Personalize Your Personal Statement

(upbeat music) Welcome to the Jack Weston MCAP podcast with your host Phil Hawkins. And Asai Calderon-Woniz. Welcome back to the podcast, everybody. We're doing something a little bit weird and we're doing it wrong. And what do I mean by that? Well, this is our 50th episode. We actually already recorded a 50th episode, but then we realized, no, we have to talk about personal statements as soon as we can. And so you're gonna hear a couple of podcasts back to back where we say this is the 50th episode and you're gonna be kind of confused and that's gonna be why. So we are mixing things up a little bit. Well, we don't play by your normal counting rules evidently. But obviously, I've kind of spoiled that. Today we are going to be talking about personal statements. But you probably also noticed from the title of this episode. But the reason we're doing this and why we felt it was so critical to do it now, like we got to do this face app. It's because I've been talking to a lot of students in the last couple of weeks and a lot of students are in the midst of the application process and applications you can start to submit them once June hits. And I'm seeing some reoccurring problems and some things that, I think there's some advice here that we have that is critical and things that are very important to make sure that you are optimizing your chance of getting into medical school. So we're gonna do this weird kind of like recap deep dive into personal statements because I think there's a lot of students that need to hear this. This may pertain to you and there might be some things you can do in that last week when those last couple of days that can drastically improve your personal statement, which is one of the most important parts of your application other than the MCAT 'cause the MCAT's the most important, but that's just spoken as somebody who just does MCAT all the time. But your personal statement is critically important. So I'm super excited to talk about this 'cause I think we can really help some students here in the next week and actively of this going out. - Yeah, and I love that you said that we don't play by counting rules because in case you haven't picked up on this already, here at Jack Weston, like you guys are our number one priority. Making sure that you guys are well equipped to take the MCAT, making sure that, and this is kind of a bonus, that you're well equipped in the rest of your careers. There are things that we talk about on the podcast and in the course that will help prepare you. And I think that even though the personal statement is specific to the, you know, mental application, by the time that you're getting ready to go to residency, you're gonna do something similar, right? Resonemays are kind of similar in that, you know, it depends or it's gonna impact how you present yourself. So there are tidbits here that I think will be valuable for anyone regardless of where you are on your future med school journey, future physician journey. So Phil, you already hinted at it. I was not, you didn't hint at it. You said it that the personal statement is one of the most important parts of your application. And why is that? Because yes, medical schools, they care to know if you'll be able to make it through medical school, right? They are investing in you. They are investing in you sometimes through financial aid, definitely in a spot that could have gone to another student investing in you because you're going to carry their name, right? And so yes, the sciences, you know, you're MCAT score, you're GPA, things like that. They're important, those numbers, those metrics are important because they'll give the schools an idea of how you'll, you know, how you might do in medical school and that like grit to succeed and to keep pushing forward and to be resilient. But they also need to know who you are, right? They need to get to know you. They need to make sure that you'll be a good fit on their, you know, on their campus, a part of their med school, cohort and family. It's also an opportunity for you to make sure that you'll enjoy that med school that you're applying to and that you ultimately get into. Your personal statement is the story of you, right? It's what you've overcome. It's how you decided you wanted to become a physician, right? It's the twists and turns that may have occurred in your, in your decision and in the progress of getting to the point of applying to medical school. It's also the opportunity to show why you're sure because a lot of people, you know, they, they say that they want to go into medicine and then halfway through they're like, ooh, you know, it's a little, it's a little tough, right? Phil, I know you've shared your story, you know. Here I am, try it, halfway through medical school. And I'm like, I love education. I'm passionate about this. Who knows what turns, you know, we'll end up happening in the next couple of years. And there's, you know, there's nothing wrong with that, figuring out who you are is, you know, is constantly evolving. But this is such an important chance to, to give this to, to like the medical schools, right? And I guess, to like totally, sorry, I'm just like so passionate about that. I feel like just so many students think like, oh, just the MCAT and the GPA and that's all I need. And like, the problem is there are more applicants than there are spots. Yeah. There is, there's more supply on this, this kind of like balance side of things of going to med school. And so that means that med schools can be really picky. This is not news to anybody, right? It is a very competitive realm out there. And so yes, your MCAT and your GPA and like, that sort of stuff is important because that shows that you are capable enough, like you are smart enough. But like just being able to know everything a doctor knows doesn't make you a doctor. We talk about this a lot. And that there are other