 So you're about to start writing your medical school personal statement. What you say is as important as the mistakes you want to avoid. Stick around to find out what those are. For the best medical school personal statement coaching, make sure you hit subscribe and the bell so you don't miss out on any videos I post. If you want a free strategy call with me on your personal statement, book that call in the description below and we'll get started. With so much at stake for your med school personal statement, you wanna make sure that you hit creative, reflective, thoughtful kind of moves throughout the essay. However, these are four tips to avoid so that you want to kind of tell your best story, right? Hi, I'm talking to Josie with Write Your Acceptance. As a writing faculty and personal statement coach, I know how to help you tell your best story. It's your turn, let's go. Tip one, don't pretend like you know what a doctor's life is like. It sounds harsh, it sounds aggressive and I'm sorry for that. But you wanna make sure that you are avoiding these kinds of blanket statements that you kind of know the hardships of the ins and outs of everyday life as a physician. If you're watching this, I am 100% confident that you will one day become a physician but you're not there yet. So your personal statement should be made personal about you, really kind of narrate your experiences and you can talk about hardships as long as you've experienced them and observed them yourself, right? So you can talk about kind of negatives or kind of drawbacks of a nursing home, let's say. If you volunteer there and you can kind of lead with a patient-centric experience first. But kind of avoid these blanket statements that you know what it's like to be a doctor. The essay is not asking you if you kind of know what you're getting yourself into. That's kind of implied and then the delivery when you kind of make those sentiments, it kind of can rub people the wrong way. And then you're not really being personal. You're not answering that kind of why your journey and why you've done kind of, you've committed to this field. So make it about you and don't pretend like you know what it's like to be a doctor just yet. Tip two is kind of similar. It's the don't rag on doctors you've come into contact with. So many times students will tell me that they want to write about that like their spark moment and initial experience was the passing of their grandfather or an illness at a sibling illness. And so they are really kind of drawn to writing about that there were careless mistakes or laziness or whatever negative about the medical professional team treating that patient. And I say avoid this. It's tough because I always tell students that you should honor your truth and you should honor your journey. But you also kind of, there are a million ways of telling a story. And if you dedicate let's say two sentences to the passing of your grandfather and then eight sentences to kind of medical negligence then if you look at that as a whole you should not be spending eight sentences on anything but if you see that as a whole then the story is not about your grandfather it's about kind of malpractice or kind of you know. And I would caution against this because you want to make sure that every story one is personal enough where it is kind of advancing your argument about why this is your kind of purpose and calling and how you are showing continued commitment to the field, right? So you're not doing that with that. And to every story that you tell you want to elicit from the reader compassion, empathy, understanding, curiosity to learn more about who you are. And so something negative about the medical field may kind of elicit skepticism or kind of be offensive. And so you want to make sure that you avoid that with your reader because this is a very, very important text, right? I don't have to tell you that. Okay, do you have a story that you want to share in your personal statement but you're not sure if it's radioactive or not? Comment below, I'd love to give you my two cents. Tip three, I would avoid humor. So this is a pretty conservative bunch. And okay, so if I back up with every rule there is a way that a student breaks it inevitably if your natural voice is kind of you know, witty and humorous and that is how you naturally write then I would say keep this as a potential red flag top of mind. But you definitely want to kind of avoid it if it's kind of not your natural speaking kind of voice. So if you want to show kind of wit and an observational kind of depth then do that by analyzing a cultural reference or an image in your experiences. But don't add kind of you know, jokie, self deprecating moments. It kind of comes off as making light of a situation or that you are kind of unsure of yourself and we want to be as confident and precise as possible with our language. Tip four, don't make a negative mark your kind of main premise for the personal statement. So if you have a less insteller MCAT score or less insteller GPA you may be talking about kind of you know, as you're writing about your journey you may talk about kind of dips in GPA let's say or kind of you know, why you took a gap year here or why you had a poor performance this semester but don't make a kind of a negative the main purpose the main kind of crux of the argument in your personal statement. You never know if you are calling attention to something that they already kind of when they're looking at your application holistically that they've already settled on but if you draw them closer to that kind of red flag and all of the real estate or most of the real estate on your personal statement is talking about that red flag then you kind of could potentially have them second guess what they already settled or point to something that they didn't really think was that big of an issue and you've blown it up and made it a bigger issue so definitely kind of if you're gonna talk about something negative you want to spin it as something that you learned from that you adjusted to your systems that you are more resilient, more adaptable ready for the rigors of medical school right but don't make it your central claim kind of apology tour. If you want more personal statement feedback and kind of expert tips definitely book your one-on-one call with me the link is in the description below. If you found this video helpful give us a like, subscribe, share with your pre-med friends I really appreciate it and more will come soon, thanks.