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Medical School Essays: AMCAS Application Tips

Writing Your Medical School Essay

"...many admissions committees place significant weight on this section."
           --AMCAS Application Help Information for the "personal comments" section

You get a scant 5300 characters on your AMCAS application to write your personal statement. That's about one page. So much information to communicate to the admissions committee and so little time and space in which to do it.

Do well on this first application essay, you will likely get a chance to say more in additional essays that come with secondary applications. But let's face it, you need to really stand out in this first personal statement to even get those secondaries.

You spent long hours and late nights making those great grades and outstanding MCAT scores—but those just get you through the first cut. Schools use those GPAs and MCAT scores to slash through the onslaught of the thousands (upon thousands) of applications they receive.

But they admit human beings—human beings with personalities, with the characteristics of future physicians, with the stamina to endure the rigors of medical education. Your application essay fills in important details and shows the person behind the grades and statistics. And, what's more, even the best grades and scores cannot make up for a poor application essay. However, an outstanding application essay has been able to overcome spotty records and earn a place in a desired medical program.

So, while you thought competition for grades was tough, welcome to this "invisible" competition.

And competition has never been tougher.

While the early part of the last decade saw a decrease in the number of medical school applicants, according to AAMC, the last five years have shown a steady increase in the number of applicants, particularly women applicants, up 15% from 2003.

With thousands of applications being submitted to nearly every medical school, admissions committee members have less and less time to look at your essay. When members look through the piles of applications, they are looking for reasons to reject you, not to include you.

You need to start your application essay with a strong opening. Writers—from speech writers to ad writers to fiction writers—know this as "the hook," Unfair as it may seem, that hook will determine whether the admissions committee member will "meet you", or whether they will simply skim your essay and move on.

By creating a first sentence with curiosity and maybe even suspense, you move the reader on to your following sentences. That hook, that curiosity, works best when it leads into a story. And your story has a purpose. The purpose is to show you as the kind of person who would make an excellent physician. For instance, a story about a difficult decision you had to make, and how you made it, will tell a great deal about your character.  Make it engaging, but not overly dramatic. Admissions committees, after all, are looking for future physicians, not emotional catharsis.

You can (and should) describe obstacles that you've overcome on your pre-medicine journey—but do so in an upbeat way. Come across as strong and victorious (and not pandering for sympathy) and you communicate your potential to do likewise during the grueling years of medical training. Your medical essay should show how you have the qualities of the ideal physician.

What are those? We, at EssayEdge, have researched the answer to this question extensively. To help you out, we've created an easy-to-follow course to help you to write your medical personal statement. It asks you the critical questions you need to answer to have a blockbuster essay. And keeps you from making those easy-to-make, tragic mistakes that will assure you a place on the reject pile. And even better—it's free!

Go through this course and follow-it up with the services of EssayEdge. See how our professional editors ensure that the best possible medical school candidate you can be is reflected in your personal statement—giving you the maximum momentum in the medical school admissions process. No more struggling and wondering—you can have peace of mind that you are hitting all the right notes.

There's a lot that goes into writing your medical school personal statement—and an awful lot that rides on it. It can, in some cases, even lift you out of the reject pile. With your future at stake, be sure to get the best help you can. That's what we do at EssayEdge. We bring the best of what we do to show medical school admissions committees how the best of what you do will make you the medical student they most desire.

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"Unlike getting help from friends and peers, [my editor] from EssayEdge is always straightforward and does not hold back to let me know when something needs to be improved. Needless to say, based on their correction and comments, my essay was polished beyond my imagination which likely became one of the major factors on the swift admission!"
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