things kind of like outside that, like more personal skills and interactions and things like that that you need to be able to do with patients. You need to be able to understand what life is like in their shoes. And that side of things is different. And so I feel like most of the time, schools pay more attention to the MCAT GPA thing to just see, like, do they hit a threshold where like we're interested in like continuing to look at them? And then the personal statement is one of the first things they look at to decide, like, this is somebody I want to represent me. Like as a university, somebody I want to represent physicians. This is somebody I want to stand next to and work next to for a decade. Right. And so it's not just about being smart, but it's also about being invested in the right things and being focused on the right things and being like an empathetic good person, right? Because it turns out that that is a very important thing for a physician. And this is part of why your application is more than just a date, right? Because you want to make sure that it is the best presentation of you that you can give to medical schools, right? And so this is one of those things that we would suggest if you feel that your personal statement is not where it needs to be. If it's not a good or the best reflection of you that it can be, if there are parts that you're doubting, if this is something that you have not had other people take a look at, pause. Because this is not something that you want to submit haphazardly, right? And this is something that is worth pushing your application date back. If it needs to be another two weeks, those two weeks with a stronger application will not make or break your ability to get into medical school. What has the potential to make or break your ability to get into medical school is an apporly crafted application and an apporly crafted personal statement. And so making sure that you have that optimized, this is the time we know that you know, apps are opening. And so you know, people are itching to just get them in and have that, you know, have that advantage. But really take stock after you listen to this podcast, really take stock and ask yourself, you know, is this what I want? Is this what I want them to see? Am I truly happy with this? Yeah. I think so many people get caught up on the date that I need to apply June 1st because that's the date you can apply. It got to be in that first wave. I hear that so often and as like, it has to be this date or it's not worth doing. Like I hear that all the time from students all around. But like, I mean, you guys are MCAT students. You want to do the best. You want to be the best. And like, so somebody says, June 1st is the best to submit. So many people take that as like, well, then that's when you have to do it. But I've had students submit their application in August and get in. I've had students submit their application June 1st and not get in. And that is like, that's a real thing. And so pushing like literally pushing your exam back or pushing your exam or your your personal statement or your application, if you have to push back two weeks or even a month, like I don't think, like if your application is stronger because of it, totally worth it. Right? Sometimes this, this generally comes up in the context of the MCAT because that's where we spend most of our time. But I have some students, so like, listen, if you push your exam back two or three weeks, I honestly think we can get like a three or four point higher score. And that's worth it, right? Your application, you will be more likely to be accepted under those conditions than if you apply now with like the worst score, a score worse than what you could get. Same thing goes with personal statement and your experiences and your application kind of overall, that if you can make it better, do it, and that's worth it. That's more important. So just something I want to reiterate and just kind of fight back against the noise out there. There's even, I even hear stories from students that like, oh my admissions committee, or not my committee, my pre-med committee won't write a letter unless I apply on June 1st. And I'm like, that admissions, or that pre-med committee is doing you a disservice. They're making you less likely to get into a med school, like given your scenario and your conditions and what's going on with that. And so understanding that is critical to, I feel like we've hammered that idea enough. But like that's something that I battle against daily, because there's students that feel like it's better to submit a worse application earlier, and that is not true. Now when it comes to actually your personal statement and your experiences and everything else in your application, I think it's really important to think about the story and like what it is that you're trying to get across, right? And think about how all of these pieces fit together and what it is that you're trying to push. So I was actually just talking to a student earlier about this, that I knew from my application that my love of teaching and love of like research and love of science is going to come through on this application. It's something that is going to be crystal clear to everyone who reads this, because just looking at the hours that I spend on those things, it's like, yeah, this guy likes teaching, likes learning, likes doing research. And so for me, when it came to the personal statement side of things, I'm like, I don't want to do the same idea that I'm trying to get across. I want to convey something else. I think there's a mistake a lot of students make where they have like some idea that they feel like I need to get this across. Like I'm a hard worker. So like their personal statement is all basically about how I'm a hard worker. And they're like, all their experiences, all 15 of them are all about how I'm a hard worker and like they're like obvious from