 Are you worried about standing out in your dental school personal statement? Everything you write is cheesy or expected and you don't know how to kind of bring that wow factor? Stay tuned, let's workshop an entire successful essay. Hi, I'm Dr. Josie. This is Write Your Acceptance. I work with pre-dental and pre-medical students on their journey to that dream career. We've worked so hard to get to where you are and I work with students, partner with them in their application to elevate their message so that everything from personal statements, interview prep is exactly as polished and as substantive and thoughtful as it could be. So stick around, let's talk about what they're looking for. So step one, I will read the personal statement in its entirety so that you can kind of get a sense of the whole essay together, the transitions, and then we'll break it up and workshop piece pecky so you know what is working when. Okay, so here we go. Daniel's mom asked me desperately for help. Once she realized I could speak Corsi on the other end of the pool, joyful screams of kids muffled into bubbles as they practiced their handstand underwater as an older man watched Daniel's bloody spill from his missing front teeth. Although perfectly still on the surface, his legs must have been kicking furiously to keep him afloat. I ran to the nearest vending machine searching for milk to save Daniel's teeth. The wet tiles cold beneath my feet. As all these scenes came together, I wondered if one of my core principles as an aspiring dentist is to help reveal and support what occurs beneath the surface, to build community through dentistry so that no one feels like they're alone in their care. Before immigrating to Canada from Iran, I remember my parents' dental practice located in the basement of the residential building where we lived. Everything good happened underneath the surface. How they held an elderly woman's hand while getting dentures and how I even inspired a toothy smile when I would hand out prizes to other children for their bravery chair side. Immigration brought freedom but also difficulty as my parents struggled financially while passing their dental exams. However, it is that struggle beneath the surface that the American dream is built upon and now I am proud to have worked at their two dental offices for the past five years, solidifying my personal calling to dentistry. While my parents exposed me to dentistry from a young age, I hope to find my own place within the field. To achieve this, I shadowed Dr. Amir, Dr. Ali Shian and Dr. Nasli Shabani and learned that providing care can look different for different people. I'll never forget when 16-year-old Linda rushed into the office in extreme pain minutes before closing. She had neglected the issue due to financial struggles and the unpleasant experiences she had with going to the dentist as a paraplegic individual. I put her arms around my neck while lifting her off the wheelchair. To distract her from the pain, I chatted with her about her daughter's upcoming wedding. That day, I learned that equitable access is about celebrating openness and inclusion. As a community-oriented dentist, I will strive to always diminish the lack of accessibility and awareness that exists in the dental space. From building bridges with peers to research pursuits, I have found great purpose in serving as a leader in dental advocacy. I was fortunate to participate in didantic, dental public health and preventive dentistry research by providing critical scientific edits to improve the clarity and coherence of various research projects. The studied population often consisted of community members who were financially capable of visiting an outside private practice. Additionally, I spent two years investigating the effects of aerobic exercise on maximum oxygen capacity. No matter the topic investigated, I focused on how our work will one day benefit patients starting with those of our own community. For me, every moment with patients is an opportunity to learn and grow. While volunteering at the McKenzie Health Hospital, I learned the necessity of humanity in patient-doctor relationships. The first patient I encountered was Maria, a 40-year-old mom to two kids who had recently suffered a stroke. Using my background in kidney acesiology, I spent hours practicing simple tasks with her including taking steps, raising her arms and speaking a few words. Some days, she regressed and forgot the movements and in those moments, I made sure to remind her that she's everything but a failure. Other days, I would sit beside her bed and would share her love for telenovelas. I aspired to bring this aspect of compassionate effort to meet patients at their level of cultural comfort within dentistry. What happens beneath the surface cannot be seen, but it is often the foundation for success. Daniel's story is a constant reminder of how I can make a profound difference in an individual's overall health. From the early exposure to dentistry from my parents to handling a dental emergency to shadowing and employment in a dental office, I have developed a strong love for the profession through my newly found sense of purpose and dedication. Amazing essay, it has the wow factor, it has an attention grabber, it has image-driven narrative, purpose, commitment, leadership. I mean, it really hits a lot of the dimensions and buckets that I aspire for students to really showcase so that they offer a multi-dimensional kind of wide dentistry, right? So let's break it down piece by piece. Let's start with the introduction. Daniel's mom asked me desperately for help when she realized I could speak Farsi, great first line. It establishes, I speak multiple languages without saying that in that way. On the other end of the pool, joyful screams so we kind of zoom out and we see kind of kids doing bubbles and practicing handstand. So we see kind of like the natural chaos of life around and how kind of stillness encroaches when a crisis emerges, right? So the introduction sets a stage. The student is in action. There's immediacy to the moment. It's image-driven, sensorial. I can see, hear, taste, touch different things as if I have a camera over my shoulders. Then, and this may not happen with every essay but we identified a symbol, a theme that then we kind of thread throughout, right? Which is that everything that happens beneath the surface is meaningful and is of interest. And