Writing a successful medical personal statement is your ticket to getting noticed at your chosen medical school, so getting it right is crucial to your chances of beginning your studies as a medical student. However, it’s easier said than done writing a show-stopping personal statement that grabs a reviewer’s attention and makes them intrigued enough about you to invite you to an interview.
Starting your medical personal statement strong gets you off to a good start with your reviewer and helps to keep their attention throughout, but how do you do it? Many aspiring medical students ask what the first sentence of a medical personal statement be so in this post, we give you some helpful tips on how to begin your personal statement to make sure you get noticed.
The Future Medic
Alongside our helpful tips and tricks, our experienced tutors at The Future Medic are here to help you first-hand. We have supported many students before they get into a medical school of their choice by coaching them through the application process from start to finish, and they are here to help you too.
At the end of this post, we give more information about us and what we can do to improve your chances of success so take in all the information you can from here, make notes, then contact us to secure your place today!
How important is a medical personal statement?
If you want to get into medical school, you can’t do it without submitting an outstanding personal statement because yes universities do read them! So, how important is a medical personal statement? The answer is, very, so you need to get it right.
Your personal statement is the first point of contact for your chosen universities that you’re applying to, has to you. It should tell them who you are, what skills and experience you have that make you suited to the medical profession and why you are attracted to a career in medicine.
Sound simple? Well, not quite. Competition is fierce and we mean, really fierce. We don’t say this to deter you from applying, quite the opposite, we want you to write the best personal statement you can to give yourself the best chance of securing an interview.
However, knowing if your personal statement is good is difficult to determine, particularly for someone with no experience in going through the process before. Use the following tips, followed by a follow-up browse of the services we provide, including coaching you through and checking your personal statement, to make sure your personal statement is good enough to secure that ever-important meeting.
5 tips on writing your opening paragraph
With highly competitive spots at medical school universities, you need to know how to start your statement to ensure you give off the right first impression.
1. Start somewhere else
Most students assume that starting at the beginning is the best place to begin, well, sometimes it isn’t. Even bestselling authors don’t always start at the beginning of their stories, some start in the middle, write the ending and then go back to the start once they’re clear on the storyline, and your personal statement for medical school need not be different.
The length of a medical personal statement should be around 500 words which aren’t very many if you’re trying to impress, so make every sentence count. So, the best way to start your personal statement is to not start at the beginning at all. Your opening paragraph is an introduction into yourself and an overview of what’s to come in the statement so it’s best to get the main body of your statement down on paper first, before going to the introduction.
2. Think before you write
This one sounds obvious but waffling is a major flaw when it comes to writing a medical personal statement. Brainstorm all of your ideas first and be clear on exactly what it is that you want to say. A personal statement that isn’t clear and goes off on a tangent doesn’t instil confidence in the reviewer that you are a confident student ready to embark on a challenging career in medicine.
Consider what attracts you to medicine and why you are well suited to this career path. What makes you think you can be successful and what are your plans for the future? Think back to past experiences and how they relate to a field in medicine or any specific skills and knowledge that apply to medicine that you have that would look great to a reviewer. These are all things you need to think about before starting your statement.
3. You don’t need an Oscar-worthy backstory
Everyone wants to be unique and original of course, no one wants to think of themselves as having their statement in a pile of hundreds of other personal statements that all look the same. This is true of course that if yours looks the same as all the others, you won’t get noticed, but that won’t happen because no one else on that pile is you!
Many students spend hours pondering over an elaborate backstory they can tell as to why they want to get into medicine or some highly sought-after skill that they have that no one else has. No one is expecting you to be able to perform a medical procedure, cure an incurable disease or have saved someone’s life before you even get started.
Being yourself is one of the best things you can do when writing your personal statement and it’s usually the small, often overlooked things in a person’s life that make them the most qualified.
For example, have you done work experience in a medical setting in the past and were inspired by the medical staff? Maybe you or a family member was treated by a fantastic doctor and it made you want to be able to do that too. Writing a backstory fit for a movie is up there with what shouldn’t be included when introducing yourself.
4. Cliches and quotes are outdated
Way too many students spend hours and hours pondering over the perfect quote or cliche to use as the opening sentence of their personal statement. Remember that your reviewer has likely read hundreds if not thousands of these and they have read every quote and cliche there is.
Being authentic to yourself is what’s most important and using something unoriginal is certainly a way to get the reviewer’s back up and move your statement to the bottom of the pile. Knowing how to write and structure your personal statement is paramount, from the introduction, main body, conclusion and nowhere in there should you try to include overused quotes.
5. Don’t obsess over your first sentence
Yes, that’s right, don’t obsess over your first sentence because it’s not the be-all and end-all. The most important thing is that your personal statement reads well, reflects you, has no mistakes and includes all of your skills, passions and experiences that the university really want to know about.
Your first sentence should be the last thing you write because you want your introduction to give an overarching view of what your statement is all about, therefore, your first sentence should do the same. Write your personal statement and then when you’re done, sum it up in one sentence and that will be your first.
Why choose The Future Medic?
We have over 14 years of experience in mentoring, public speaking and the medical school admissions process. We have helped thousands of aspiring medical students successfully enter the medical schools of their choice.
All our tutors are fully qualified, British doctors who specialise in medical education and are also interviewers at medical schools, so they know what they’re looking for. We can support you through your UCAT exam, write your personal statement and coach you for your interview.
To read related content from us, have a look at how to end your personal statement.