their GPA and room gap, they're a hard worker. And you're like, okay, I get it, you're a hard worker, but that's all I know about you. And so instead you want to kind of think about like the different facets of you that you want to come across. And so for me, my personal statement was focused more on trying to show how I care about community and how I care about helping other people and kind of like the softer side of things, which is still really important to me. But I knew that like some things are going to come across automatically in my application and some things are not coming across automatically. I need to push those and get those things kind of out there. And so I think that this is like a very high level thing to be thinking about and looking at your application. Not just look at your personal statement as like a single thing. Look at it as a part of the entire application, including your GPA and your MCAT and all of that stuff. And use your personal statement to get the ideas across that you want to. Now if you struggled and your GPA is a little bit lower because your freshman and sophomore year, you like struggled academically, but you got your act together, your junior year, like at the end of the sophomore year, into your junior, then you might worry that like I feel like they're going to look at this application and think that I am not a hard worker and I'm not intelligent and like I'm worried that that's going to come across. In which case maybe you should talk about some ideas that get that idea across a little bit more on the personal statement. And so I think it's really important to like take that big picture step back and kind of understand what are the messages I need to get across and am I getting these ideas across for me. Also say note, your messages might be different than mine and probably should be than somebody else's. I wanted to go into a very academic research teaching world. Other people might want to be a family practitioner. Somebody might just be an adrenaline junkie and wants to be an ER surgeon and that's all they want, right? Like they love that. And so the ideas that they need to get across in these are a little bit different. And so like that's important. It's kind of understand what are your goals? The are you sending the messages right that this is like I'm going to achieve these goals and I'm going to be great at it. And like please give me a shot here because I'm going to be awesome at this. And that sounds very ego-tistical. I always feel like that. I don't know about you as I have a hard time like job applications or like scholarship things. Like it feels weird to be like, I'm awesome. But like that's essentially what you're doing is you're trying to, or like dating apps. And if you were trying to date somebody, you'd be like, oh, like I am so awesome and great. And like it just like feels weird to be doing those sorts of things. But note that that's essentially what you're trying to get across here is like, I just want you to let, I want to, I wanted to let you know a little bit more about me and why, like I'm going to be a great physician and why you would love love to work with me. And kind of like get that across is a little bit tricky. - For sure. And the fact that it's so tricky means it can be really helpful and actually quite important to have other people take a look at your application, right? We don't always know how our stories will come across. We don't know how the parts of our stories that we decide to share or how we share them will come across. And because this is a portrait of you in written form, have people that both know you and don't know you, people who are in medicine and are in medicine, take a look at your personal statement and see what it's like. Something that I did, so I had, I had some of my friends look at my personal statement. I had cautiously my, my mom looked at it just to see with my mom because you know, she, parents are going to give you the sweetest, generally speaking advice. But for her, I had her look at it and see if there were parts that were missing in the story. I had my brother look at it. I had, because he's more critical. And I had him have coworkers who didn't know me and who he hadn't really told a whole lot about me. I had him ask and a few of them did, they looked at it. I had a physician look at it and I had a mentor look at it. And all of that was really valuable because they had such different perspectives on the application. And ultimately by the time I got to my last iteration, I felt like it was a good, a good understanding. It would give them a good understanding of who I was. And so, you know, you can only look at your personal statement so many times before you start glazing over or you know, start missing little mistakes. And with that also comes the idea of spacing your reviews of it. Right? You do not want to sit down and non-stop review your personal statement for three days in a row. That will not give you the best results. Space it out a couple of days between maybe, you know, you do one in the morning and you do a review in the evening and keep the copies, save the different versions of your personal statement. Because maybe there's something in one version that you want to include at the end, but that you decided, "Eh, maybe I'm not so sure halfway through." Right? So you want to keep track of that and you want to have that ability to go back and see how it's evolved as you're cultivating it. - Yeah. And this, you know, some of the stuff that I've talked about was like trying to understand my application, like I need to push the more personal side of things. That didn't, that was not obvious to me at the beginning. That only comes through like, I've looked at my application, edited it and looked at it and tried to figure out kind of like what's going on here. Do I like this? Do I not like this? And like I said, you start to kind of understand your application a