 With 5,000 characters for your YPA personal statement, stick around to know exactly how you want to make it flow, bring it all together, and advance your YPA. Hi, I'm Dr. Josie. This is Write Your Acceptance. Make sure you are clicking that subscribe button so that you don't miss a video. I work with students on personal statements year-round with medical, dental, residency, PA, and many others. So stick around. I know what they're looking for and let's get your personal statement to where it needs to be. All right, so let's get started. First and foremost, too many students that I read for PA personal statements start with lines like, I want to help people. I like to be in service of others, making sure that they feel as healthy as possible. And these aren't terrible lines. The I want to help people is too much of a cliche, but this sentiment is very important and very compelling. And so you want to make it as unique to you, the sentiment as possible so that we can kind of anchor this in experiences that really show and advance your YPA. So step one is to kind of start thinking about these moments in your outline or in your draft or in the couple paragraphs you have written where you are telling too much, I want to do this, I am part of that, where you're kind of telling us what experiences have been important. And so identify which ones, maybe three, four, that you can anchor in very specific patient-centric experiences. So anchor them in experiences you've had in a clinical setting or in a volunteering setting and really kind of think about how you can show as much as possible you adapting to patient's needs, you being part of a team-centric atmosphere and environment and if that is within a medical context even better. Make sure that whenever you tell a story that you are offering your lessons learned and your reflection, right? And the sense of being part of a team, being kind of part of a larger whole, very important in my opinion and kind of traits you want to identify in the experiences that you're thinking about adding to your personal statement. Step two, let's think about examples. Here are a few from former students. A PA spending a lot of time with patients, students in the past have shown when working at a clinic they chat up patients about losing weight to curb their pre-diabetic numbers. Then during follow-up appointments the student had a few nutrition plans that they offered to the patient to take into account the patient's ethnic foods and her favorite spots to eat and offering as well kind of low impact exercise routines that they can adopt into or you know bring into their daily life. Students also followed up the appointment by calling them, calling the patient, seeing if they needed additional support or had any other questions about their medication. Then the kind of this one example then ended with reflection and then this is how they said that. They wanted to offer the support, care and infrastructure for the patient that is key for long-term success. And so as a PA she would continue this type of work supporting patient medical care by really focusing on the entire patient's lived experience and wanting to connect with them on a deeper level and wanting to connect with them beyond prescriptions and diagnoses or something like that. That is an example of you know how a patient drew out from very specific experience with a patient, how a student kind of drew out that very specific experience with the patient to make it a chunky body paragraph. There was another student in the last cycle who was on the surgical floor and she made sure that she would know every person's role in that team. And so then as a PA she would be very interested in ortho and plastics as like specialties and as a PA she would be able to kind of work and serve those specialties kind of you know moving from specialty to specialty in a way that you know surgeons wouldn't be able to. So that was another interesting aspect of their YPA that was very specific to them. So now let's talk about red flags and how to avoid them. Notice how the two examples that I shared with you really anchor patient experiences and show kind of the student really reflecting as to the specificity of their YPA. So Y physician assistants specifically right. That's very important pivotal actually to build your YPA argument in your personal statement. However I'm not a big fan of trash talking MD or nursing careers where it's like students offer the why not doctor or why not nurse type and trash talk that profession. So I'm not really fan of kind of you know poo pooing another profession and then you know you present the PA as the default. I think it's better to build up the reasons for PA than tear down the reasons against another career. Next is you know really understanding what the personal statement is asking or the conventions that it typically asks for. A lot of the content for your personal statement comes from or is drawing from experiential learning right. So if you are not at the cycle right now and you're getting ready to kind of start thinking about building your candidacy as strong as possible. Do you need more clinical hours. Do you need more volunteering. Do you need more patient contact. Do you need to retake you know your GRE or a prerequisite class. So really think about kind of you know what the requirements are but also how to build up that you know face time with patients so that you have tangible experiences that will set apart your personal statement versus others. Another red flag another mistake that I see students sometimes make is that they don't really bring in there who they are a little bit of who they are personally whether that's cultural background lived experience socioeconomic realities. Something that really kind of humanizes you that shows a personal kind of call to medicine in a way. And so I think that that kind of adds a qualitative aspect that your resume or your you know quantitative stats won't offer. So for example I had a Hispanic student who had a tradition of replaying or saying in her head Spanish sayings that her grandmother used to say. So when moments of like you know anxiety or nerves or kind of difficult obstacles she would kind of replay in loop certain sayings that her grandmother would say. And so she started with the saying in the intro she kind of gave a store quick anecdote as to like when she was about to use it in a kind of medical environment that was a little bit challenging. And then that kind of served as her thread the saying its definition what it meant to her how it changed as she kind of grew in her life in different milestones as she passed different milestones. And then she ended with that saying. I had another American student who went to Denmark for a study abroad. And she really loved the idea of Higa the Norwegian word for making things cozy and warm and and really inviting. And so she really just fell in love with the concept. She was in Denmark over the holidays while she was studying there so late December and she kind of just saw how the entire community that she was where she was staying really kind of embraced this this notion of warmth and inviting and coziness. So she used that as a theme and she brought in her study abroad experiences in the intro then went into medical experiences where she was you know patient facing and how she brought that the notion of Higa to her practice and while adapting to patients needs. And then she ended with the saying again or with the tradition again. So in a way she used a theme not every student is going to use a theme but think about ways to kind of particularize your experience. And if that's through identity or lived experience that may be very interesting. So mistakes you definitely want to avoid and I don't want to forget these. So let's see don't talk resume language right. I have accomplished this or I have completed that I supervise this. I would anchor show me that and then kind of give a reflection as to what you learned or how you grew from those responsibilities. Make sure that the intro is I don't know exciting but that it's compelling that the reader wants to learn more about you that it's intriguing. So you want to use images whenever possible as if you had a camera over your shoulders right sensory driven language I want to see here taste touch even if it's a line or two. And then that way kind of it feels catchier and then you can say something like your last couple lines in the introduction could be something like I aspire to become a physician assistant because or on my journey to becoming a physician assistant I learned that and then you know a lot of times I see students start with a line like that and so many students are starting like that. However if you start with a short kind of little anecdote about you personally or a medical experience then you're making the intro unique and then you end with the I aspire to become a physician assistant because it's great because it could serve as a thesis for your personal statement. I would skip quotes I know that sometimes I feel like I am in the minority when I say this but I would skip the kind of famous quotes by famous people idea to start or conclude and every time I say something like this there will be a student who does it really well for the most part for me I feel like it takes away from you're basically handing off the mic to someone else and the quotes tend to be very very famous they tend to be something that the reader will probably have their own personal definition or their own personal kind of connection to the quote in a way good bad or ugly and you don't know what that is so I wouldn't give your mic away in your you know real estate to speak directly to admissions committee to someone else so that's why I am kind of like not a big fan of using other people's quotes and of course proof of your work you know no careless mistakes if you want to learn about how I work with students make sure you get on my Calendly link and book your free 15-minute call so we can chat about how I work with students if you want more videos on PA personal statements let me know examples suggestions on brainstorming et cetera hope this was helpful give us a like and I'll see you guys soon thank you bye