AMCAS personal statement - what to include?

I’m a non-trad with a circuitous route to becoming a physician. There are a bunch of things that I think are important to telling this story and also tell about me as a person. Is that second part important–in other words, if there’s something that I do/love that doesn’t have to do with my path to medicine, should I leave it out of the personal statement? I don’t want my personal statement to be scattered but I feel like I have a lot to talk about. What would you include/exclude from the following? Are there important topics I’m missing?

Want to include:
My mom’s disease and death and why/how that was the final trigger for my interest in becoming a physician
My shadowing, reading, and interactions with neurologists and patients that is driving my continued interest.
Why I want to be a physician
What I want to do as a physician

Maybe include (maybe some of these belong in extracurricular essays?):
My MS/PhD in environmental engineering and water treatment that signaled my initial passion for health
My ongoing efforts to help myself, family, and friends with health issues through nutrition and skincare
My love of racing sailboats–to demonstrate being able to think fast, integrate lots of information, and work with a team to solve problems

Thanks for your help :slight_smile:

That is awesome that you have so much ideas to write about! Definitely makes it easier. Here are my two cents.

From your list:

Want to include:
My mom’s disease and death and why/how that was the final trigger for my interest in becoming a physician - include it, just remember to show your passion and show why you want to go into medicine, maybe include a personal story?

My shadowing, reading, and interactions with neurologists and patients that is driving my continued interest.
Definitely - shows you are committed and interested in medicine, again show, not tell

Why I want to be a physician - yes

What I want to do as a physician - maybe not as much, just include the general idea. Remember the prompt for your personal statement is “Why I want to go to medical school” and not “What I want to do as a physician?” I would keep this pretty open for now…I mean you don’t know for sure yet until you get into medical school.

Maybe include (maybe some of these belong in extracurricular essays?):
My MS/PhD in environmental engineering and water treatment that signaled my initial passion for health - Hey, this is awesome! As a fellow engineer myself (BS/MS in Chemical Engineering), I totally get why you want to include this. Definitely include this if you can somehow link health with this field, just be careful not to go into too much detail on the engineering, you want this to be medicine related

My ongoing efforts to help myself, family, and friends with health issues through nutrition and skincare - I don’t know about this one…it seems rather general and doesn’t quite fit in with the personal statement. Maybe leave it in the EC section? Its up to you.

My love of racing sailboats–to demonstrate being able to think fast, integrate lots of information, and work with a team to solve problems - Sure. You might even start your personal statement with this so that it catches the adcom’s eyes… and then connect it to why you want to be a doctor.

Hope that helps and reply if you have further questions!

Hi doctordoctor
I’m a premed student from California. After reading your post I also wondered how I could write a great personal statement. First, I googled “Medical Schools in California” and found UCSF. After clicking through the website I found some great resources that may help you get started on your personal statement.

The first website I found was on the AAMC website, Section 8 of the AMCAS application Essay. The only thing I found useful on this website was the text explaining that the essay is limited to 5,300 character, 1 page. I did not know the personal statement was so short!

The UCSF website wrote a great article, Writing Resources: Personal Statement and Letters of Recommendation. UCSF encourages applicants to work closely with their school adviser, faculty member, and skilled writers. Additionally, the website has three more useful links, Tips for Writing Personal Statements, Read the Medical Residency Personal Statement Dissected Sample, and USMLE personal statement samples by specialty. Personally, I did not read through all the links, but after skimming them I’m confident that you will find some useful information. Please tell me how your personal statement ends up and your process from PreMed to Med Student.

Much Luck
PreMedGrapefruit

I really struggled with figuring out what to include in my PS as well. Every time I sat down to bang out a first draft, I would overthink what I wanted to say/how I wanted to say it. I took Dr Gray’s advice about writing drunk/editing sober literally. Had a few (maybe more than a few) shots of vodka, sat down and just started word vomiting my story onto the computer. It totally loosened me up and I was able to get a good starting point. It was super long and rambling (who would have thought that writing drunk leads to that…), but it gave me something to work with. I was able to use that as my giant rough cut of marble, and start shaping and polishing it each revision, until I got my final draft. Just getting something out of your head and onto paper will help immensely.

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There is now a PreMed Q&A podcast about the personal statement on the Med School HQ Facebook page that has Dr. Gray discussing how to start writing your personal statement.