little bit better, but doing the space review is good. I actually really encourage a student to like review just one paragraph of your application and like take that one paragraph and go for a walk. I just like, we'll look at that and just try to figure out like is there a way, the ideas in here, is there a way for me to put that clearer and more succinctly or maybe add some clarification or something to this and try to figure out a way to make that better. And by breaking it into chunks, sometimes it's easier. It's like daunting if it's like this big long personal statement. But I did want to kind of like talk to students. I know I've talked about this in the past, but I think that this is like the smartest thing that I did in my journey to med school. I dropped the ball and on my application in a couple of places, like the secondaries. I was way too late and that messed with me on interviews, which I didn't practice enough. And like those two things really hurt me. And I know that there are some med schools that I did not get into because I was too late on my secondaries or I was like bad on those interviews. All the first schools I interviewed at, I didn't get into any of them. All the last schools I got interviewed at, I got into all of them. And it's just because I could tell I was getting better at interviews. And so if I'd practice better, that would have gone better. But one of the things that did do well was the personal statement. And so I just kind of like walk you guys through the process that I went through. And so I got some advice at one point that you should, but your personal statement is what separates you from everyone else, right? Like otherwise you're just a pile of numbers. And so your personal statement should be a story about you and like who you are as a person. And so I just started to stop and think, okay, what are the most interesting things in my life? What are the most interesting things that a physician wouldn't ask questions about me if I was like just at a party and talking to them, what would they be interested in? And so I kind of landed on a couple of different ideas. One, like my, one point in my childhood, I lost our house due to a fire. And so like completely burnt enough thing. My brother didn't even have pants, all he had was his underwear, which is not a good place to be in, but kind of funny as a sibling. But this, like this, like fire, that like really changed the way that I saw the world and like it was a kind of a shaping event for me. And also just kind of interesting. I also grew up on a farm and so around cows and chickens and horses and it's kind of weird to grow up with pets that you know are gonna be like killed for meat. And like as a child, like that's a weird thing. And so like that was kind of an estranged thing about kind of like how I grew up. And then also every day after school, I would go hang out with my mom at the nursing home for a couple of hours. And so I just like hung out with 80 and 90 year olds on a daily basis and like for like a decade of my life. And so all three of those things are like, oh, these are all interesting things. So I'm gonna write an essay on each one of them and then I'm gonna figure out which essay I like. And so I wrote all three essays. And actually all of them were too long, but I just, I'm just gonna write and then I'll add it down and stuff like that. So I ended up with three essays that were all too long. And the fire one I talked about how like my community like helped out so much with like the log, we didn't have clothes, right? We didn't talk about how we like right after the fire we're trying to figure out like we wanna make a list of the things we need, but we don't have a pen. (laughs) And so like we need a pen so that we can write down the other things we need. And so like top of the list is pen. And like we're all like joking and talking to each other. And then it turns out somebody gave us a pen, but we couldn't find it up in. So this just up in in the house. And so like this is like, it was kind of like a weird, strangely funny thing, but like talking about how the community gave so much and helped us and kind of like you know going from like literally no clothes to more clothes than I'd ever had in my life. And it was just kind of a strange thing. And then I wrote the story about the farm. Growing up in a farm and about how I had castrated hundreds of cattle and like that's something that most people haven't done and like that's just a strange thing. That's a skill that I have. And so if you ever have a cow that you need castrated on your guy. And so and like we had two cows. One was that we're like we particularly like they were the first cows we ever gotten. It was it was nerves and happy. And so the nerves was like really nervous and happy was super happy. And like we named them lure kids at the time. But then kind of like what happens as they get older and like us coming to terms with that. We joked we we eventually had kind of like a weird dark humor which is probably what's coming across here more than anything. Where we talked about having happy meals and they like later on. And then I talked about like making friends at the nursing home and there were these like twins, plot and Clyde but neither of them had teeth. So I thought their names were Todd and Ty because they had no teeth. And talking about like making friends with these people and like seeing that room where they both lived go to just one person and then to an empty room. And so this was I wrote like three very different essays. And I gave I gave all three of those to some friends and some different people. And like asking like which one they like, which ones like what do you, which they all go in the trash 'cause they're all kind of weird. And like kind of like going through this. I got like a lot of feedback from different people and there wasn't a clear winner wherever it's like somebody would like the