Crafting Compelling Personal Statements
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'DOWN TO EARTH' ACADEMIC SKILLS COLUMN
Crafting Compelling Personal Statements Latha Chandran 1
&
Arathy S. Chandran 2 & Janet E. Fischel 2
Received: 20 February 2020 / Accepted: 7 October 2020 # Academic Psychiatry 2020
A personal statement is a professional essay about the writer, trying to persuade the reader to positively consider one’s qualifications, key traits, experiences, and aspirations. The goal of the personal statement is to inform the reader about the writer in a way that promotes the writer for selection or further consideration. Our combined experience with reviewing personal statements for admissions, awards, and promotion committees is seven decades long. This article discusses the writing and use of personal statements in the context of both that experience and information in the literature. We focus predominantly on guidance for personal statements prepared by trainees for entrance to their next step, such as acceptance to medical school or graduate medical education. However, even those preparing materials for a competitive award or faculty promotion might find the information relevant. Particularly in psychiatry, but important to any health sciences field, the ability to communicate effectively and demonstrate the highest standards of professionalism in attitudes and behaviors is paramount; the personal statement provides a forum to display those characteristics. If one is seeking admission to medical school, welldescribed experiences that effectively communicate the reasons to do so would be valuable to include. If applying for residency or fellowship, the goal may shift toward affirmation of one’s motivation, experiences, and skills to pursue this particular field. All this, without simple factual repetition of one’s curriculum vitae (CV), and without exaggeration or arrogance. An excellent personal statement for medical school entrance, in our experience, was one starting with a brief scenario drawn from working in health care in a developing country; another identified the characteristics of an ancient scholar and physician, elaborating on the qualities the writer emulated, and clarifying why he chose further studies to gain similar
* Latha Chandran [email protected] 1
University of Miami, Miami, FL, USA
2
Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA
skills. A third described a particularly devastating illness in a family member. These were impressive when coupled with insight into the writer’s motivation to pursue a health professions career. The reader could glean the writer’s observational, analytical, and reflective skills. A brief scenario such as these need not launch the essay, but is a popular approach. What differentiates a memorable personal statement from the rest is that the writer is genuine, the information is clear and interesting, the writing is disciplined, and the writer is able to thread the theme of an opening vignette or experience further than simply reporting on it. Thus, the rest of the statement and a review of the
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