Do I need to Write a Different Essay for Each Application?

Session 38

If you are applying to both MD and DO medical schools, should you write a different personal statement for each med school application service?

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Back to our episode today, there are three different services for the medical school application – TMDSAS for all of the public Texas Schools, the AMCAS for the MD schools, and AACOMAS for the DO schools. But should you write your personal statements separately?

[00:32) Do You Need to Write Separate Personal Statements for Each One?

No and yes. You need to write different ones because each one has different character counts. The AACOMAS application has 4500 characters, the TMDSAS has 5000 characters, the AMCAS applications has 5300 characters.

Now, you might think that since you’re applying to all three services, you’d write one application for AACOMAS, with the lowest character count, and just use that one for all of the services. You could do this and it could work.

However, it would look weird that your 800-character short in your AMCAS application. And when the admissions committee member sees how much shorter it is compared to other students, they will know that you didn’t take the time to write a specific essay for their service.

When you look at how big 500 characters is, that’s a good-sized paragraph. So it’s still pretty significant.

[02:00] Write for the Most Character Count

Don’t write one essay for AACOMAS and then use it for all of the different application services – the AMCAS and TMSAS.

What I recommend is write for AMCAS (5300 characters) and then figure out what you can cut out. There are usually details that you can cut out so you can trim it down to 5000 and further down to 4500. Maybe you can get rid of a story in your AMCAS application for your AACOMAS application.

'Write for the most character count and then trim it down.'Click To Tweet

[02:45] Writing for AACOMAS Application

Some students look at the AACOMS application and thinking they need to apply to DO schools, it needs to be all about osteopathic medicine. Sure, it can be. You will actually find this in my book, The Premed Playbook: Guide to the Medical School Personal Statement.

You might write for AACOMAS and then you write about a story that makes you want to be an osteopathic physician. But the whole interaction has nothing to do with osteopathic medicine, no OMM or OMT. Nothing is described in what you’re telling and you just add “osteopathic” in there, that seems very forced. So don’t do that.

If you have experiences shadowing a DO or being a treated by a DO, or interacting with a DO, talk about that experience. You can specifically mention that. But don’t just randomly throw in that you want to be an osteopathic physician anywhere you can. It needs to be very specific.

'Highlight what about that experience, interacting with this osteopathic physician, made you want to be an osteopathic physician as well.'Click To Tweet