fire ones or like the retirement home. Some people would like the farm one. And eventually I talked to a physician who's like listen, all three of these need to be in there in your personal statement. Like this line in this paragraph and the farming thing that has to be in your application. That's so good. But he's like this, like the community focus and like the fire one is so like so poignant. But there's also this like feeling of like in the other two there's this feeling of loss, right? Of like losing pets and like things that you, animals you grew up with, but also the retirement home and like the like that sort of thing, the convalescent center. And that, so eventually I like recreate in my entire essay by just taking pieces of those and writing a path, writing an essay about loss. And that was the theme of my thing about loss and coming together and doing what you can to lessen other people's pain when they are experiencing loss and understanding that that's something that we all have to do is to the like loss of stuff in the fire, loss of life and the other two. And like honestly, it was great. Like that personal statement. That's the best thing I ever wrote. I rewrote it like six or seven times. And I had tons of people edit and kind of go through this. So whenever I have a student that's working on a personal statement and I realize you guys probably aren't starting your personal statements right now. But if you feel crazy, just start writing some stuff that's interesting and then see if there's a nugget in this one place that's good and a nugget in this one place that's good. But there's some writer who's quote, like how do you write a great book? You write 10 books and then you erase the 90% that's bad. And that's kind of how what this process worked. And so I think that that's a critical thing is like try to figure out a story and note that eventually like talking to my that position and like other people were helping me out my application, they were saying like, oh, this is great because this paints such a different picture than all of like lists of your academic accomplishments and like MCAT and like those sorts of things. And so this creates a very interesting big picture of like somebody that I want to know more about, right? I want to know like I want to send this person second years. I want to interview this person because it's just kind of an interesting thing. And so don't like that's the other thing is I feel like everyone thinks that they need to write about stuff that is like physician-y if that makes sense. And it doesn't necessarily have to be. I've looked at students' applications. I've done some editing of applications in the past. I think one of my favorite ones was this was an essay about a personal statement about chess and about like this student really loved chess and helped them kind of like understand how they dealt with the problems in their lives and how they grew and like looking for novel solutions. And sometimes you just find yourself in a solution in a situation where there's no way out of this like something is just bad. You find yourself in checkmate and there's nothing you can do. And you can see like four moves from now it's going to like you've lost already even though you're not in that scenario. It was like super interesting personal statement or one about breathing about how so this student was born with lung disease that was I know their parent had a lung disease but they were born prematurely. And so this like this big story of just like breathing and kind of like tying everything together. And it's like super interesting. And you don't have to have like a big theme like that kind of like running through. I think if you can, it's super interesting and engaging. But it's so important to think about the parts that you're trying to get across. And I would not have done a good job of that if I had not done multiple rounds of editing and gone to like lots of different people. I went to like the English, like there's like an our English department had like people that were like hired by the English department to just like help people edit essays. And so I like went to them even though they know nothing about like med school and premed. I also like talked to doctors. I talked to all my friends who were doing similar process. I talked to family although you do have to take all of that with a grain of salt like you mentioned as I although I think siblings are really good at tearing you down. So if you have siblings, that's like one of the best places of editors you can find or they'll look at you and say like that's stupid, you're stupid. And like, and you're like, thanks, thanks Zach. I needed that constructive, I needed that criticism to find the weak spots here. And so I think that that is really useful. I have some more to say, but I feel like I've been talking a long time as I have like, there's so much stuff kind of going on there. Don't let me forget to talk about the editing process. But well, the reality is there's so much to talk about with the personal statement that I think you and I could talk about it for perhaps more time than people would be willing to listen. But I guess along the theme of themes, of sharing our personal, like what was included in our personal statements, I went through a lot of iterations. I think I ultimately had, I wish I remembered the exact number. I don't, I know that I one point I hit 12 and I was like, oh, funky. But I think at first I was like, okay, I really felt like that physician-y thing. I was like, I need to prove that I can be a good physician. And then I was like, that doesn't really tell them who I am, right, or what has led me to be me. And then I was like, okay, well, maybe I'll do one that really highlights my resilience. I don't think this is, but anyway, I have a very strong trauma history and just a lot of madness in things that I had overcome and whatnot. And I was like, okay, maybe