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You Can Be A Doctor:
Application Guide
What is a personal statement?
The personal statement is a crucial component of the application process and is used alongside your Highers/ Advanced Highers, UCAT score, and interview to determine if you are successful in getting into medicine. It is an opportunity to showcase your motivation, experiences, and qualities in a personal way, allowing Universities to identify ideal candidates who will go on to become good doctors!
How is it used during the application process?
1. Shortlisting - Admissions tutors will review your personal statement, looking for qualities/motivations necessary for a career in medicine. As most applicants to medicine will have excellent academic achievements, the personal statement is a way of distinguishing those with the desired character, motivation, and experiences which would not be evident from exam results alone. Some of the things reviewers will be looking for include:
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A realistic understanding of the profession and the long-term commitment it involves, as well as the challenges (and rewards!)
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Interpersonal/communication skills
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Leadership/teamworking skills
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Resilience
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Time-management
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2. At interview - If you are invited to interview, many universities will have time dedicated to further specific questions about your personal statements, going into more detail about your experiences and how they have influenced your decision to study medicine or how they have improved your skills.
Top Tip: Traits of an ideal candidate
The MSC has a great info sheet which gives a list of attributes which medical schools look for in prospective applicants. Each university’s MBChB/MBBS application page will also list qualities they wish to see in their medical students. Be sure to read these carefully and try to relate you experiences to some of the traits. Remember – you don’t need to tick off every single one!
YCBAD Advice:
Experiences to talk about can include:
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A job: working while in high school, even if unrelated to medicine, shows that you have good time management skills, reliability and team working skills
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Work experience: allows you to witness other people in work, and see their communication, problem solving skills and team work in action
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Volunteering: gives you experience of working in a team, builds you communication skills
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Spots/Music/Drama/Other Extra-Curriculars: demonstrate motivation, teamwork and personal organisation as you fit this in around your studies
Having some structure to follow is is useful when writing your personal statement
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What did you do: Brief description of the experience
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Why did you do it: Why was it useful?
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What did it teach you/How did it make you feel: either skills/attributes the experience has helped you to develop, or skills and attributes you have witnessed in others, which make them a good clinician. This is the most important part of your statement – the interviewers + panel members aren’t as interested in what you did, but more interested in why you think your experience has helped you develop the skills to become a good doctor, or how someone’s behaviour has shown you an example of what you think a good doctor should be.
Here’s an example from my own personal statement (from nearly 10 years ago – eek!):-
Work experience at a local hospital (what I did) provided me with chance to gain excellent insight into both the benefits and challenges of working as a hospital doctor (why I did it). Shadowing medics during rounds in a GM ward exposed me to the difficulties of working in medicine, as some of the elderly patients were hostile and unfriendly to the doctors. Despite this, they were always treated with patience and compassion (what it taught me), something I found very admirable.
Other key tips for personal statement writing:
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Get someone to check it over for spelling + grammatical errors before you submit it - this could be your parents, your head of year or your English teacher. Sometimes if you’ve been looking at it for so long you won’t be able to spot even simple errors!
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Make sure you are honest. If you exaggerate or write about experiences that didn’t really have a great impact on you, this will show up when you’re asked to talk more about it in your interview. The panel will be able to see your passion if you’ve been really inspired by someone you’ve met or an experience you’ve had, so write about things that impacted you
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Keep it personal: the panel want to know about who you are, and why the things you’ve done have made you want to do medicine. Use ‘I’ and ‘me’ throughout, and reflect on how the experience made you feel or what it taught you.
There are lots of examples available on the Student Room! Looking through these can give you a rough idea, but remember to keep the statement personal to you – it’ll be clear if you’ve just copied.
We are also really happy to look over your personal statement at YouCanBeADoctor – please contact us on advice@youcanbeadoctor.co.uk and we’ll happily read through your personal statement, or give you advice if you are struggling to relate your experiences to being a medical student.