I was recently reading a personal statement for a med student. In all honesty, it wasn't great. It had some grammar issues, and it was sort of all over the place.
That said, I don't think the personal statement matters at all. So I was hesitant to tell her to rewrite it.
Am I wrong? Does the personal statement matter more than I think?
(Maybe I should have recommended the template....)
No professional or application document should ever be submitted with grammatical errors. At best, distracting; at worst, it goes in the reject piile.
ReplyDeleteI would agree with you, except it's my fourth year of residency and the attending who interviewed me is able to quote my personal statement from memory. So that gives me incentive to make my fellowship personal statement good because if there's one person in the world who's crazy enough to read and remember that thing, there's probably two.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I disagree too. I think the PS matters a fair bit. It's one of the less scripted parts of the med school app, and also the only writing of the applicant we get to see. Many young people today, including native English speakers, have horrific writing skills, and I agree that all professional documents should be grammatically flawless. That's saying nothing of the substance or style of the writing. If I were reading a poor PS it would certainly lower my opinion of the candidate.
ReplyDeleteI completely disagree. Maybe to you it wasn't that serious, but don't you think it's important and serious to know why some people want to become doctors?
ReplyDeleteUnless it's something that's not inspirational like "my parents want me to", the passion for medicine should be able to shine through. And it does matter.
I think it totally matters if you want to be a competitive applicant. When I was interviewing, people had definitely read my personal statement, and I can't imagine I would have been at those interviews if it had grammatical errors...
ReplyDeleteI know there are a lot of MD hopefuls out there reading your blog and thought I'd share some experience.
ReplyDeleteI was an admissions counselor at a top 20 medical college for many years... Truthfully, I didn't even read the personal statement unless I was 99% sure I wanted to give them an interview. Even then, I only read it to make sure they weren't crazy (I'm talking to you, Mr. "when I was little I liked cutting live animals up so I could see their insides." - that actually was in a PS I read). The most important part was the essay on secondary application asking why the student wanted to go to the our medical school. You'd be surprised how many people bombed it. Future MDs, do not copy and paste your personal statement in this question. Come up with real reasons you want to go to that school. A winning essay would incorporate your experience with what the school offers and how it will make you a strong doc. What about the school interests you? Don't just copy & paste the admissions handbook - we know we're great - tell us how YOUR experience will add to our extracurriculars, programs, student clinics, etc) We let people interview with below average MCAT/GPA if they had an exceptional school specific essay. Many of them were accepted.
And while we're on the subject – I really could care less about who wrote your letters of recommendation. We only skimmed through them. Again, only checking to make sure the student wasn't crazy. I always laughed at students who agonized over the personal statement/LOR writers and then wrote an abysmal school specific essay.
Biggest things: school specific essay, experience section of AMCAS (use all 15 slots - put in hobbies or whatever but use all 15 slots).
Just to be clear, this was an application for residency, not med school. So presumably, she'd have a lot of board scores, grades, rotation evals, and maybe even an audition rotation that would probably take precedence over an essay.
ReplyDeleteAnd I thought the Personal Statement would mean a great deal....just as well...sigh :*( I never applied to Med School. (Damn, if only I were 35 years younger and smart and not crazy!) Yes, that would put me in back in early high school!
ReplyDeleteAnon "Cutting live animals up..." Now, that is really, really sick!
ReplyDeletePersonally I like this one: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=3730313#post3730313
ReplyDeleteI don't think they'll help you get a interview, but I do know that several people who interviewed me for residency mentioned things from my personal statement.
ReplyDeleteI did residency interviews this year, as well, and definitely read the personal statement. (again as a jump-off point for specific questions that helped me get to the applicant's personality). The ones I read were all exceptionally well written, I would've been appalled by grammatical errors---spell-check and grammar check can catch most of these, and you should have at least one person proof-read. Otherwise you are just lazy.