I'll talk about some of that. And then I was like, oh, maybe not. And then I was like, okay, well, maybe I'm really interested in connecting with people. I'm really interested in just being present for those difficult moments. I'm really interested in making sure people understand their lives. I'm really interested in helping underserved communities, not just my own. And so eventually that's the theme, the themes that came across in my personal statement. At first, I was also thinking, okay, maybe I'll do like one really significant event and kind of build everything on that. And I also feel to the realization, like it sounds like you did, that sometimes little, you know, multiple stories can also be really helpful. So it doesn't have to be one or the other. It really depends where your strengths are in terms of presenting yourself and presenting your story. And so some of the things that I shared, I think I ultimately went in chronological order of my life because there were like little pockets that I felt highlighted who I was as a person. And the first one, so we moved to Florida when I was like seven years old. And so the story I'm about to share was before then. So it was a very young person. And I used to tell my parents, like if someone from our church was sick, I used to have, like, I used to ask them to take me to the hospital to like be with them and like pray for them and just like be present while they were sick in the hospital. And actually a couple of years ago, I had someone like I just ran into them when I was back visiting. And they're like, I still remember this. And I was like, well, I don't know that I have a full recollection of that event, but cool. And then I shared, you know, how about when we moved my parents' physician hopped a lot because they had trouble communicating with their physicians at the time. They felt like they weren't really understood. And what it was like seeing that and seeing my community not have the access to something that felt so basic. And how that made me, yes, it drew me to medicine, right? But also drew me to wanting to be again present for people and help them achieve what they should get to achieve. I also talked about like just, I talked about a lot of things, but I also talked about like my love for teaching and making sure that like I said, people really understood what was going on in their lives. And I think it was the summer before like the year before I wrote my application. I was talking with my grandmother who lives in Puerto Rico and she had been, she'd been seeing physicians for some chronic conditions for a very long time. And I sat down with her and she didn't know what they meant. She didn't know why she was taking certain medications. She didn't, you know, understand a lot of things that I had learned to take for granted. And that I think a lot of us when we're pre-meds learned to take for granted. And for me, that was a moment of realization of, wow, I'm interested in education, right? That comes across in my application because I taught for many years. And I taught other pre-meds and whatnot as I kept progressing. And just like again, connecting with people and making sure that they understood their life and had the access to advocacy and understanding and these basic things. And I think ultimately I also talked about just because of all these experiences wanting to connect and help people that were underserved and not just my community, right? And you know, more extended because that just so happened, what to be what I was interested in and I'm interested in. And I remember at the end, I was thinking, how do I wrap this up? And looking at our backdrop is a little ironic. But I was like, I see what we do, not just in medicine, but in a lot of other spheres. And I included this there as building bridges, building bridges between people, building bridges between individuals and collective understanding and knowledge and communities and the same and representation and all of these different things. And the bridges are built of brick. They should be. They should be individuals coming together and using their strength and their resilience and their perspective. And you know, like looking at the very side, it's just like slightly different, you know, tones and whatnot. And like they're all unique and probably no two, no single two are alike. And I was like, I do not expect to change medicine in some grand way, right? I wasn't interested in like health policy or things like that at the time. And I was like, I want to be a brick in this bridge and help people achieve just the best version of themself that they can be while also learning to be the best version of myself that I can be. And I felt like that shared my experience. Maybe it doesn't show all the facets of who I am. It certainly doesn't show all of the experiences that have shaped who I am. But I felt like it showed key moments and moments of realization and moments of connection and moments of just brightening, right? My like just brightening my day and others. And for me, that was important. And yes, there was an element of physician, right? Thrown in there. But that wasn't quite the emphasis. And I suspect the emphasis that I shared is not surprising to many of our listeners because you know, some of it hopefully comes off. But that's kind of the road that that mine took. And like you feel had a lot of like I mentioned, a lot of people reviewing it. And that's ultimately what when mine settled on. Yeah. No, I like that. You actually use the full brick analogy in your essay. Like I love that. It was in my last paragraph. I remember that because I had some people say like, Oh, that's kind of cheesy. And I was like, but it's reality. Yeah. So I like that. Yeah. I also just side note when you're talking about like, you know, patients not knowing what drugs they're on and why I'm like, that's such a real physician problem. Like I'm having like