionate reflection on the part of the applicant, they don’t really let us know how they were able to come to this reflection.
Example 2: My motivation to serve marginalized communities burdened by health inequities led me to become an EMT. I was eager to serve a more active role in supporting patients, particularly those from lower-income communities who were at higher risk of chronic illnesses and needed to rely on emergency services for medical care. One day, we were called to the home of “Jeff”, a 67-year-old male with a previous medical history of congestive heart failure and type 2 diabetes, both of which were very poorly controlled. He had recently lost his wife to cancer, leaving him with no motivation to take care of himself while his chronic conditions continued to worsen. We had been to “Jeff’s” home many times since his wife died. With each visit, I spent time talking to “Jeff” and sharing with him the importance of taking his medication and seeing his primary care physician regularly. But I could see the resignation in “Jeff”; he had spent his savings on his wife’s funeral and a headstone for her, and now, had very little money to his name. I understood how “Jeff’s” grief and financial instability were preventing him from taking care of himself but I felt powerless in my ability to help. In addition, if I knew a little more about how to manage his chronic conditions, maybe I could find a way to help him. Maybe if I understood the complex interplay of medicine and community, I could find an interdisciplinary way to help him make sure that he would be able to afford his medications and able to see his primary care physician. But as an EMT, my job ended at the ER door; I knew if I wanted to help him, I would need to spend the time to learn about the science, resources, and social factors to help my patients, and I could only do that by becoming a physician.
What do you notice? Here, the writer begins by sharing a specific interest that inspired them to pursue medicine, in the first few sentences. Immediately, the reader learns that this applicant wanted to serve the community and found that becoming an EMT might help them do just that. So right away, you can see that the applicant has a passion for community, especially marginalized populations. Then the applicant leads us into an example of patient they took care of, sharing various aspects of the patient’s life that was affecting his ability to take care of himself. Without using adjectives such as “compassionate” or “effective listener”, you are able to see exactly those characteristics within the writer given the way they share what they did for “Jeff”. In addition, the writer spends some time reflecting on the experience and shares with us why medical school was the only way for this applicant to help patients like “Jeff”.
A note about “why medicine?”
Your body paragraphs are going to be the space where you share why you want to become a doctor. Most people go into medicine for a variety of reasons but the most typical include financial stability, wanting to serve others, and/or the ability to build meaningful relationships with their patients. There are a finite number of reasons of why people enter medicine and so it’s hard to not sound cliché in your personal statement when you share how you want to “help others” or “serve my community”. But there are many ways to convey a message which is why “showing” throughout your personal statement is so highly valued. It’s easy to write an essay and list out the reasons for why you want to be a doctor, however, it’s far more challenging to say all those things through actual experiences you’ve been a part of. Hopefully, you’ve seen above that if you are able to answer the three questions I posed to you earlier, that you can convey a lot of the same reasons that others are writing about and still stand out. As a reminder, those three questions are:
Illustrate what you learned and accomplished over the course of the experience
Share how the experience affected you on a personal level
Describe how the experience influenced your decision to choose medicine
What will make your personal statement different than others is how you convey those reasons that many other applicants share. When you dig deep into your premedical career and think about what it is that draws you into medicine, you’ll find that there are a number of experiences available to you that can show the AdCom exactly the kind of person you are and what you will be able to bring to your medical school, classmates, and future patients.
In addition, it’s important to distinguish in your essay why you want to be a doctor by highlighting experiences that are unique to the skill sets and training of a physician specifically. Many poorly written personal statements talk about medical experiences but are unable to show the AdCom why they need to be a doctor to achieve their goals. There are many overlapping fields in medicine and you need to convey what it is about becoming a physician that you can do for patients that you can’t do through nursing, social work, or being a physician assistant. This means that you need to show:
A clear understanding of what makes being a physician so distinctive from other fields in medicine
A long-standing commitment to medically relevant extracurriculars and experiences
By addressing both of these bullet points, it’ll be clear to the AdCom that you have taken the time and energy to understand exactly what the rigors of training are and how they will get you to your chosen destination. Also, they will show your clear commitment to medicine in a way that makes you stand out as an applicant.
