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Medicine Personal Statement Examples

Get some inspiration to start writing your Medicine Personal Statement with these successful examples from current Medical School students. We've got Medicine Personal Statements which were successful for universities including Imperial, UCL, King's, Bristol, Edinburgh and more.

Personal Statement Examples

• Read successful Personal Statements for Medicine
• Pay attention to the structure and the content
• Get inspiration to plan your Personal Statement

Personal Statement Example 1

Check out this Medicine Personal Statement which was successful for Imperial, UCL, QMUL and King's.

Personal Statement Example 2

This Personal Statement comes from a student who received Medicine offers from Bristol and Plymouth - and also got an interview at Cambridge.

Personal Statement Example 3

Have a look at this Medicine Personal Statement which was successful for Imperial, Edinburgh, Dundee and Newcastle.

Personal Statement Example 4

Take a look at this Medicine Personal Statement which was successful for King's, Newcastle, Bristol and Sheffield.

Personal Statement Example 5

Pick up tips from this Medicine Personal Statement which was successful for Imperial, Birmingham and Manchester.

Personal Statement Example 6

This Personal Statement comes from a student who got into Graduate Entry Medicine at King's - and also had interviews for Undergraduate Medicine at King's, QMUL and Exeter.

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SIX MEDICAL SCHOOL PERSONAL STATEMENT TIPS

Writing your medical school personal statement can feel like a daunting process. For many premeds, the thought alone causes anxiety and unrest. Rest assured: we have read thousands of statements from both successful and unsuccessful applicants. My hope is that this article offers you some clarity and comfort so you can get started on your personal statement.

 Every year, we hear common concerns from premeds:

• How do I “stand out?”
• How can I write something they’ve never heard before?
• How can I convince them I want to be a doctor?

TIP #1: Make sure your reader really “gets you.”

I realize this may sound pretty basic, but I am amazed that students sometimes veer away from the “personal” in the medical school personal statement. Ultimately, your reader wants to understand who you are, what motivates you, what is important to you, where you are from, how you have gotten to this point in your life, and who you hope to be in the future. Therefore, your personal statement should be what the name suggests: personal. If you write thoughtfully and introspectively about your life path, experiences, insights, and ideals, and what has led you to choose a career in medicine, you should end up with a document that is unique to you, and only you!

TIP #2: Think of your medical school personal statement as one piece of the puzzle.

Your personal statement is one piece of your application and is never read in isolation. Medical school admissions committees all practice holistic admissions to varying degrees. You have likely heard this term before, and I can assure that admissions officers will review all of your written documents to get a sense of who you are. What does this mean? Your experience descriptions , secondary essays, and letters of recommendation will help paint that picture. So, when composing your personal statement, you must consider the other pieces of your application portfolio and what they will communicate about your story. In fact, your application descriptions that detail all of your experiences on your path to medical school are as important as your personal statement!

TIP #3: Be uniquely yourself!

Medical schools seek diverse classes, filled with individuals with varied interests and expertise. This is why it’s crucial to communicate the unique opportunities in your life that have led you to decide on medicine. Undoubtedly, you’ve likely developed expertise (even if elementary) in an area related to medicine. For example, maybe you have explored patient advocacy in a public health internship, or you have research experience in immunology that sparked your interest in a future specialization. Think deeply about what your “expertise” is and communicate this in your personal statement. In this way, medical school admissions committees will be able to envision you at their medical school, in the hospital and clinic, in the conference room, in the labs, and out in the community, making an important contribution in the areas that interest you most. 

TIP #4: Reflect on what drives you.

When writing about those experiences that are important to you, you must reflect deeply about WHY those experiences were valuable offering insights about what you learned from each and how they motivated you to become a physician. The personal statement offers the opportunity to connect the dots of your personal, scholarly, extracurricular, and academic milestones to show how each has deepened your curiosity about medicine, and offered you a more mature and sophisticated understanding of it. Think critically about what you learned and how it shaped your view of patient care, the healthcare team, or your own skills. For example, if you are writing about a patient encounter, reflect on what that allowed you to learn about the patient’s experience, the coordination and cultural competence of the healthcare team, and how you comforted the patient based on what you had learned about patient care.

TIP #5: Use specific stories wisely.

