Medical Thompson Advising: Expert Medical School Admission Consulting

[ThompsonAdvising]

As a premedical advisor for 25 years and as the former director of both the Johns Hopkins and Goucher Post-Baccalaureate Premedical Programs, I offer experience and insight to medical school applicants that is unparalleled. No other medical school admissions consultant has my level of experience. I know the medical school application process inside and out, and have advised hundreds of applicants with outstanding results.

I now offer my knowledge to medical school applicants, helping them craft the best possible application to achieve their desired result: getting into medical school. Please visit my website to find out more details about my services. You may also find me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter. You may also want to check out my blog regarding the med school application process and issues in medical education.

Please feel free to email me directly with any questions regarding your particular situation at [email protected] I can't wait to hear from you, and look forward to helping you realize your dream of a career in medicine!

Liza Thompson
Thompson Advising

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[ThompsonAdvising]

Writing the Medical School Personal Statement

There are several written parts to the medical school application but the central component—and the one in which applicants have the most open space to convey their past experiences and future goals—is the personal statement. In the AMCAS application the prompt for the personal statement is:

“Use the space provided to explain why you want to go to medical school.”

Prompts in the other applications (TMDSAS and AACOMAS) are similar. The space allotted in the AMCAS application is 5300 characters, including spaces, which is approximately one single-spaced page. In that short amount of space you must articulate clearly your reasons for wanting a career in medicine. Your medical school personal statement should be a convincing piece of prose: through your writing you need to convey your excitement about your chosen profession, along with evidence that you’ve tested the profession through clinical experiences.

I have read and helped applicants refine their personal statements for almost 25 years. To write the most effective possible statement adhere to these basic principles:

Draw in the reader: The personal statement should have both immediacy—drawing in the reader instantly—and big-picture goals. It should help the reader understand what you’ve done to learn about the medical profession and convey your broad interests and what you eventually hope to accomplish as a physician. The first paragraph is critical in getting the reader’s attention: make it compelling. Use specificity and visual images to grab the reader from the first sentence.

Choose content wisely: Applicants often have difficulty deciding what to include in the personal statement, especially given the space constraint. It’s imperative that applicants reflect on the experiences that have shaped their goal of becoming a physician—include in the statement those that are most relevant. Think carefully about your experiences and choose wisely the ones you include in your statement. Provide reflection—help the reader understand what you’ve learned from the experiences you opt to include in the personal statement.

Show and don’t tell: Good writing consists of showing and not telling. Writing “I am compassionate” does not convince the reader of your compassion. It is far more effective to demonstrate your compassion by describing an experience in which you showed compassion to another individual; this technique allows you to create a visual image and show your compassion in action, thereby convincing the reader that you are compassionate.

Convey what you know: Admission committees want to know that you’ve tested the medical profession and that your goals are well-informed and realistic. Show through your writing that you’ve amassed experiences that have taught you about the realities of the medical profession.

Keep a journal: For applicants who are a year or two removed from writing the personal statement it’s wise to keep a journal of your clinical experiences. It’s not only useful when you begin to write the statement—your reflections about your experiences with patients can be helpful to draw upon when you start drafting your statement—but it is also beneficial to process what you see in your clinical experiences by writing about them.

A blog post by Dr. Sunny Nakae, Assistant Dean of Admissions at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, gives excellent advice to applicants about what to strive for in the personal statement.

I have given numerous presentations on writing the personal statement to both past students and at national conferences. To help applicants, I have distilled my approach into a Personal Statement Worksheet that I share with clients. The worksheet helps applicants figure out how to write about their experiences in the most effective way, while also clarifying for them the most important experiences to include. If you want help with your medical school personal statement, please email me at [email protected].

–Liza Thompson, Expert Medical School Admissions Consulting

Originally posted on the Thompson Advising blog.

 

[ThompsonAdvising]

Hello SDN readers. You will find a lot of useful information on my blog at the Thompson Advising website. You can search according to categories for different topics of interest. Here's a link:
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Enjoy! If you have questions about a post please feel free to email me at [email protected]

Liza Thompson, M.Ed.
Expert Medical School Admissions Consultant
Thompson Advising
Thompson Advising: Medical School Admissions Consulting - Home

 

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Medical School Personal Statement: Five Essential Elements

As a premedical advisor for the past 25 years and as a medical school admission consultant, I have read thousands of personal statements. At Johns Hopkins and Goucher, where I directed the post-baccalaureate premedical programs, I read countless essays written by applicants and made admissions decisions based in part on the strength of the essay. When my students reached the medical school application phase I helped them refine and focus their essay into a cogent, convincing piece of prose. I know what’s important to include in the personal statement and am an expert in helping applicants sharpen their message.

The personal statement is a vital and central component of the medical school application. Think of the personal statement as an opportunity to tell your story and convince the medical schools that they need to meet you. The personal statement should be engaging and compelling, while being simple and straightforward enough that admissions committees can read them quickly. Admissions committees have thousands of other applications to read; do what you can to make yours shine!

There are five essential elements of an outstanding personal statement. Once you have a draft of your essay, review it to make sure you have included the following:

1. Motivation: Have you conveyed your motivation and reasons for wanting to be a physician clearly and logically? If not, tweak your draft. It should be abundantly clear to the reader why you’ve chosen this path.
2. Evidence: Have you showed, with concrete evidence, that you’ve tested your interest in the medical profession through a variety of experiences in the field? Medical school admissions committees will want proof that you’ve gotten your hands dirty and know the realities of patient care and the challenges of the profession.
3. Altruism: Have you shown through past experiences that you care about others? Experiences in the community—volunteering at a soup kitchen, in a homeless shelter, or a food bank—are highly prized by medical school admissions committees. These experiences indicate that you care about others enough to put your empathy into real action. If you’ve done these things consider including them in your statement to build evidence as to your caring nature.
4. Clarity: Have you used relatively simple words and syntax to get across your main points? Readers spend approximately one to two minutes reading your essay. Make your essay logical and clear, yet compelling. Don’t make the reader struggle to get your meaning; readers will lose interest and move to the next file to read if your essay is confusing. This should be a statement of your interest in medicine, not a philosophical treatise.
5. Smooth Transitions: Applicants often have complicated stories to tell. Sometimes their path to medicine is not altogether straightforward, as in the case of nontraditional students. No matter your story, your statement should have logical and smooth transitions from paragraph to paragraph, which when combined create a convincing whole. Check your statement’s transitions to make sure they are seamless, thereby creating a perfect whole.

In the end, what your statement should do is make the reader want to meet you in person and have a conversation. Once you have written your statement ask yourself the final question: have you convinced the reader to invite you for an interview?

–Liza Thompson, Expert Medical School Admissions Consulting
Originally posted on the Thompson Advising blog.