The Conclusion
This is where you bring the essay back full circle. In order to do this effectively, you need to have a strong throughline throughout the essay. If you don’t have that, it’ll make your conclusion harder and more frustrating to write. This is also where you can do far more “telling” than “showing”. This last paragraph should highlight three areas:
The qualities that you believe are important to being a good physician. These should match the characteristics you shared throughout the personal statement.
What you learned or perspectives you gained from the experiences that you mentioned in your body paragraphs
Your interest and passion for medicine
There are a few things that you should not be included in your conclusion. Those are:
Introducing new topics that have not been already noted throughout the entirety of the personal statement
Casually mentioning a major red flag or failures from your application
Let’s look at a well-written conclusion paragraph:
Example 1: When I think back to my work as an EMT, I realized that my work in healthcare was only beginning. I still had a lot to learn and understand and I noticed that one of the key things I was missing was a robust medical education which would allow me to walk past the ER doors and into the world where my patients actually live. While the hours were grueling at times, I noticed that having empathy and patience were the key to being a successful EMT. If I wasn’t going to try and see the perspective of my patients and walk in their shoes, how would they ever trust what I would have to offer as a future physician? What I first thought was just stubbornness and non-compliance in a patient like “Jeff”, was actually deep shame and grief; that would make anyone unable and paralyzed in their ability to take care of themselves. In addition, I learned that critically thinking about solutions to our patients’ concerns was key. In a world where health inequity is rampant, especially for marginalized communities, I will need to be creative in finding solutions to my patients’ medical issues. While medications are helpful, there is an entire web of social factors that go into being a healthy person. I will need to learn about the roles of social workers, case managers, dieticians and behavioral health providers in order to provide the best care for my patients. I hope to take on the role of physician in this interdisciplinary approach and work with my colleagues in other fields to provide marginalized communities the care they deserve. Only then, will I be able to help lessen the gap that exists out there, preventing our patients from being the healthiest and best versions of themselves.
What do you notice? Assuming we knew that the characteristics that this applicant conveyed through their personal statement were empathy, compassion, critical thinking skills, we can see that they touch on those same characteristics again. We also notice some reflection and acknowledgement of the applicant’s own biases that they needed to reassess after their experience as an EMT. Finally, this applicant’s passion for medical school is emphasized again about how they want to learn skills specific to becoming a physician. They acknowledge the role of other specialists and how they want to work with them to help a specific population that is important to this applicant.
A note about the personal statement for AACOMAS
While the same rules apply, there is one big difference between the personal statement written for MD vs DO schools. Many applicants will make the mistake and use cliched terms such as “holistic” or “looking at the whole person” in their essay because they think that is the one big difference between allopathic and osteopathic schools. The reality is that the osteopathic philosophy is so much more than “holistic” care. Make sure you are applying to an osteopathic school for the right reasons (many applicants use the AACOMAS application as a backup!) and take the time to really understand osteopathic values and approach and think about how that philosophy fits into your vision of the kind of physician you want to be. The best approach in your personal statement is to take a look at those osteopathic principles that resonate with you most, and how you’ve incorporated those same principles in your chosen experiences. It’ll be important to integrate these encounters throughout the entirety of your personal statement, and continually refer them to osteopathic ideologies, so the AdCom feels confident in your understanding of osteopathy and why you have chosen to apply to an osteopathic medical school.
A note about the personal statement for TMDSAS
The TMDSAS application is a very unique and different application when compared to the AMCAS and AACOMAS. Please refer to our separate guide for the TMDSAS application.
Final Thoughts
As medical school becomes more competitive, it is important to stand out and showcase the unique person that you are. The process is often going to feel like a slog, especially if writing is not your favorite subject. We hope that this guide has provided a strong framework for what a strong and authentic personal statement for medical school should look like. This is your chance to really showcase who you are outside of your application and so be prepared to spend the time to follow the instructions in this handbook. Also, don’t be afraid of edits; it often takes applicants anywhere between 3-7 rounds of edits to get a polished personal statement that not only reflects what the AdComs are looking for but also one that showcases your authentic voice.
