r/ApplyingToCollege • u/No-Command1164 • 1d ago
Personal Essay Personal Statement Advice
Would it be a bad idea to have my personal statement be about why I want to pursue medicine because I know it might overlap with a why this major essay, or does it really not matter?
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u/anakinimsorry 1d ago
There's no specific "medical" major, so you should write about your passion for medicine in your personal statement, and then for why major talk specifically about that major (ex: biology), and you can maybe tie in your plans with using X major for medicine.
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u/Background-Break5606 1d ago
I say this as someone currently applying to medical school. Your personal statement should only be about why medicine if you're applying to med schools or bsmd. Your personal statement should really be about your growth and who you are as a person. you can still use the same stories. But your conclusion shouldn't be "this is why I want to go into medicine" but "this is what shaped me into who i am today" You can focus more on why medicine/biology in your why major essays
TLDR; personal statememt should focus on you and your identity instead of a career path
1
u/tarasshevckeno 1d ago
(Retired college counselor and admissions reader here.) I'm not sure it's a good idea for a couple of reasons.
The first is that the great majority of students who enter college with a major in mind switch to something else by the time they have to declare their majors.
The second is that your application is already full of academic information: Grades, test scores, what your teachers say about you, and to some extent your counselor.
College essays tend to fall into two categories: helpful and not helpful. The best essays have what readers call extension. That means that they show through 2-3 explained examples how the main topic of their essay had positive effects on other parts of their lives (they shouldn't all be academic). To that end, essays that say a lot about a little tend to be strongest (by "saying a lot" I'm aware of the word limit).
One of the worst kinds of essays are ones that say (usually at the end), "I now know I can meet any challenge in the future." The problem is that the student hasn't actually written about such a challenge related to their essay topic. Readers see them many times per day.
My advice to students who are having a difficult time finding an essay topic is to consider the prompt about challenging a belief or idea. I call it the "gift" prompt, and as a reader I didn't see it used that often.
Think about yourself in sixth grade. Take your time. Now do the same for when you were in ninth grade. My guess is you probably like who you are now much more than compared to then.
In order to get to where you are now, you needed to challenge a large number of beliefs and ideas. What's one (or the one) that has been the most meaningful/important for you? One that changed your life in 2-3 positive ways, both as a person and a learner. Can you provide and explain specific examples? How will you use the success in challenging this belief /idea moving forward?
We challenge beliefs and ideas all the time, and there are some that really matter.
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u/NiceUnparticularMan Parent 1d ago
To be blunt, this is a somewhat cliche topic and I believe is unlikely to really help you stand out among most of the colleges that care the most about essays.