 I love working with non-traditional pre-med students. They have the most interesting stories, just super enriching and thoughtful. And now thinking about which stories should make it into the personal statement, which stories should not can be tricky. Stick around, let's talk about it. Thank you so much for joining me on my channel. This is Write Your Acceptance. Make sure you hit that subscribe button and the bell so you don't miss a video. Although non-traditional pre-meds are answering the same exact prompt, there are three questions I urge non-trads to really ask themselves because that will inform what kind of deviations in their personal statement they should have. Hi, I'm Dr. Josie with Write Your Acceptance. After teaching over 15 years in higher education, mostly on college level writing and working in writing centers with students on their personal statements, leading workshops, and just working with hundreds of students at this point, I know what they're looking for. And so let's really parse through and think about how you can maximize your candidacy. It's your turn. So question one that every non-traditional pre-med should ask or address somewhere in their personal statement is the why now. So why are you ready to kind of undertake this incredible effort and journey of going to medical school, right? Why this moment in your personal life? Why this moment in your intellectual life, in your professional life? And I want you to think about this. It may not kind of translate directly to your personal statement, but at some point it will inform kind of the why now will inform your personal statement for sure. So you definitely want to kind of consider it and maybe even think about where explicitly you want to kind of mention that. Now there's a difference between students who studied English, art history, philosophy, and did their pre-med. So that version of non-traditional and then there is the kind of I worked as a lawyer for four years or I was a teacher teaching high school for two years before kind of going back to school doing my pre-rex and then applying to medical school, right? This is more for the latter. If you are still chronologically on the same path, you may want to consider how the non-traditional major that you pursued along with your pre-rex informed and kind of compliments your purview, your vantage point, how it makes you kind of interesting and more thoughtful in a way. So that may be interesting, but the why now is really for kind of students that have or professionals that have been out of the game completely for a while and then coming back. Why are you ready to kind of undertake this now? Question two is how has your professional career enriched and served as an advantage to your new journey now, to your shift in career choices in your calling? Many times I see students writing this essay and they spend way too much time on why engineering is not for them, like let's say if they were engineers, and then too little time on why medicine, right? And you want to kind of flip that completely. I even tell students, be weary of poo-pooing your kind of former career, your former self, right? I would consider kind of bringing in the positive attributes. So how does it kind of serve to enrich your candidacy? How is it an asset today and can you bring to the table that is different than a traditional student, right? You're not comparing yourself, but you are kind of spinning positive the kind of how enriching the previous career has been for you and the way you think about the world and how you value kind of your position within your social and professional kind of communities. So like for example, I had a student who worked as an engineer for a few years before going back to do their pre-rex or some pre-rex that they missed and then applying to med school. And they were shadowing a physician, a surgeon, and one of the kind of instruments just like stopped working. And so his engineer brain kind of clicked on and he kind of immediately thought about how he could kind of like improve the instrument, how he could kind of revamp the the procedure all together. Not in a kind of I know what it's like to be a surgeon because you don't want to do that, but his kind of engineering prowess came in and he thought about how to kind of fine tune the instrument. And so it was very quick, very brief, but it was a very interesting way of showing how his brain functions a little differently. And it was very interesting then follow up conversation with the ortho surgeon afterward. And so he really kind of got a lot out of that shadowing experience and then that follow up conversation about kind of the actual surgery and kind of how the surgeon was able to kind of improvise. So to give you kind of, you know, info on how they did it, the intro paragraph was this anecdote that I kind of talked to a little bit about. And then the next paragraph was like how strategic thinking and planning and solving real world problems was something that he really was able to develop and fine tune as an engineer and how he then aspired to bring that to medicine. And then he went straight into kind of a couple of patient-centric examples and experiences that he has had recently. So it really focuses on the journey of why medicine, right, but that he was able to kind of double down and use and kind of maximize his experience as an engineer through an experience. So like showing the experience and then kind of offering its valuation, right, then reflecting