The purpose of the medical school personal statement, is after all, to answer the question: Why medicine? However, medical school admissions officers are humans too and it’s best to provide some element of intrigue and entertainment in your personal statement. For this reason, it is important to incorporate stories and anecdotes into your personal statement keeping in mind that the stories you include should be related to one of your most influential experiences that has led you to medicine.

When writing your stories, think about the most impactful experiences on your path to medicine. Capture these so the reader can feel immersed in the space you describe. Bring in sensory details to engage the reader fully—what did you see, hear, smell, or feel? This approach infuses humanity into your statement, helping the reader connect with your journey. In this way, you draw the reader into your vignette and, in doing so, can make them feel what you were feeling at the time. That relatability is more likely to result in the reader appreciating more significantly who you are and why the experience was important to you. Keep in mind that your statement should not read as a string of anecdotes. Explaining your path to medical school won’t allow more than one or maybe two well-described situations.

TIP #6: Communicate how you hope to contribute in medical school and into the future.

Ultimately, you want your reader to picture you as a medical student in their incoming class as well as the physician you hope to be in the future. In this way, you want to conclude your personal statement by showing that you are forward thinking. Try to express how your past and current experiences have positioned and informed your trajectory. How do you hope to grow and how do you hope to contribute as a medical student and into the future?

By focusing less on simply making your personal statement ‘stand out’ and more on how your pivotal experiences have clarified your motivation for medicine, you’ll create a statement that is distinctively and authentically yours. Take time to reflect on what truly drives you, and let that form the core of your personal statement.

JESSICA FREEDMAN, M.D. , a former medical school and residency admissions officer at the  Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai , is the founder and chair of MedEdits Medical Admissions and author of three top-selling books about the medical admissions process that you can find on  Amazon .

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Book recommendations for an oxbridge medicine personal statement, some reading suggestions that you may wish to discuss in an oxbridge personal statement and tips on how to include them..

When considering the approach to take for a personal statement directed at Oxbridge, it is important to think about including further reading as this is something they favour. This does not have to be books, it can be articles, courses, journals, or anything else that shows that you have taken an interest in medicine. They want to see that you have been proactive and taken a  step further to learn more about the profession. But, sometimes it can be difficult to weave these into your personal statement, therefore in this post, we will discuss how this can be done as well as provide some recommendations of reading material.

How to write about books?

A misconception surrounding Oxbridge is that you need excessive further reading to stand of chance of getting an offer. This is absolutely not the case! Whilst it is useful to have some academic content, i.e. further reading, in your personal statement, it is not a requirement. It is also important to note that too much focus on further reading, meaning it takes up the majority of the personal statement, may be disadvantageous. At most, a few lines or a short paragraph should be sufficient. Rather than summarising the reading, you should talk about what you find interesting about it, and what you learnt from it. This could be a particular condition you found interesting, a case study you resonated with, an aspect of healthcare you might want to go into etc.

Book Recommendations

The Man who mistook his Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks : This book is a collection of patient cases who the neurologist Oliver Sacks encountered during his career. Each of these cases is individual and unique and offers a detailed visual description of how many neurological disorders and diseases present in patients. This book is a fantastic and insightful read for those interested in a career in neurology or psychiatry. Although difficult to understand initially due to medical terminology, it is a great piece of text to discuss at interviews. When talking about the book I would personally recommend taking a particular case you found interesting, talking about why it stood out, what you’ve done since reading about it to learn more about that disease, and how it may link to your desire to study Medicine. This shows you’ve read the book and have taken the necessary steps to explore this interest further, expanding your knowledge in the process.

When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi : This is a non-fictional autobiography that details the author’s battle with stage 4 lung cancer. As a neurosurgical resident in the US, he experienced symptoms of lung cancer but was initially diagnosed as healthy. After a long and arduous journey battling cancer, he sadly died at the age of 37. The book was published after his death and received excellent reviews worldwide. This book is a great choice for those who are interested in a career in oncology. Although written by a doctor, it is written from the patient’s perspective, contrasting to ‘The Man who mistook his Wife for a Hat’, so would certainly be interesting to write about. When writing about this book, I would take a similar approach to the one above – talk about what you found particularly fascinating, what you have done since to learn more, and how it may link to your desire to study Medicine.