flashbacks when I'm like talking to a patient. Like, what are you? Are you any medications? Like, yeah, it's a pink one. I'm like, okay, why do you don't know what it is? Like, no, I'm like, do you know what it's for? I'm like, no, I don't know why I'm taking it. But I'm just taking it because I was told to. I'm like, Oh, like this, the pink one, that does not clarify things for me. But like kind of like pulling back to this process, right? I've like, we've done a lot of like big picture and like some stories about kind of like what it is that we wrote about. And then obviously tons of editing is useful. But I want to kind of take a second and give you some like concrete actionable things on like ways to make your application better. First off, I have a lot of students that this feel like they need to get across ideas in ways that I need to seem smart and feel like I need people to think I'm smart. And so they will word things in kind of like complex sentences. They'll do things like like say something like for the furtherment of mankind, it was critical to me to address the the elderly community and fortnightly incidences of socialization in order to raise their spirits, right? And like you could say instead, like I really enjoy helping out at the local community, like I spend every two weeks ago, then I'm playing bingo with the elderly people at Brighton's their day. It also brightens mind to be honest. And like that's that's a lot more powerful actually. It's like I clear succinct sentence. And I know that this is something I was talking to a student earlier about this who was so worried about this because they were English as a second language. And so they felt like the way they wrote was just very simple and clear sentences. And I'm like, no, that's actually great. Right. That's you want that rather than like the overly verbose crazy, you know, writing of like on so smart, right? And I mean, just taking a second and thinking about it from the the academic or the admissions committee, think about it from their perspective. They go home with a stack of applications and they have to read through a bunch of them. And if there's some really long winded, overly complex, hard to follow sentence that's got two semi-colons in it, but I'm going to glaze over because I got to get through 80 of these tonight. And like something that is easy to read is a little bit more powerful because it's a little bit easier for them to engage in and like to pull them in and like get a clear story across. I think that that's a really critical thing. I think something else that is really important is your for sentence. It's you want something and this is probably sound silly and you're just like this was talked about in high school and undergrad and it's just ridiculous. You want to hook, you want a really good hook because you don't want to be the that writer, right? Because you're writing. You don't want to be that writer that takes three paragraphs to build up and build suspense and engagement because they will, like you said, feel check out, right? And you should not make them want to reread because they were like, oh, maybe there's something actually interesting at the beginning, but I was just like kind of bored. Um, get that just dive right in. This is not where you want to like skirt around, you know, your point just be like, yeah, this is what, this is what makes me get up in the morning and this is what makes me think. And, um, yeah, this is gonna sound really dorky, but bear with me. When you're, and this is like actionable, when you're reviewing your personal statement, approach it like cars, right? You are finding arguments in cars. You are making the decisions. Exactly, exactly. Right? Like every, you're trying to make sure that every sentence has a reason that it's there. And if there is a sentence that is just like fluff, right? Toss it out. Don't, don't waste precious space. Um, and along those lines, it's better to write more and just get to shave it off than to be missing an entire paragraph, right? If you're a couple of words off from the limit, that's fine. That's not the end of the world, but you should not be halfway at the limit. That's a problem. Right. And so making sure that you're making good use of every sentence that it has a purpose and that it's engaging and is simple and easy to understand are all important components when you're writing and editing your statement, your personal statement. Yeah. That's, that's such a big thing. There's two things in there. Like you talk about the memorable first statement. I think mine was something like, I remember, I remember the mues over the crackling fire. And like, so like the cows moving over like the house burning, down and like, that's such a weird sentence that I'm sure everyone's like, wait, what? What's going on here? But that is, um, like, that's definitely a thing. You do want a memorable first sentence and, ideally a memorable last sentence as well, that like first and last are very important. Um, but I love, love, love that you talked about. Every sentence needs to have a reason to be there. I think that's one of the reasons that my personal statement was so strong, is because I had more than three essays worth of stuff. And I'm like, how do I cut this down? Where all this, the same idea as an information are in this, but it's less than one third the size. And so doing it like sentence by sentence, going through like, what is the point of this sentence? Does this sentence have a point? Is there a reason? Not necessarily like a point, but it's what is the reason this sentence is here? Right? Like saying, like I remember Todd and Tide's room becoming just Todd's. And then an empty room like, what's, why do I include that sentence? Because I want to show them that like this really affected me and created a see a feeling of loss through there. Like, so if I said that and then the very next sentence, I said, it was very hard