 Get me into the story, show me the image. Too many times we hear, I know, show, don't tell, but too many times students will show too much and not really tell or tell too much and not really show. Stick around and let's talk about the right balance you should kind of strike in your DO and MD personal statements. Hi, I'm Dr. Josie. This is Write Your Acceptance. Thank you for hanging out and spending time with me. I hope you find our content valuable and please make sure you subscribe. If you want to chat with me to learn about how I work with students, definitely get your appointment with me to chat for free 15 minutes in our Calendary Link book your call today and we can chat about how I work with students through my program PSRX. Let's get started on medical school personal statement examples. When I work with students, we do so much more than just editing, right? It's not sentence line kind of editing only. It is not copy editing, right? Here is a comma. Here's a fragment. It is more about elevating your message. It is about choosing the right stories and how to approach these stories and kind of how to combine content. This is why I have students who have gone on free ride to Mayo solely based on their personal statement and how a student, you know, multiple students who were re-applicants just changed their personal statement, didn't really have new experiences, no new MCAT score and got multiple acceptances and interviews after the unsuccessful cycle. The personal statement is really, really important. So let's get started. The first example that I get a lot from students when they're stuck is the I like to help people and I don't know where to go from there and that's okay. When we talk about how cliches are bad, cliches are bad, not because they're just bad cliches are bad because they will kind of deliver the same message or the same level of depth for the page for you, right? So you will sound exactly like someone else. But if you anchor that, if you kind of go a step further with regards to details, then I like to help people could become a very compelling example that goes way deeper than just helping individuals, right? So the student has, I am passionate about not only treating symptoms, but getting to the bottom of illness and how we can improve if not reverse chronic conditions. I love this line. I think this is a great telling line, right? You're telling me what you like, what you really appreciate, how you want to help, how it's more kind of preventative and dealing with chronic conditions from like the root level, right? So it's an exceptional line. What you need first is the evidence first. Show me that you have kind of started this work. Show me that spark moment that really kind of put this brand of medicine for you in your kind of top of mind pillar of what you want to do aspirationally. So the first thing is anchored in experience. So once you have a patient experience you want or as you're selecting patient experiences you want to think about, did you give advice to a patient? Did you offer resources that the clinic that you worked at offered with regards to diabetes or nutrition classes or exercise classes? So what kind of root level experiences were you helping kind of to guide the patient through? How were you active in this or how were you offering a support role in a moment? And then when you're thinking, so once you have a patient experience, then you think that ER acronym that we talked about in last week's personal statement video, if you haven't seen that, I'll link that above. It is more brainstorming content, but ER is basically evidence, then reflection. So you want to kind of think about that structure. It's going to be a topic sentence that gestures. So let's say you're ready to write a body paragraph for the personal statement. It is a topic sentence that gestures the lesson that you will have at the end of the body paragraph, then your story, your evidence, then a reflection, right? It's not always. This is not a hard and fast rule, but this is just a template that is a standard template for me that really works. So it would be something like learning to balance symptoms driven medicine with preventive help is what I learned to appreciate when volunteering at name the volunteering place. Now you go to the story. When a 66 year old female patient with type 2 diabetes came in to check up with her endocrinologist, I noticed she was flushed just from walking a few steps. Here's where that's it. That's the story. Here's where then the student will add what they did, how they addressed it, how they talked to the patient, what resources they offered them, so how they kind of jumped in action and saw how kind of chronic conditions and preventive health can come together. So this particular students draft ended up talking about how both the patient and the student had Colombian background. The student was Colombian American and how they started talking about diet and so how they started talking about kind of, you know, how the patient is wanting to eat healthier but can't give up their Colombian diet stapled. And so the student kind of goes into research mode and finds them healthy alternatives that still tastes stays true to their Colombian background. And so then the lesson or lessons that you can kind of talk about are they admired the physician being welcoming kind when the patient confessed that they broke their diet, how you kind of jumped into action and you wanted to kind of offer, you