Life at the Extremes, Frances Ashcroft : This is an exciting read if I do say so myself! This book focuses on how people survive extreme conditions – things like temperature extremes, altitude extremes and depth extremes. This book gives examples of how the body is adapted for human survival in harsh conditions. Answering questions like ‘What causes mountain sickness?’, ‘Why do astronauts faint when standing up after returning to Earth?’ and ‘Why don’t penguins get frostbite?’ This book is excellent for people who want to learn more about physiology and the scientific principles behind bodily systems. A more scientifically oriented read with a huge variety of examples. It may also be quite useful for interviews as it encourages you to think about slightly out of the box scenarios, and helps develop your ability to apply your prior scientific knowledge when problem-solving.

A quick example of how you may wish to talk about books:

“The book ‘The Man who mistook his Wife for a Hat’ particularly furthered my interest in neurology. I especially enjoyed a case on visual agnosia, where the patient was able to see objects but couldn’t recognise them. To learn more about this abnormality I completed an online course on neurological diseases where I learnt more about the pathophysiology of devastating disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis.”

General Tips

The biggest tip I can give is that if you mention a book in your personal statement, please make sure you have actually read the book and know it fairly well. So many people mention books that they have not read or have only read part of. Of course, interviewers know this, so they often try and ask interviewees about the book to make sure they have read it. This can include questions like ‘You mentioned this condition from this book. What can you tell me about it?’ or ‘What else did you find interesting from this book?’ etc. So please make sure you are prepared to answer questions like these! You won’t have to know enough to recite the entire book, but just enough to provide a summary and offer some thoughts about what you liked/disliked about it. Another important factor to consider is to not just mention a book for the sake of it. Only mention things in your personal statement if you actually think it adds something and it helped you decide on Medicine as a career or learn more about the profession. Sometimes, it may be more suitable to talk about journals, articles or other forms of reading depending on what you would like to convey. Often books give personal narratives and experiences, which may not be suitable for you. If this is the case for you, I would recommend looking at some of the below resources:

• New Scientist
• FutureLearn
• Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

For more information regarding online courses such as FutureLearn and MOOCs, see our post ‘ Free Online Courses For Medicine Applications 2021 ’ (although written last year it is still very relevant).

To summarise…

Books are a great way to express your desire to pursue medicine, but they are by no means a requirement for Oxbridge. It is important to only mention reading you find genuinely interesting as you won’t be able to talk about it well at an interview if you are not passionate about it. Sometimes it may be better to talk about alternative further reading such as journals depending on the nature of what you would like to talk about and convey. If you do talk about a book(s), please be careful about the wording to ensure you talk about it in a way that is effective at expressing your interest. Also, please make sure to actually read the book – if you receive an interview and you are asked about it, you will most certainly lose out on marks if it is clear you haven’t read it!

Author: Chandan Sekhon

Editor: Allegra Wisking

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Successful Personal Statement For Medicine At Cambridge

Last Updated: 31st March 2020

Author: Rohan Agarwal

Table of Contents

Welcome to our popular Personal Statement series where we present a successful Personal Statement, and our Oxbridge Tutors provide their feedback on it. 

Today, we are looking through a Medicine applicant’s Personal Statement that helped secure a place at Cambridge University. The Medicine Course at Cambridge aims to educate students to become compassionate, thoughtful, skilled members – and leaders – of the medical profession.

Read on to see how this candidate wrote a Personal Statement that demonstrates the qualities to work in a medical profession. 

Here’s a breakdown of the Personal Statement:

SUCCESSFUL?

The universities this candidate applied to were the following:

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INTERVIEW + REJECTED

Enrolling on our Oxbridge Medicine comprehensive Programme will give you access to Personal Statement redrafts. 

Your tutor will give you actionable feedback with insider tips on how to improve and make your Personal Statement Oxbridge quality for the best chances of success.  

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Medicine Personal Statement

I realise that medicine may not always have positive outcomes, having witnessed two deaths at a young age. However, the inevitable fallibility of the human body has driven my desire to acquire a better understanding of the complicated processes and mechanisms of our body. I am captivated by the prospect of lifelong learning; the rapid and ceaseless pace of change in medicine means that there is a vast amount of knowledge in an astonishing number of fields.

