Medical School Personal Statement Advice

Posted: January 24, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Admissions Essay, get into med school, Med School Admissions, Medical School, Personal Statement, Premed | 1 Comment

If your stats put you in the middle of the herd for med school applications, your statement takes on a new importance. It must differentiate you as a better-than-average applicant who has average numbers.

Fortunately, a lot of your fellow applicants will write terrible personal statements, making very common mistakes and relying on clichéd, overused advice. You do not need to write a fantastic statement; you just need to avoid writing a lousy one.

If a school receives 6000 applications, 5700 of the personal statements will be, in a word, heinous. You need to be part of the other group. Start with the following things in mind. After you finish, go through this list again as you edit to make sure you didn’t sneak something nauseating into your essay. You might even give this list to the people proof-reading your essay.

  1. Never forget what the essay is about. First and foremost, it must answer the question “Why do you want to be a doctor.” Spell it out. Don’t force your readers to guess and don’t leave room for them to misinterpret your motives. Make it absolutely clear. Once it is, then you can go into how you know you want to be a doctor and why you would be a good one.
  2. “Omit needless words.” -Strunk & White, Elements of Style. Be concise. Brief writing is powerful. It is clear. Wordy writing is cloudy, amateur, and boring.
  3. Do not start with a quote. This is lazy and overdone. You are not writing for your high school AP English exam – this is a statement about who you are and why you want to go into medicine. Admissions committees want to know about you, not Robert Frost, C.S. Lewis, Ralph Waldo Emerson, or Dr. Seuss. The only exception is if you have a hilarious patient quote, but even then don’t use it. As another blogger, Panda Bear, MD advises:
  4. “Avoid humor, by the way, unless you can pull it off which you can’t. You are not funny. You say some funny things occasionally, we all do, but that doesn’t make you a comedian.” This is perfect advice for your personal statement.
  5. Do not use the words “passion” or “fascinating.” In fact, for your reference, here is a list of the most overused words in all of the personal statements I’ve read:-      Underserved

    –      Deep (deep interest, deep desire, deep need, deep understanding, deep fascination)

    –      Fascination, fascinating, fascinated (by the human body)

    –      Make a difference

    –      Crucial

    –      Persistence, Perseverance

    –      Cutting edge (research, technology)

    –      Scientific knowledge

    –      Saving lives; improving lives; quality of life

    –      My patients, my future patients

    –      Captivated

    –      Cultivated

    –      Fueled, flamed, ignited, sparked, anything making fire a metaphor for you motivation or interest

    –      Empathy

    –      Humbling

    –      Gratifying

    –      Life-changing

  6. Do not talk about what qualities a good doctor should have, unless you have been asked to address this specifically in a secondary essay. You are not writing your personal statement to do the admissions committee a favor and educate them about health care. The personal statement is not a good platform to get philosophical about the practice of medicine.
  7. Do not use long or uncommon words. Even if you have a great vocabulary (not likely), give it a rest. Do not use a thesaurus. Use simple terms to avoid sounding pompous. Do not try to sound smart. If you are smart, it will show best in clear and concise writing.
  8. Do not use too many “ing” words. They sneak into your essay as present progressive verbs (i.e. “I was running…”[Forest Gump]) and as gerunds at the beginning of a clause or following a preposition (i.e “Learning is an art,” or “…the art of learning”). Use too many and your statement will flow like a kidney stone. Or, perhaps better said, using too many “ing” words ends up causing problems with the flowing of your writing.
  9. Avoid adverbs. You needn’t say “I ran quickly toward the door” because “ran” is already a quick action. You don’t need the adverb. Only use them if they actually modify, clarify, or enhance the verb or adjective with which they are paired. Adverbs make you sound verbose, which is uninteresting every single time. Instead use descriptive verbs and adjectives that require no modification.
  10. Do not talk about how many whales you have saved. Your service accomplishments should be listed in your application. Use your statement to answer “why medicine?” and to introduce things not covered elsewhere in your application. Don’t reiterate the litany that is your AMCAS application; instead, add depth to it.

