how to write a medical school personal statement Archives

Important Changes to This Year’s AMCAS Application

Two medical school applicants, one male and one female, navigate an obstacle course wearing white coats, stethoscopes, sneakers, shorts, and gym socks. They carry piles of applications while sweating, facing various hurdles, climbing walls, and balancing beams — Know the new obstacles AMCAS has erected!

With the AMCAS portal opening May 1, many medical school applicants have already begun this process in earnest. Of all the graduate and professional schools, medical school has the most intense, time-consuming, and onerous application, and changes to it can send shivers of panic up the collective spines of aspiring physicians. Not to worry, at Gurufi, we have nearly 15 years of experience helping applicants earn admission to their top choice medical schools. We’re here to help!

Here are some of the changes to this year’s AMCAS that you need to be aware of. These changes reflect a broader shift toward a more holistic review process. As such, in addition to noting specific things you should be aware of, also note how these changes are strong indicators of how much admissions committees care more and more about whether applicants have demonstrated leadership, care about public health, and have a service-oriented mindset when it comes to medicine as a career. Thus, these changes aim to capture a wider array of applicant experiences, providing admissions committees with a deeper understanding of candidates’ backgrounds, experiences, and motivations.

1. Social Justice/Advocacy Experience Type

One of the most notable additions to the AMCAS application is the new Social Justice/Advocacy experience type in the Work & Activities section. This category allows applicants to highlight their involvement in social justice or advocacy efforts, demonstrating their commitment to advancing the rights, privileges, or opportunities of a person, group, or cause. Examples of activities that fall under this category include registering people to vote, advocating for civil rights, reducing health inequities, addressing food deserts, or advocating for vulnerable populations such as children or the homeless.

Note that this doesn’t necessarily have to be healthcare-related social justice work, as the above list indicates. Medical schools recognize that doctors must be prepared to work with diverse populations and advocate for health equity. By including this experience type, the AMCAS application aligns with the values of medical schools that seek to produce physicians who are not only clinically competent but also socially conscious and dedicated to addressing systemic issues.

Practical Advice: considering using one of your “Most Significant” entries so that you can have an additional 1325 characters to explain, at length, what you did, why it was important to you, what you learned, and perhaps how you think this work has given you an important perspective on the kind of doctor you aspire to become.

Replacement of the “Disadvantaged Status” Question with “Other Impactful Experiences”

The second major change to the AMCAS application is the replacement of the Disadvantaged Status question with the Other Impactful Experiences question. This new question aims to promote a holistic review by allowing applicants to provide additional context about the challenges they may have experienced in their lives. The Other Impactful Experiences question is designed for applicants who have faced or overcome challenges in various areas, such as family background, financial circumstances, community setting, education, religion, or other life experiences.

This change provides a broader scope for applicants to share their unique stories and backgrounds, allowing admissions committees to better understand the hurdles they may have overcome. It also reduces the stigma associated with the term “disadvantaged” and offers a more inclusive platform for applicants to express their personal journeys and resilience.

Practical Advice: Any time you are discussing status, you want to make sure that you go beyond describing the status. Ultimately, the idea that you hope to convey is that a particular status is connected to experiences, worldviews, certain kinds of empathies, and connections to causes or problems that are personal to you. This is partly a function of wanting to make sure you convey yourself as a compelling candidate and partly a function of schools wanting to make sure that they remain on the right side of the law vis-à-vis new affirmative action rulings by the US Supreme Court.

Addition of Drop-Down Categories for the Institutional Action Question

The third change involves the Institutional Action question, where applicants must report any disciplinary or academic issues they faced during their undergraduate education. Previously, this question was open-ended, but the new format includes a drop-down menu allowing applicants to select “Conduct,” “Academic,” or “Both.” This change aims to provide a more comprehensive view of any institutional action and allows applicants to categorize the nature of the issues they encountered.

The addition of drop-down categories provides more clarity and context for admissions committees. It helps them better understand the type of institutional action, reducing ambiguity and promoting a fairer assessment of applicants with disciplinary or academic histories.

Practical advice: We have written extensively about how to address missteps in your medical school applications. Check out these shorts, here, here, and here (this was done for MBA applicants, but the ideas are the same!):

Optional Field for AAMC PREview® Exam Registration Date

The final change to the AMCAS application is the inclusion of an optional field to indicate an upcoming AAMC PREview® exam registration date. This addition allows applicants to indicate their intention to take the PREview exam, providing medical schools with information on when they can expect the score .

The AAMC PREview® exam assesses applicants’ pre-professional competencies and is designed to help admissions committees evaluate candidates’ readiness for medical school. By including this optional field, the AMCAS application aligns with the growing importance of the PREview exam in the admissions process, allowing schools to plan accordingly for the evaluation of these scores.

Remember, though these changes are important, the underlying components of a strong application remain the same. Take these changes into account as you craft your personal statement, Work & Activities, and secondaries. And, if you need help with these vital documents, Gurufi’s editors collectively have more than 50 years of experience helping students earn admission into the top medical schools in the country! Check us out today.