so that was just like one casual line that we kind of found and really allowed that to flourish as the kind of foundational theme for the personal statement. Now, not all personal statements will have a theme but when you can kind of bring in something that is a unifying effect that's always substantial in your journey that's always, I mean, gravy, bonus. This particular line, as all these scenes came together I wondered if one of my core principles as an aspiring dentist is to help reveal and support what occurs beneath the surface, to build community through dentistry so that no one feels like they are alone in their care. So it goes from just the concrete aspect of beneath the surface to not allowing patients and community members and neighbors to feel isolated. It elevates the theme from concrete image to symbolic depth. So let's get into the body paragraphs. The second paragraph is kind of setting the stage. We talk about kind of an immigration to Canada from Iran. She talks about her parents as dentists and how kind of she navigated that early exposure. And so this second paragraph is great on multiple level. So we learn culturally where the student is from and then we also kind of see the theme of everything happening beneath the surface as kind of playing out with the basement dental practice, right? So kind of we have that thread in this paragraph as well. This took a couple of revisions but I love the fact that this paragraph shows experiences through images, right? So we have that toothy smile from a child. We have the elderly woman that she comforted. So we see it as snapshots of images that the reader can hold on to and it's much more compelling. It's that showing aspect rather than just telling. So the very next line establishes obstacles as a family but also kind of deep wisdom for such a young age, social and cultural awareness of immigration and kind of starting new. And so that was really, really great. The final line, we almost have like a thesis number two for the essay, right? It's their white dentistry and their personal values merging. However, it is that struggle beneath the surface that the American dream is built upon and now I am proud to have worked at their two dental offices for the past five years solidifying my personal calling to dentistry. The student, yes Canadian, but is applying to US schools. So then we go to paragraph three and this is the student's relationship to dentistry on their own terms. So for me, the transitional topic sentence here is very important because sometimes the onerous on students is kind of, you know, when you inherit a profession is kind of to show that this is not something that your parents want, that this is what you want. And so this paragraph does that very, very nicely. Here we zoom into a patient experience. We see the student adapting to the patient's needs and their lesson and takeaway of that particular patient's story informs their future within the profession. So that was great. So this paragraph has it all. It establishes a student on their terms and their work, right? Advancing their wide dentistry and we see them in action with a patient. Do you have a question about your essay or about your structure or how you're kind of managing all the content? If you do comment below, I'd love to start chatting. And if you want to learn how I work with students, definitely snag your spot on my calendar and we can talk about how I work with students and if we are a good fit. So that's in the description. So paragraph four, here is another really, really great topic sentence. So too often students will start a new paragraph with no agenda and we'll say something like, another experience that was vital in my dental journey was, da, da, da, da. But a transitional topic sentence will take what just happened and build off of that to ease into this next experience and scaffold, build your experiences, stacking them up together so that it builds a narrative that is cohesive. So from building bridges with peers to research pursuits, I have found great purpose in serving as a leader in dental advocacy. We just talked about dental advocacy or advocacy in action right with the wheelchair-bound patient in the previous paragraph. So it was a nice kind of transition to deepen that work as something that is very close to the student's passion and purpose in the field. So I think this paragraph is subtle but it establishes the student in another dimension of awareness and participation within the field. We have another short anecdote that this paragraph is kind of like teeing off of or like prepping for but this paragraph is kind of the more telling aspect of the essay, which is fine as long as you have the other aspects that are image-driven, sensorial and it is kind of like I said, prepping for that next patient story. So here I wanna show how topic sentences don't only transition, they confront load the lesson. So while volunteering at the McKenzie Health Hospital, I learned the necessity of humanity in patient-doctor relationships. So we're gonna now show that in a story and then we're gonna come back to our takeaways and deepen our kind of lesson from this experience. If you map out the paragraph, it is topic sentence which establishes what the paragraph will convey, the lesson, action in story form, then a wrap-up lesson. Not all body paragraphs are gonna go kind of in this format but some do and it feels very kind of organized and anchored in strategy in the sense of like every paragraph has a purpose. So if you have like a typical patient-centered experience that you want an entire paragraph to be kind of built around, that structure may be of interest to you. Then here comes the conclusion. What happens beneath the surface cannot be seen but it is often the foundation for success and then we kind of like list the different experiences, right? The student returns to the theme with deeper wisdom and a few key takeaways which are strong here because they were anchored in examples in the personal statement body paragraphs, right? So the wrap-up feels kind of more complete because we've shown the raw material, the anecdotes in the kind of journey throughout the essay. Hope you found this video helpful. If you would like to know how I work with students and see if we're a good fit, please grab your appointment on my calendar and we can chat and go from there. Thanks so much for stopping by, I'll see ya, bye.