Work experience and volunteering have intensified my desire to pursue the profession; it gave me the chance to observe doctors diagnosing problems and establishing possible routes of treatment; I found the use of monoclonal antibodies in kidney transplantation fascinating. A doctor needs to be skilled, dexterous and creative. Medicine is a scientific discipline that requires a profound understanding of the physiology of the body, but the application of medicine can be an art, especially when communications between the doctor and the patient can influence the outcome of the treatment. I admire the flexibility of doctors; an inpatient needs to be approached with sensitivity and reassurance, whereas an acute admission patient would benefit more from hands-on assessments. I have been volunteering at Derriford Hospital since 2010. The most valuable part is taking time to converse with the patients to alleviate their stress and appreciate their concerns, demonstrating my understanding of the importance of listening. I appreciate that the quality of life is more important than the quantity of years, as a recent death at the ward made me realise that despite all the technological advances and our increasing understanding of the human body, there is a limit to what we can achieve.

My Nuffield Bursary project was based on finding potential medical treatments for sepsis by working on the molecular genetics of bacteria-infected cells. Using theory to interpret laboratory experiments allowed me to show how an enzyme was involved in the inflammatory response mechanism. My skills of organisation and time management were recognised by the Individual Achievement Award for my role as Finance Director in the Young Enterprise team. I used my leadership skills to assign team members to tasks to which their talents were best suited and demonstrated effective communication and teamwork to meet the deadlines. I took part in the British Mathematical Olympiad after receiving the Gold and Best in School prize for the Senior Maths challenge last year. Regular participation in the Individual and Team Maths Challenge enhanced my lateral thinking. The numerous awards I have won such as Best Results at GCSE and Bronze in the Physics Olympiad not only show my ability in a range of subjects but also my commitment to my academic career. As a subject mentor, I developed my ability to break down problems, explaining them in a logical, analytical yet simpler way. I cherished the opportunity to work with the younger pupils; enabling them to grasp new concepts, and I believe that discussing ideas, problems or case studies with colleagues will be even more rewarding.

A keen pianist, I have been playing for 14 years. At the age of 12, I became the pianist for the Children’s Amateur Theatre Society. Perseverance was essential as I was learning numerous songs each week showing commitment, resilience and attention to detail, which are transferable skills applicable to medicine. Playing in front of 300 people regularly helped me to build my confidence and taught me to stay calm under pressure. Playing the piano is a hobby that I love and I will continue to pursue it to balance my academic life.

I believe I possess the ability, devotion, diligence and determination required for this course that demands a holistic understanding of both the sciences and the arts. I will relish the challenges on an academic and personal level and I look forward to following this vocation in the future.

For more inspiration, take a look through our other successful Personal Statement a nalysis articles:

Successful Personal Statement For Medicine At Oxford University

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Good Points Of The Personal Statement

A well-written statement that guides the reader from one point to the next, delivering good insight into personal development and the motivations to becoming a doctor. The student shows that they have a very diverse background, both academically as well as work experience. One of the strongest parts of the statements is that the student recognises the limitations of medicine and acknowledges the challenges in delivering medical care under those limitations. The student is also able to demonstrate experiences made in non-medical fields and how they contributed to their personal development. This is important as some of the skills necessary to becoming a good doctor are transferable from other professions.

Bad Points Of The Personal Statement

The student provides extensive detail on awards and prizes won. This part is somewhat unnecessary as it does not add anything to the quality of the statement itself. Most, if not all students applying for medicine will have a history of academic excellence, therefore, listing awards and achievements is less relevant. This space could be better used to provide more insight into lessons learned from work experience.

UniAdmissions Overall Score:

A strong statement with a lot of information on the student’s development and academic achievements. The statement succeeds at raising interest in the student and providing an overview of the individual’s development. There are a few minor weaknesses that could be optimised in order to improve the overall strength of the statement even further.

And there we have it – a Cambridge Medicine Personal Statement with feedback from our expert tutors. 

Remember, at Cambridge, the Admissions Tutors are often the people who will be teaching you for the next few years, so you need to appeal directly to them.

Our Free Personal Statement Resources page is filled with even more successful personal statements and expert guides.

Our expert tutors are on hand to help you craft the perfect Personal Statement for your Cambridge Medicine application.

