 Hello, YouTube. So I hope you watched last week's video where I interviewed Ollie, one of my students from this past cycle, and we got into his stats. He talked about his journey and he shared his outcomes so far, right? With multiple acceptances, he shared his MCAT, all that good stuff. If you haven't, I'll link it above here. You should watch that before we break down his personal statement. Alrighty, let's get started. Hi, I'm Dr. Josie. This is right. Your acceptance. Welcome, welcome. If you are new, welcome. If you are not, hello, hello. I focus on working with students on their medical and dental school applications, really elevating your language, crafting your message so that you stand out with hundreds of students successfully medical school in residency right now, full ride at Mayo, multiple acceptances with a low MCAT score, your messaging, how you craft, who you are, your values, your why medicine, super, super important, at least for me. If you are here for personal statement information and how to write your most compelling self, make sure you hit that subscribe button so you don't miss a video. Let's get into Ollie's personal statement. Let's get started. So we're going to do this two ways. I'm going to read the essay once through completely so that you hear the essay in its entirety and so you can kind of see beginning, middle and end. And then we'll break it down so that we can really talk about rhetorically what is working well, how did it, you know, certain sections come together XYZ. All right, so let's get started. As a first generation American, I have enjoyed the privilege others in my ancestral home Iran only dream of through their physical journey, my parents set us on the path to realizing our American dream while preparing us for the often grueling emotional work it entails from an underprivileged childhood to being drafted at 18 for the Iran Iraq war and ultimately becoming homeless and stateless in his quest to become a U.S. citizen. My father faced difficult circumstances. Consequently, it was his diagnosis of severe age pylori when I was a child that revealed to me both his strength and our vulnerability as we searched for care. The distinct memory of watching him be wheeled off as I helplessly grasped my mother's arm anxiously awaiting any news is a memory that will forever haunt me. But on the other side of that fear and worry was an individual wearing a white coat who shifted the atmosphere by providing reassurance and comfort for us during a vulnerable moment. The care my father received not only healed him but also offered us an empowered understanding of his well-being. This moment sparked my determination to pursue a career in medicine, one that offers the same level of reassurance and care as they modeled a professional philosophy that heals, educates, and advocates. Though I initially viewed medicine through the lens of simply diagnosing and treating individuals, my knowledge has deepened since becoming an undergraduate student. Although my biomedical courses have taught me about the mechanism that regulate our bodies, it was my first sociology course that deepened my understanding of health disparities that plague local and global communities. Inequities that hurt in the short term but have deep long-term effects as seen in quantitative statistics of the correlation between life expectancies and zip codes. Collaborating with a team of students and faculty for a year-long research regarding the lack of adequate care for elderly patients revealed staggering racial and ethnic disparities, especially within palliative care which ignited my urgency to become a hospice volunteer for Southeast Michigan communities. My first patient was a 101-year-old African American woman named Jane, who to my surprise was receiving palliative care within her household in an urban Michigan city. Initially, I thought that hospice was the care that patients received in a nursing home. However, realizing that care could transplant beyond a typical healthcare setting helped clarify that healing can be part of all our interactions. While physicians focused on the medical demands of Jane's condition, I offered her emotional support, arranging activities for her, such as listening to music, playing games, and attentively listening as she shared stories about her life. Subsequently, I was immersed in the social determinants that impact health dynamics. While growing up in Mississippi during Jim Crow, her family lacked adequate care, which resulted in untreated chronic ailments that led to the untamed deaths of her brothers and sisters. Jane revealed to me that every patient has the power to teach us about the human condition and therefore clarified how I view healthcare as a humanitarian connection, as it is through our interest in fostering a true relationship that we most compassionately care for others. Jane and other patients exposed to me the vulnerabilities and resilience that patients endure, but also the emotional toll that families face when a loved one is receiving medical care. While I observed patients bound to their homes with terminal or chronic illnesses, I also connected with family members shackled by the burden of disease. Too many relatives shared with me that their loved one's conditions were difficult to monitor and take care of. Although they do not feel the physical absence of dementia, they too struggle with the psychological and emotional pains. When John, who was battling Alzheimer's, could not recognize members of his household, his wife privately discussed how his condition progressed. She was losing her husband and gaining so much more responsibility. She considered assisted living as the best option for her husband's care, but the exorbitant expense was not feasible. These candid moments with families and patients exposed the disparities of receiving quality care and helped fortify my resolve to do whatever it takes to ease the burden. It was at these moments that I was keenly aware of the experience I had in the hospital with my own father. Though the emotional toll of the disease certainly transcends to members closest to us, I felt great inspiration when witnessing firsthand how physicians go beyond the psychological manifestations of health, while also staying true to caregiving, a commitment to care in the most expansive form that I aspire to practice myself. As a first generation American, I have definitely felt my difference. However, the formative perspective that I offer is my commitments of bridging cultural and social aspects of a community to provide adequate care. From the vast array of diversity that I have witnessed in hospice, I hope to heal, educate, and advocate for patients from all backgrounds, including those who may not have a voice. Working with Ali, it was a pleasure because he really embraced the back and forth conversation that for me, in my opinion, is needed to kind of present such a polished, well thought out and multifaceted