upon the lesson learned and the takeaway. Do you have a tech background? I've worked with students who have worked in Google at NJIT in big data. And so I've seen them kind of in interesting, curious ways weave in their information. So one experience was they talked about how they use data tracking and real-time analysis about patient experiences while in the hospital to really kind of improve just overall feel good morale of the patients in a specific hospital that they were shadowing and volunteering at. So they were able to bring in their big data kind of scientist lens and help improve kind of patient experience in a way while learning a dimension of medicine, which was great. So that I thought was a very interesting way of showing their kind of intellectual rigor and what they bring while still kind of being about medicine. So another one I see a lot is education. So an applicant who has been a science and biology teacher or history teacher for a few years and now is coming into or back into a medicine if they were pre-med. So they sometimes ask me, you know, how can I bring in this experience? And so you can consider how maybe you brought science to life for students. You can consider how doctors are teachers or educators of wellness for their patients, right? It's not just about diagnosis and prescription, but you're also kind of educating your patients. So think about how kind of the overlaps there and what you've learned about education and age appropriate education, how to be kind of honest and direct, but also engaging. So think about kind of how you can weave in your information. And then sometimes you want to bring in an experience, but you don't have like a neat medicine connection. That's fine. Consider it as your bookend. Consider it as a story that you start with in your personal statement and kind of weave it as to what lesson has it taught you that then you bring to medicine and then you can kind of come back to it at the end of the personal statement. So that's something you can also do too. One example that I saw while working with a student, they were, it was like Sten Saturdays and they were kind of like volunteering for this program and they were dissecting cow eyes and there was a student in the background not very engaged, not very interested whatsoever. And she went back there and started talking to her, realized that she didn't speak English. So it was a cultural linguistic barrier, not a disinterested kind of a lack of connection to the material. And so the student actually spoke Spanish. They were bilingual. They were able to kind of connect with the student. The student had grown up in a farm. And so then they were talking about cows. They were talking about kind of different kind of fun engaging ways of bringing the student to the actual kind of middle school student into the fold into the kind of lesson and inspiring a future physician there or future kind of scientist. So however wording that was for the student and then why that was kind of a formative moment for them within education and then kind of bridging education and kind of science. Are you a non-traditional student but don't know how to weave in your story? Comment below. I'd love to hear you out. So ultimately you may not have the typical background that your traditional pre-med does, right? But that may be an asset and a strength. I think if there's one takeaway from this video is that is that you want to think about less why being an engineer or a teacher is no longer for you and more how the traits and values and skills that you have acquired and developed and really fine-tuned is an asset or an asset now to you as an applicant and will be as a medical student. So definitely think about that kind of spinning it to really showcase what you bring to the table in a multi-dimensional way. And then question three, it's really related to one and two, but I need to kind of make sure that it is emphasized. It's basically kind of remember the prompt. It is your journey to medicine, right? So make sure that every experience and every kind of major moment in the essay is really kind of doubling down on that. So like I mentioned, right? Like too many students kind of talk about their career or why engineering is no longer for them and not why medicine. So focus most of the experiences on kind of medically related experiences, patient-centric experiences, those are the best or for me, they're the best because they show you an action, they show you adaptable to other people's needs and really kind of showcase that prolonged commitment that this wasn't something that you just woke up one day and said, hey, I'll become a doctor. That once that spark moment happened that you're like, okay, medicine is really for me that you've taken kind of, you know, action to really establish yourself within medical contexts and experiences to really kind of clarify this calling, right, that you have taken the time to continue this commitment recently. And so that you have successfully entered medical spaces and can see yourself there, right, accurately. So thank you so much for watching. I hope this was helpful. If it was, give us a like. I offer free 15 minute strategy calls to talk about your personal statement. If you like, it's in the description. We can chat about how I work with students and I can give you my take on your journey and your story. And yeah, so that's in the description. Definitely check that out and come back soon. Thank you so much for watching. Bye.