For more help with your personal statement, check us out at Gurufi.com. Our personal statement editors and consultants have decades of experience helping clients get into top medical schools. Our specialty is helping you craft compelling personal statements that move the needle in your admissions process! For questions, shoot us an email at service@gurufi.com. Check us out on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Do NOT Write Your Medical School Personal Statement About This…

The death of a grandparent is the most overused cliche on personal statements

“As I looked into my grandma’s eyes, a single tear rolled down my cheek. I wished that I could save her life, but I felt so powerless. In that moment, I knew that I had to become a doctor so that I could save the lives of people like Grammy. I was only six years old, but that moment changed my life!”

Does your personal statement begin like this? In my 17 years of helping aspiring physicians earn admission into their dream medical school, I have seen some version of this essay hundreds of times. The dying grandma (or aunt, uncle, or grandpa…), the bedside revelation, the moment of irrevocable inspiration.

I don’t doubt that such moments occur nor that they are deeply meaningful, but I do worry that after reading the 25^th such story in a week, the Admissions Committee will find it hard to differentiate your application from the scores of other people whose essays feature a med school origin story that requires the sacrifice poor ol’Granny.

Of course, I’m being a bit facetious (okay, a LOT facetious), but depending on the year, I would guess that between 15% and 30% of medical school essays lean heavily on this trope. The personal statement is just too valuable to waste on a story that the AdCom has read hundreds of times before. Applicants have one opportunity to frame their experiences, accomplishments, and goals, and selecting a cliché subject for your personal statements instantly puts you in the JAG (“just another guy” / “just another gal”) pile. Although the applicant may consider these subjects to be significant, they are overused and do not help the candidate stand out.

Cliches are shallow and don’t give a complete picture of the applicant’s motives and objectives. An applicant’s experiences should be discussed in their personal statement, along with how those experiences affected their decision to pursue a career in medicine. It’s this second part that too often gets overlooked. Obviously, experiences and stories are central to your personal statement and application, BUT you need to build out these stories by linking them to bigger themes, making clear how and why they motivated you (as manifested in actions and decisions), and then projecting that motivation into a vision of the future you aspire to build. The superficial facts of an encounter are frequently highlighted in cliches, leaving out the applicant’s internal dialogue or feelings. The admissions committee could find it difficult to comprehend the applicant’s motivations for applying to medical school without this extra information.

Cliches can sometimes be deceptive and fail to accurately represent an applicant’s experiences. For instance, a candidate who writes about their time spent volunteering at a hospital can say that it confirmed their decision to pursue a career in medicine. The reader can’t know how profound an experience was, though, until the author describes it in detail and reflects on their feelings and ideas when they were having it. Cliches can thereby produce a fictitious narrative that is unrepresentative of the applicant’s experiences and motives. This is why I often urge applicants whose personal statements look flat or cliché to do a journaling or brainstorming exercise where they explore their feelings on the topic, how they worked through an experience or challenge, how it transformed them, and why it informs the kind of doctor they will become.

A useful tip for moving beyond cliché is to provide specifics and engage in deeper storytelling. For instance, many applicants will discuss their time doing volunteer work at a hospital. Does this mean you should avoid that experience altogether in your personal statement? NO! Instead, highlight specific instances and give depth, detail, and personality to that story. Describing your duties in a broad way won’t have nearly the impact that telling a single story of a meaningful interaction with a patient or a hard conversation with a doctor. Tell me about how you assisted a patient with navigating the healthcare system AND HOW THAT INFORMED YOUR VISION OF MEDICINE, or tell me why a particular medical procedure was exciting for you to witness.

You might also talk about how their experiences outside of medicine, such working in another industry or engaging in creative hobbies, have inspired their choice to become a doctor. These subjects offer a more thorough and distinctive perspective of the candidate, highlighting their personality and capacity for critical thought.

Candidates should also think back on their experiences, take into account the lessons they acquired from them, and assess how those experiences have affected their aspirations. Instead of just recounting an incident, candidates should discuss how it affected them academically and emotionally and motivated them to seek a career in medicine. A candidate who had a personal health crisis, for instance, may talk about how that event motivated them to support others or engage in relevant research.

When talking with a colleague a few years back, we joked that May, when applicants begin working on their personal statements, was the “grandma culling season.” Beyond this dark joke, there is a deeper bit of actionable advice for you: cliches lack depth and complexity, can be deceptive, and fail to exhibit an applicant’s originality and critical thinking abilities. Candidates can write a personal statement that highlights their abilities and potential as healthcare professionals by emphasizing their unique experiences and thinking back on the lessons gained and how they have affected their aspirations.

A personal statement gives you 5300 characters to make your case, and it’s often the biggest differentiator between acceptance and denial. Therefore, it’s imperative for candidates to approach this crucial part of the application process with imagination and consideration.

For more help with your personal statement, check us out at Gurufi.com. Our personal statement editors and consultants have decades of experience helping clients get into top medical schools. Our specialty is helping you craft compelling personal statements that move the needle in your admissions process! For questions, shoot us an email atservice@gurufi.com. Check us out on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.