personal statement. It really hits all the marks. And so let's dive into kind of breaking it down a little bit. Let's start with the introduction. The kind of highlighted, right? We kind of have a cultural, you know, GPS pin that's dropped as a first generation American. So that's going to be formative to how he kind of views not only healthcare, but disease and even wellness, right? And a very interesting, so at first, this essay started with a more kind of drawn out moment describing his memories of the hospital with his father. But instead he was like, my dad was so much more than that moment in the hospital, right? So we kind of started listing out all the kind of characteristics and traits that were so meaningful to forming his dad. From that is what came from an underprivileged childhood to being drafted at 18. So these like phrases that really showcase kind of like the anatomy of a man and his experience. And then the ending of the introduction has that kind of what I call thesis statement for the personal statement. So this moment sparked my determination to pursue a career in medicine, one that offers what kind of medical experience, right? One that offers the same level of reassurance and care as they modeled a professional philosophy that heals, educates and advocates. So we're going to hear the healing, educating, advocating, we're going to see that in experiences. By the way, if you're applying and want to learn how I work with students specifically on messaging, on elevating your personal statement and all your messaging, comment below or snag your spot on my calendar. I'll put the calendar link in the description and we can start chatting. So paragraph two and body paragraphs. This is not going to happen for all of them, but for a lot of them, make sure that you are establishing an argument. You have a topic sentence that has a point. It's not just telling me where you're going to be, it's gesturing to the reader what the purpose of this paragraph is. What is it going to accomplish for the reader? So he states, though I initially viewed medicine through the lens of simply diagnosing and treating individuals, my knowledge has deepened since becoming an undergraduate student, right? So we understand now that there has been deepening wisdom. And so then we're going to get into that. That is kind of one of the main purposes of this paragraph. First, putting the sociology major and his lessons was an integral part of Ali joining hospice volunteering in clarifying his why, right? So this section establishes the academic and then soon a patient-centric experience that deepens that lesson. Then he teaches something he learned, right? The initial drafts had a line, but here with the kind of the phrase where he says inequities that hurt in the short term, but have deep long-term effects seen in quantitative statistics of the correlation between life expectancies and zip codes. That line, right? They're anchors kind of Ali as a thoughtful participant in the discourse of sociology, how communities organize, how public health kind of like may have limitations, inequities. So just that kind of, you know, anchoring experience that detail deepens tells the reader that he has a deeper knowledge than just kind of cursory understanding, right? So that was very interesting. I thought that going back and forth a little bit on this essay, that was a moment that we were able to kind of deepen his knowledge and deepen the specificity and anchor something very concrete that added a lot in a very kind of brief kind of moment. So paragraph three goes into the patient experience with Jane, right? And so we have, you know, who Jane is, we have image-driven experiences. It's a typical patient-centric story. Some students have a couple of these throughout their personal statement or most students have a couple of these throughout their personal statement. And we played around with this section for a while because at first he considered bringing in a couple of patients he served, then kicked that kind of, you know, listing of patient experiences into the activity section and kind of really focused in on Jane. We have imagery and lessons and description that really kind of share how this wasn't just a casual relationship for Ali, that this is someone that he got to know and got to learn about and her family as well. So paragraph four, this paragraph both zooms out and shares one more patient story. I like this paragraph specifically for a DO application because it continues the threat of holistic care. So social determinants of health, the toll of care on family members while also falling in line with the interest in academic knowledge within sociology and studying the human behavior and how kind of communities organize, right? So it goes into John and his and battling his Alzheimer's in John's family. So it really kind of zooms in a little bit more to Jane and then kind of transitions out of there and goes into John and zooms out a bit in just care in general. And it always comes back. The end of the paragraph kind of gives us a little bit about where we are with our Y medicine. This is not a spark moment. This is not the first time he encounters medicine like, you know, the young boy in the hospital when his father fell ill. This is a wiser older applicant, right? Who has had multiple now encounters with medicine and he's actively sought out these experiences. At the end, I felt great inspiration when witnessing firsthand how physicians go beyond the physiological manifestations of health while also staying true to caregiving, a commitment to care in the most expansive form that I aspire to practice. So it really kind of lands the plane a little bit, it reminds us where we are within our Y medicine and that that is a trajectory and that there is kind of growth in that journey. The conclusion returns to him, which I like to who he is, to what perspective he brings to medicine as a first generation American. I have definitely felt my difference. However, the formative perspective that I offer is my commitment to bridging cultural and social aspects of a community to provide adequate care. So he really comes back to the personal as like medicine is personal hospice care that he saw was very personal in people's homes. So like there's a theme of personal and advocacy and voice of an agency throughout the essay in a very beautiful way. So yeah, I mean, I love this essay. I really found it to be a privilege, a true privilege to work with Ali and students like him this cycle. So if you are applying to medical school and you want to partner an application, someone to work with someone to go back and forth with so that you elevate your message strategically craft your best essays and activity section and really kind of stand out in a very thoughtful way. Make sure you snap your spot in my calendar. Let's talk about fit and if we'd be a good fit to work together and yeah, talk to you soon. Have a good one. Bye.