know, support that went beyond the visit and how kind of, you know, sharing how creating a space where patients feel comfortable so they share all information will render better care and health outcomes. And it was a culturally competent kind of moment because they met the patient at their kind of moment of cultural comfort and awareness. Example two from a student reads, I aspire to offer personalized and comprehensive care to patients. Again, a great start. Where do we go from here? So you want to kind of think about anchoring this in a patient experience and then giving us the lessons. So it started with something like this, a patient cried as she found herself lost on the wrong floor of the hospital. All I could hear her say was no se donde estoy I don't know where I am on loop with increased anguish. I approached with my hands out and softly spoke to her in Spanish, which seems to ease her worry. She found home in our native language and I realized that something about caring and being personable in medicine, right? You can return to the story here and kind of talk a little bit more. You can say something like when I joke that our last stop of the hospital tour was her room. She chuckled and I remember her and she reminded me of my grandmother. I treasure this moment as a pivotal experience because it launched my commitment to and then kind of go into what this moment kind of meant to you, right? And so you can say something like, well, I helped nurture her sense of comfort socially. I recall how Dr. Pete came in and began treating her medically and it is balancing these two emotional threads that reveal my type of medicine. So you want to think about there are some moments in your journey to medicine that are the quieter moments. I call them the quiet moments, they're moments that will probably not be captured in a resume and yet they are kind of emotionally driven moments with patients usually that really can kind of speak to your journey to medicine in a very emotional way. And so you want to kind of consider those as potential content for your personal statement. So before we go to example three, so many things are happening in this moment, right? We have a connection within diversity. The student shares a cultural connection with the patient. Do you have an idea for a personal statement paragraph but you don't really know or have a lesson but you don't really know kind of how to attach a patient's story? Comment below. I'd love to help you Yeah. So example three, I have to come back to this one. I love to help people because it is absolutely I mean I hear it every cycle multiple times a cycle and where students kind of truly want to say that and don't know where to go from there. So since this is such a broad experience but meaningful experience you want to kind of or identity of trait, you want to make sure that yes you anchor it in an experience right in a patient's story but that you are in action. A lot of times sometimes or a lot of times sometimes students will kind of write that they observe someone else do something amazing or that they are in the position kind of where they hear a patient talk about a hysterectomy that they have to undergo or insurance red tape and instead of doing something for the patient whether it's lending an ear or kind of giving them resources helping them figure out how to be a little bit more empowered they kind of go internal and they kind of talk about you know how man in that moment I really thought that are you know in the future I want to help people do this that and the other instead of showing me they kind of you know instead of externalizing their experiences and act they internalize and they just give kind of reflection as to what they wanted to do and for me I don't love that in the personal statement just because it kind of shows me you in action or it doesn't show me in action right it shows me the lack of action and just kind of you going into your interior monologue and and I don't love that in your personal statement so here is how a student kind of expanded this in last year's cycle so while waiting a long line for transport I noticed the patient who had just left our office clutch a weathered paper with instructions I sat next to him and asked where he was headed which revealed his frustration since he could not figure out which bus to take to his son's house after pulling up the clinic's private bus service I made sure to put him in the queue and less than five minutes he was on his way home more at ease and only focus on his treatment plan I inspire to serve patients not only while they're in the physician's practice but caring for patients in all aspects so then we see the students helping right it was a small gesture but it helped kind of make a real difference for this patient and then they can go into kind of social determinants of health and how economic and other lifestyle obstacles can hinder health care right so then that could be like a broader lesson learned at the end of the paragraph and how mindful they want to kind of be about adding kind of a being of service beyond treatment room so if you found this helpful please give us a like share with your pre-med friends if you want to chat with me on how I work with students and start working together potentially to see if you're a good fit if we're a good fit together definitely get on my calendar there's the calendar link below and you can reserve your spot to chat with me talk to you soon take care bye