Most people spend too much of the personal statement talking about things that appear elsewhere in the application. Readers do not like this, and it makes you seem either cocky, boring, or both. Talk about new things that will give the reader a sense of who you are. Remember, even on paper it is easy to tell when people are posing.

Should I Become a Doctor?

Posted: January 24, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Calling, Good reasons to become a doctor, Wrong reasons to become a doctor | 2 Comments

It is funny how many people would make great doctors but never give it much consideration. It is annoying how many people end up as doctors who do not like their jobs. They come to work with pissy attitudes and complain about everything. These are the people who became doctors for the wrong reasons.

Anyone considering a career in medicine should be familiar with some of the less pleasant realities, because you will not be able to avoid them. If you are asking yourself, “should I become a doctor?” here are 5 things to consider as you make your decision. No one wants you to end up as just another annoying, dissatisfied doctor.

  1. A career in medicine is hard, and not in a romantic way. Many people think that if something is hard, then it must be worth doing. Simply put, that is a stupid reason to choose a career in medicine. There are plenty of good reasons to choose a career in medicine, and for some people these make it worth putting up with the hard stuff. If you choose medicine, it should be in spite of how hard it is, not because of how hard it is. Medicine can be a great career if it suits you, but know also that it is normal to work over 50 hours per week and still end up on call on nights and weekends. Your sleep schedule will get screwed up, and you won’t have much free time compared with the average professional. This is just the price of admission; it is the first of many sacrifices you must make. A career in medicine compromises a “normal” life. How much can you give up and still be a happy, competent doctor?
  2. You are not allowed to make mistakes. Personal injury attorneys are waiting to max out your malpractice insurance and then go after your personal assets…your house, your cars, your retirement fund, and the money you set aside for your childrens education. What’s more, literature suggests that roughly half of all malpractice trials are frivolous…the plaintiff and the attorney don’t have any evidence to support a case, but they want to see if a judge or jury will rule in their favor anyway. Astonishingly, doctors lose about 30% of these frivolous cases. When accused of malpractice, many impeccable doctors settle out of court (even when they know that they have done nothing wrong), simply to avoid such an unreliable system. According to Forbes, win or lose, the average cost of defending yourself in a malpractice suit is about $93,000. Can you deal with that kind of pressure?
  3. Doctoring is not glamorous. Doctors take care of sick people, and sick people are not always attractive, friendly and clean like the ones on Grey’s Anatomy. What’s more, taking care of them often involves unpleasant duties. Depending on your specialty you may just get to shove a camera up a person’s anus, saw through their bones, irradiate them, pump them full of chemicals that make their hair fall out and their mouth blister. You will get to break every kind of bad news there is. Being a doctor comes with some great responsibilities, but no one gets to skip the unpleasant ones.
  4. Dealing with insurance companies, Medicare, and Medicaid is an interminable hassle, but your paycheck depends on it. To make a long story short, costs of practicing medicine in the U.S. are rising, while insurance reimbursements paid to doctors are decreasing. There are no remedies to the U.S. health care dilemma that involve doctors making more money. Physicians are going to have to settle for less pay in the future. The pay will still be good, but there are a lot of ways to make a six-figure income in America. There are a lot of ways in business to make $200,000 – $300,000 that involve fewer hours, less training, and less liability. The people who go into medicine to make a paycheck are the unhappy ones. Happy doctors are the ones who love the act and the art of doctoring and know that the money will take care of itself. However, the cost of a medical education is astronomical. So, if you succumb to $200,000 in debt for medical school, and weak health care economics leave you with a sub $100K salary, you will have to be resourceful to make your loan payments. Know that becoming a doctor does not entitle you to awesome finances.
  5. You have to learn an absurd amount of information, not all of which is interesting. Personally, I like understanding how kidneys work, and I like knowing that there are over 80 openings in a human skull and specific nerves and vessels pass through each one. I hated chemistry lab. Other people love chem and biochem, and don’t like kidneys. This is why choosing a career is a very personal decision. Do your likes outweigh your dislikes? Is it even close?

The more you learn about medicine, the harder a push you should feel either toward or away from becoming a doctor. If you have seen what medicine is about and you are still on the fence, don’t bother.