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2024 How to Write a Medical School Personal Statement (11 Steps)

• By Med School Insiders
• December 2, 2023
• Medical Student , Pre-med
• Medical School Application , Personal Statement

Each piece of a med school application brings a unique set of anxiety-ridden challenges, but few equal that of the personal statement. A personal statement is much, much more than a narrative-version of your CV. Reiterating your grades and extracurriculars in complete sentences is not how to write a medical school personal statement.

A personal statement is an opportunity to tell your story. Why do you want to study medicine? What drives you? This is your chance to let an admissions committee know who you really are beyond your grades.

Of course, you’re studying to become a doctor, not a novelist, which means the idea of crafting your personal statement may seem daunting, to say the least.

In this guide, we’ll take a comprehensive, step-by-step look at how to write a medical school personal statement, including how to get started, everything you need to include, and common mistakes to avoid.

Article Sections

• Anatomy of Medical School Personal Statement

What Med School Admissions Committees Look For

How to get started.

• How to Write a Personal Statement

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Medical school personal statement examples, anatomy of a medical school personal statement.

A personal statement has a 5,300 character maximum, about 1.5 pages of single-spaced 12-point Times New Roman font. The challenge isn’t trying to fill in words; the challenge is selecting the key moments in your life that made you want to be a doctor and expressing them concisely.

A personal statement is made up of three parts:

Introduction

It’s essentially a short essay that uses your life experience to succinctly demonstrate why you’re the right person for the job. If someone’s making a movie about your life and the events that shaped your desire to become a doctor, what key moments do you want to highlight?

Your introduction must capture an admissions committee’s attention. Use the introduction to hook your readers. The first few sentences should entice them to read more.

There isn’t a perfect number of paragraphs or set structure. This is where you discuss the experiences that have shaped your personality, your desire to study medicine, and your dreams for the future.

This is the summary of your statement, and it should tie in directly to your introduction. Now is the time to emphasize why you want to be a physician and your future goals.

Learn more about the Anatomy of a Stellar Medical School Personal Statement .

Admissions committees need to know they’re accepting students who are ready to face the rigorous day-and-night grind of medical school. They have your CV and transcripts; now you need to demonstrate you have what it takes to succeed.

The personal statement is your chance to display your personality and highlight the experiences that shaped you. What drives you? What strengths and experiences will you bring to medical school? Why are you an asset?

The admissions committee isn’t looking for a list of your accomplishments. They want to know your story . Don’t tell the admissions committee you’re compassionate and driven; show them with tangible examples from your life.

So you’re a great listener. What’s a moment in your past that demonstrates this? If you care deeply about the wellbeing of others, what story from your life illustrates that passion?

1 | Read Real Personal Statement Examples

Right off the bat, it’s important to remember that you’re not alone—far from it. Every medical student who came before you has written personal statements, which means you have a wealth of examples to read and learn from.

Every personal statement is unique to the writer. Don’t expect to find a perfect blueprint you can copy off of, but reading several different personal statements will give you a sense of the themes, concepts, strategies, and stories that can help you find success.

If you know people in your own life who have successfully matriculated to med school, it’s a good idea to ask them if you can take a look at their personal statement. Med School Insiders compiled a database of personal statements donated by successful medical school applicants. Reading successful personal statements will give you an idea of what’s expected.

Reading bad personal statements can also give you an idea of what mistakes to avoid. Learn from our bad personal statement examples , which includes key insights into what you should do instead.

2 | Reflect on Past Experiences

Take this as an opportunity to reflect. Don’t think of it as brainstorming, and don’t worry about being creative just yet. Simply think back on key moments from your past.

Think of your personal statement like your superhero origin story. You may have excellent grades, abilities, and a natural aptitude for science, but why are you pursuing medicine? What moment or moments in your life revealed to you why you had to be a doctor?

Take Spider-Man. Yes, Peter Parker received his superpowers from a radioactive spider bite, but that’s not why he fights crime; Spider-Man fights crime so that what happened to his Uncle Ben never happens to anyone else. Bruce Wayne is incredibly smart, incredibly strong, and incredibly rich, but that’s not why he fights crime as Batman. Bruce Wayne became Batman so that no one else would lose their parents to a random act of violence like he did.

