Wondering how your personal statement might be different from the one you wrote for college admissions? Don’t worry— we’ve got you covered! Read on to learn more. 

When applying for college, you (hopefully!) wrote an essay showcasing your values that gave admissions officers a glimpse of how you would contribute to their campus. These characteristics are still true of your personal statement for graduate school, but there is one crucial difference. In your personal statement for college, you could include stories or anecdotes about any topic such as eating Sunday night dinner with your family, restoring an old car with your dad, or running into a bear on a camping trip. However, when writing your personal statement for graduate school, the content of your anecdotes should be more specific: they should all relate to your chosen field of study. While your academic area of study doesn’t need to be clear in your admissions essay for college, graduate schools want to see your commitment to your chosen field through the experiences demonstrating your passion for it. 

If you’re applying to medical school, you may want to include any clinical or volunteer experiences that illustrate your passion for medicine.

Did you read to a patient while volunteering at a pediatric hospital?

Did you shadow a physician and learn the importance of clear communication with the patient and their family?

Did you travel to an underdeveloped country and teach elderly patients how to manage high cholesterol?

Any of these valuable experiences would make great anecdotes! 

In your personal statement for college admissions, you may have used creative writing techniques to hook the reader including dialogue and figurative language. This aspect of the admissions essay doesn’t change from college to graduate school. Descriptive, narrative-based writing will still make these admissions essays successful by helping your anecdotes pop. After all, the most successful admissions essays tell a compelling story, so use narrative writing techniques to make yours stand out! 

One way to approach the brainstorming process is to think about which values you want to highlight. If anecdotes don’t come to mind right away, working backwards might look like this: think about the values or characteristics that a person in your chosen field would exemplify and think of moments when you have demonstrated these characteristics! For example, you might think that empathy makes a psychologist successful.

Can you remember a moment when you showed empathy for another person, and it made a difference in their life?

Being detail-oriented and able to work well with your hands might be traits you think are important to making a dentist successful.

Can you think of a moment in which you succeed in a detail-oriented project and possibly used your hands to do so? 

Finally, as with any essay, make sure you read the prompt. Some essay prompts for graduate school applications may ask you to explain why you are interested in undertaking graduate study in their particular program. If this is the case, make sure to address this aspect of the prompt by including details about the school’s program that align with your goals.

Do they have a professor who does research in an area of interest to you?

Do you admire that they require completing internships for credit as part of their program because you value hands-on experience?

Do they offer a concentration in an area of specialty that fascinates you?

Any of these types of details would strengthen your essay and show the admissions committee that you applied to their program for compelling reasons. 

It’s important to note that it is not necessary to include any school-specific details in personal statements for medical school. If medical schools invite you to submit secondary applications, there will likely be a specific prompt asking why you are interested in their particular program. Some dental schools require secondaries as well. 

As you sit down to write, always remember your goal – why do you want to be a doctor? dentist? lawyer? academic? While stressful, it’s also important to take in the excitement of the moment— congratulations on deciding to take the next steps in your life!

Have questions that weren’t covered in this post? Feel free to contact us through the website!