Personal Statement Advice

Wish I had read this article earlier.  It speaks about really being "personal" in a personal statement as opposed to what I was told - to just write something safe so I don't sound like I'm cuckoo.  Always a fine balance!


Excerpt:

As the director of an internal medicine residency program, I read hundreds of personal statements every year. I know many program directors who find them irrelevant at best, and I confess I can't blame them. These statements usually follow 1 of 3 scripts: The candidates relay a medical catastrophe that afflicted them or their family. Curiosity is piqued. They indulge their curiosity by poring over endless tomes of biologic sciences and end up in medical school. Or, they know that they've wanted to be a doctor since conception. They were always exceptionally skilled in the sciences but really wanted to help people. Medical school was the natural conclusion. Or, lastly, the curious case of Mr. X, who tells me a great deal about the unfortunate patient but surprisingly little about the candidate. All candidates then have some sort of revelation during their internal medicine clerkship, and that is how their applications arrived on my computer screen.

I hate them all. Not the candidates, but their personal statements. Because there's really very little that's personal about them. The major thing they've told me about themselves is that they are very much like 90% of the other candidates for my program, or that they've engaged the services of whatever essay mill produces such stultifying prose. I'm not sure which is worse.

Turi McNamee, MD. In Defense of the Personal Statement. Ann Intern Med. 6 November 2012;157(9):675