The truth is, a lot of superheroes have pretty similar motivations, and doctors have similar motivations, too. Your desire to become a doctor likely stems from a genuine intellectual interest in medicine, a desire to work closely with other humans, and a drive to help people and save lives. The other med school hopefuls you’re applying with have very similar motivations.

The key is digging deep and determining what you value most about becoming a doctor. Once you know that, think about the tangible experiences in your life that helped you realize those values.

Utilize our list of 25 medical school personal statement prompts as you ideate and reflect on your life to date.

3 | Choose Which Experiences/Traits to Highlight

Identify three to four personal strengths you are particularly proud of and want the admissions committee to know. Where did these strengths shine in your premedical years? What experiences helped you build on these strengths? This will make up the body of your personal statement.

Remember: writing a personal statement takes time—and lots of it. It will likely take several different attempts and drafts. After discussing your selected strengths, you may find that they don’t define you well enough or that there are better options. Don’t be discouraged. Give yourself plenty of time to reflect on and explore a variety of different strengths.

Don’t forget about the interview; the admissions committee will certainly ask you to further elaborate on the experiences outlined in your personal statement. Share personal stories that you want to be asked about and feel comfortable addressing.

Generally, personal statements involve experiences in the following categories:

• A passion for patient interaction
• Intellectual curiosity for medicine (academics, research, etc.)
• Dedication and discipline (medicine or another pursuit)
• Perseverance in the face of adversity
• Interpersonal and professional skills

How to Write a Medical School Personal Statement

4 | show, don’t tell.

If essays or storytelling aren’t necessarily your strong suit, think back to math class and those equations where the teacher made you show your work for the full grade. It’s not enough that you got the answer right; you had to show how you arrived at the answer.

Think of this in the same way. It’s great that you’re compassionate, but the admissions committee isn’t going to take you at your word. They want you to back up that claim with evidence. It is vital that you show the admissions committee you’re compassionate with concrete examples from your life that illustrate your journey to medicine.

It’s much more impactful to share a story that demonstrates specific qualities than it is to tell someone you have those qualities directly. Saying you are hardworking or resilient is not enough. You need to craft a story that allows the reader to infer those qualities about you.

5 | Leverage the Narrative-Based Approach

You are applying to medical school along with an immense number of other students with great grades, stellar qualifications, and impressive clinical hours. These are all key to your medical school application, but the best grades in the world won’t set you apart in the eyes of the admissions committee.

Your personal statement is a chance to stand out in a crowded field. Too many personal statements read like a CV but with full paragraphs, which quickly becomes monotonous.

Leverage a narrative-based approach so that the admissions committee is excited to learn more about you. Your entire application should illustrate your compelling journey toward becoming a doctor. Highlight how your experiences make you an asset who will contribute uniquely to the medical school.

It’s not enough to simply check off the boxes. The admissions committee wants to know your story.

Learn How to Develop a Cohesive Narrative for Medical School Applications .

6 | Create an Outline

After taking the time to reflect on the experiences and traits you want to include in your personal statement, create an outline to structure your approach .

You do not need to stick to it, but this is the general structure of most personal statements:

• Introduction (A strong hook to catch the reader’s attention—usually an anecdote or reflection that introduces the theme of your story. Hook the reader with the opening sentence.)
• Experience 1
• Experience 2
• Experience 3
• Conclusion (Tie your story back to the opening hook/theme. Summarize why you want to be a physician and what your future goals are.)

Remember, this is not a list of your accomplishments. The personal statement must read like a cohesive narrative, not a resume.

Establish a theme in the introduction that’s central to your desire to become a doctor. Each following paragraph will illustrate how your personal experiences have shaped that desire and prepared you for your journey. In the conclusion, gracefully tie back to your central theme or hook to turn the personal statement into a consistent, interconnected story.

7 | Force Yourself to Start Writing

It’s understandable and common to feel overwhelmed while writing a personal statement. In fact, if you don’t feel overwhelmed, it’s safe to say that you’re not taking this seriously enough.

Start with a theme, but don’t get stuck trying to come up with the perfect opening sentence. That comes later. Once you have a general outline, just start writing. See what happens, and—most importantly—be kind to yourself.

