Potentially the most important piece of writing that you will have to do for medical school is your personal statement. This is basically a 5,300 characters (counting spaces) or 1 page essay sharing your story with the medical school admissions committees and telling them why you want to go to medical school.
This is not something you can write the night before submissions are due so make sure you give yourself enough time to write this. I started with drafting my outline in February and then edited it throughout March and April. It took me until April to finalize it, and I wrote several versions. I remember scrapping a large part of it in March (after I had already spent a month on it) because I just wasn't happy with it. Ultimately, you need to be happy and proud of your personal statement because that’s how the admissions committee will characterize you.
There are many ways to approach a personal statement, but it should (without a doubt) answer the question: “Why Medicine?”
I chose to focus on the software element of my application (I was a data science major who interned at a software engineering company and then pivoted to healthcare). I ended with discussing how my data science degree could be applied to medical school and in my career as a physician.
Brainstorm the most important aspects of your medical school journey.
One thing that can also be helpful during the brainstorming stage is to write out some anecdotes. (Was there a special patient interaction during your clinical hours? Is there a memorable moment you had during shadowing?)
Create an outline with a somewhat linear path of how you ended up in medicine.
If it helps, you can try structuring your outline with the classic essay structure of an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Select which stories and ideas from your brainstorming will actually make it into your final personal statement.
Seek feedback on your outline.
This can be a medical school advisor, someone attending medical school, or anyone that you trust will give you valuable, honest feedback. It is much easier to change your personal statement during the outline phase so garner as much feedback as you can. Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide which feedback to accept, but my advice is to stay open to different opinions.
Start drafting your personal statement.
I had approximately 20 drafts of my personal statement (which could be excessive, but I didn’t want to stop until I was happy with it). After each draft, I sought feedback from my medical school advisors. After about 7 drafts, I sent it to one of my friends for her advice as well. Overall, I had 3 people give me advice because I didn’t want to be inundated by feedback and have “too many cooks in the kitchen.”
While the length of the AMCAS and AACOMAS personal statements are the same, it is highly recommended to adapt your AMCAS personal statement for DO schools. Some people simply try to fit in the words “holistic” or regurgitate the tenets of osteopathic medicine. While this is a valid strategy, it would be more effective to edit the actual content of your personal statement to “show” this holistic care that you observed or participated in.
One way to do this is by adding in an anecdote from when you shadowed or observed a DO. Did they use OMT in their treatment of the patient? Was there something about their care practices that aligned with the “holistic care” treatment that provided the patient with better care?
Personally, I hadn’t shadowed a DO so I edited my MD shadowing content from my AMCAS personal statement to focus on the non-medical elements of the doctor’s care - how she asked lifestyle questions, how she offered alternative treatments, etc. – and then relayed how I observed they put the patient at ease and led to a better healthcare experience. I also edited my clinical example to discuss how I had helped a patient utilize breathing techniques to calm her down after a stressful situation had occurred. In this way, I could relay my belief in a patient’s emotional well-being affecting their physical health and also demonstrate examples of how I had observed this.
Ultimately, DO schools want to feel chosen because they realize that for a majority of applicants they are the “second choice” to MD schools. The more you tailor your personal statement for them, the better received it’ll be. You shouldn’t spend too long on this (I had two drafts before I finalized it because most of the content will stay the same from the AMCAS personal statement). I worked on this in June once I finished submitting my AMCAS application because the DO school process tends to move faster so you can wait to submit the primary for DO schools until July.