Medical School Essays That Made a Difference, 5th Edition

Book Preface

WHY DID WE PRODUCE THIS BOOK?

Too many freaked-out premeds with outstanding academic records, enviable MCAT scores, and impressive experiences outside the classroom encounter frustration with their medical school personal statement. Given the task of boiling down their desire to be a doctor to a single page of prose, many don’t even know where to start. This book is designed to show that there are many different ways to approach the personal statement and that, if a student reflects on what’s most important in his or her life, he or she will indeed have something to write about. Our evidence is enclosed herewith: actual personal statements that got living, breathing premeds into medical school.

The personal statements in this book display a range of creativity and sophistication with the written word. Some are so good they may intimidate you; others may hardly impress you. We think you’ll find, as we have, that the most memorable ones illuminate their writers and edify their cause. They’re believable and perhaps relatable—but above all else, they’re sincere.

Of course, personal statements don’t stand alone; they have a place within the larger admissions context. In this book, we give you the whole picture: the college GPA; graduate school GPA, if applicable; extracurriculars; hometown; race; and Medical College Admissions Test (i.e., MCAT) scores of the student who wrote each personal statement we feature. Some students were also generous enough to provide essays they wrote for secondary applications. Finally, we include a list of admissions decisions for every single applicant whose personal statement you’ll read. We hope to provide you with an understanding of the relative selectivity of the medical schools that the students in this book applied to and the admissions context within which the personal statement functions. Sure, you can find the average MCAT scores and GPAs of last year’s freshman class in most college guides, but what you’ll find here are the complete profiles of individual applicants who are currently enrolled in, or have recently graduated from, U.S. medical schools.

HOW CAN THIS BOOK HELP YOU?

The early chapters of this book are primarily a guide to medical school admissions and the writing that med school applications entail, with some extra information that you may find helpful as you decide whether to pursue a career in medicine. These chapters will fill in any gaps in your knowledge and make you a well-informed premed.

The personal statements, secondary essays, applicants, and admissions results in this book are presented without commentary. Among the personal statements and secondary essays, not every sentence is eloquent, nor every comma perfectly placed. However, they all passed the ultimate test for medical school application soundness: Their authors gained acceptance into at least one of the medical schools to which they applied. Ideally, these personal statements and secondary essays will inspire you, supply you with paradigms for narrative and organizational structures, teach you ways to express yourself that you hadn’t yet considered, and help you write exactly what you wish to communicate.

This book should also help prepare you to encounter both success and failure in the admissions process. You’re going to be a bit perplexed when UCSF accepts, Penn waitlists, and Mt. Sinai rejects a student in the book. As you’ll see, even wunderkinds—we’ve profiled plenty of them—get denied admission to top-flight schools. In fact, very few of the students you will encounter in this book got into every medical school to which they applied. So what should this mean to you? It means that disappointment is a part of life, even when you worked your buns off toward a particular goal. But even if you do get a rejection letter, there’s no reason to feel completely bereft: a few fat envelopes are probably wending their way to you.