The first words you write won’t be perfect, but they will get you started. You should fully expect the first draft of your personal statement to be terrible. That’s okay. First drafts are never perfect.

Your first draft probably won’t look anything like your final essay. Put one foot in front of the other and just start writing. Get the ideas out and worry about editing later.

8 | Keep it Concise and Direct

In your subsequent drafts, focus on cutting down your words and being concise. It’s not your use of flowery language that will impress the admissions committee. Forget about extravagant word choices and convoluted sentence structure. You don’t have the space for poetic tangents anyway.

Use your words efficiently, and favor clear language over long, complicated words. It’s easy for readers to spot when you’re using a thesaurus, and it will only take away from your end message. Find the simplest way to say something.

For example:

Hard-working over Assiduous

Compassion over Magnanimity

Agree over Concur

Use tools like the Hemingway App to keep your language direct and concise.

9 | Take Some Time Away

Take time away from your drafts. Once you complete a draft, take a break, and let it sit. Go for a walk, watch some TV, or work on a completely different activity. After your break, come back to your personal statement with fresh eyes. You may find that the fantastic opening line you came up with isn’t so fantastic anymore, or that sentence you weren’t so sure about actually works really well.

Writing your personal statement will take time. Even if you feel extremely confident in your personal statement, take time away from it and come back.

10 | Refine, Review, and Edit

We recommend using editing apps like Grammarly and Hemingway Editor , but don’t rely on bots alone to catch possible mistakes.

Ask your friends and family for their first impressions on the content of your personal statement. Tell them to be brutally honest (because the admissions committee certainly will be.) Reach out to a mentor or people who have been through this process before.

Spelling or grammar mistakes indicate carelessness on your part and are an automatic red flag for admissions committees. Read over your work carefully, and ask others you trust to do the same.

The editing process is such a critical phase for your personal statement. Learn how to edit your personal statement to impress admissions committees.

11 | Invest in Essay Editing Services

Your medical school personal statement is arguably the most important piece of your application. While an excellent essay can lock-in your interview offer, a poorly-written personal statement can ruin your chances—even with stellar grades, impressive academic awards, and a notable list of extracurriculars.

Don’t risk your acceptance. Essay editing services can provide the help that friends, family, and mentors cannot.

Med School Insiders Personal Statement Editing Services includes careful analysis of content and tone as well as helpful insights into how you can improve your essay and impress admissions committees.

Avoid the following common personal statement mistakes .

• Don’t list your accomplishments or rehash your CV and extracurriculars.
• Don’t make spelling or grammar errors.
• Don’t overuse the word I. Doing so makes you more likely to state your accomplishments instead of telling a story.
• Don’t use flowery language or words you found in a thesaurus.
• Don’t explain to a physician what medicine is all about. Talk about yourself and your experiences; the admissions committee already understands medicine.
• Don’t state the obvious or use clichés. (Every applicant likes science and wants to help people.)
• Don’t lie or fabricate your personal stories.
• Don’t make excuses for poor grades or a low MCAT score.
• Don’t speak negatively about another physician or healthcare professional.
• Don’t plead for an interview or acceptance.
• Don’t edit your personal statement by yourself.
• Don’t procrastinate.

Learn more: 20 Personal Statement: Dos and Don’ts .

It’s important to read the personal statements of matriculated students. While you won’t be able to mimic someone else’s personal statement, you can still learn a lot from them, and reading different statements can spark ideas for your own essay.

We compiled a selection of real medical school personal statements from successful applicants. These statements are for reference purposes only and should not be plagiarized in any way. Plagiarism detection software is used when evaluating personal statements, and plagiarizing is grounds for an automatic disqualification.

Be sure to read the included feedback regarding the personal statements as well, as this will give you extra insight into what admissions committees are looking for.

Read Real Medical School Personal Statement Examples .

Medical School Personal Statement Editing

Don’t write your medical school personal statement alone—we can help. Med School Insiders offers a range of personal statement editing packages , from general editing to unlimited, in-depth editing with a physician who will be there to advise you every step of the way.

Learn more about our Comprehensive Medical School Admissions Packages . Our team of doctors has years of experience serving on admissions committees, so you’ll receive key insights from people who have been intimately involved with the selection process.

Next read: Guide to Understanding the Medical School Application Process

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