for me to experience loss. And they're the loss of both of them really affected me. Like those last two sentences, get rid of them, right? Like, because that's the same idea from the previous one. You want each sentence to have a purpose and a reason for being there. And I would say getting that into a point where you're not just doing it at the level of a sentence, but at the level of a word, right? And so there was, what was the one I was just looking at? Bear with me, I promise. I'm gonna pull this up real quick. I was looking at actually at an application. And so, yes. So somebody in their thing was talking about how they evaluated study candidates for this research thing. I'm like, no, you evaluated candidates. You don't need study candidates because that study, not a critical word, take that out. And if you do that through the entire, through the entire thing, one, it's easier to read because it's like as simple and succinct in there. It often can become more powerful, right? Like when you simplify those sorts of things, like more punchy or sentences. But also it gives you more room, right? So if each sentence is an idea and each word is like, I need every single one of these words throughout the entire thing, I can't get rid of one. Then you know that you have jam packed everything, like that past personal statement is as full of who you are as a person as it can be. Like you are getting across as much as you possibly can. And so validating every single word, like probably start with sentences. What's the point of this sentence? Is there a way to save that shorter? Right? Or is every word in here critical? Like can I get rid of any of these? You can take a personal statement. There are times I've done this. I'm like, okay, let's go, let's just do this. Let's go through all of the ideas here. And all of the, every single word and let's eliminate everything that is not necessary. And all of a sudden, the personal statement is half as long or two-thirds as long. And so I'm like, all right, awesome. You got way more room to tell us more about yourself and to paint a fuller picture, get some more ideas across. And I think that those are the personal statements that are really powerful. At the end of it, I'm like, there's just so much in this. And there's times I read a personal statement that somebody's written. And I'm like, I feel like this could have been like three sentences. It was like for the amount of stuff that I got out of this. Like it was, it was long-winded and it was like just the same idea over and over again, but nothing new and no new component to it. And so that's why it's really, really important to get good editors to help you out with your personal statement. To like, look through and do that sort of rationale on a sentence by sentence, on a word by word, a character by character level. Because you have a limit on how many characters you can put in here. You want to make sure that you are spending every word, every character wisely, right? That's an investment that you can do. You can put this to work as much in there as you possibly can. Yeah, I know we've thrown so much at you guys in this podcast with the importance of the personal statement. Maybe some of you as a result of this are going to push back your application submission date and we encourage it if your personal statement needs the work. We've talked so much about editing. We've talked about trying to have a theme and really making every component of your personal statement count and just show and highlight who you are and what has brought you to where you're at. And so we hope that everyone listening has found something that they can apply to their personal statement, to their future residency applications, to maybe your future resumes. And just cultivating that ability to share who you are. And so here at Jack Weston, we do have additional, like additional support and resources. And so calling to see we have an admissions advisor that would be able to help students cultivate their applications and whatnot. And so we encourage you guys to check it out if it's something that you're interested in. And just like we also said, making sure that the people in your life that can help you and extending those reaches a little bit more for this are also a great place to start. Yeah, I will say if you have any more questions about any of this stuff, you can always reach out to any of our academic advisors for free. Like it costs nothing and so you can meet with them once or twice. There are some fantastic people in their Robert Clark Sada. And so reach out. Like this is another thing we do at Jack Weston because we think it helps medicine, helps progress medicine and health care forward. And so we do this for free. So if any of you guys have any questions, note that you can reach out to them. You will be able to find a link to them and like their calendars in the explanation for this video. And so that's something it doesn't cost anything. So if you need some advice on like should you maybe push back and kind of like what's going on with your application, definitely do that. But I feel a whole lot better. I don't know about you as I knowing that we have done this episode. I know we kind of like shuffled things around and move this in. But like I've run into so many issues in the last couple of weeks that I'm like okay we need to get some information out there to as many people as we can to try to stop some of these problems before like somebody hits a mitt. Because I think that there are some things that pretty much you know most people can do to strengthen their application. Especially if they just wrote it themselves and they haven't done a lot of editing. Like you need those other eyes on there to help kind of like see and break those things down. Thank you again for joining us and for any other resources that you might need for your MCAT studying and Metzq's application head over to Jack Westonbach.