Bavesh Blogs

You don’t need to have had some crazy experience saving lives in the Andes to write a good personal statement for Medicine. In fact I didn’t really know if sharing my statement would even be worth it because of the truth of applying to medical school nowadays.

The truth is most universities simply don’t care. Gone are the days where unis would read and even score your statement as pre-interview screening. Sure, some unis like Oxbridge may use it in the beginning of an interview (and if you’re applying there, it would be wise to leverage it to try and get a chance to talk about topics you’re actually interested and confident in), but most unis simply care about the UCAT and maybe your A levels.

With that said, the personal statement is still something you have pretty much full control over and you usually have plenty of time to perfect it. Don’t obsess over it, but you might as well spend some time doing the typical things like making your teachers and trusted friends read it.

Introduction

Exploring the intricate structure of a nephron under an electron microscope was enough to make me fall in love with the science behind Medicine. However, it was a moment during my hospital work experience that truly made me consider it as a career. I talked to a patient with renal failure and learnt about his journey after diagnosis. He explained that he was planning to go back to his beloved job thanks to his doctors’ efforts, showing me how much change they could bring to individual lives. This was reaffimed to me when I shadowed doctors at a sexual health clinic. Watching how they handled sensitive information and empathised with worried patients showed that, despite being a very demanding profession, its rewards were unparalleled.

I strongly believe the best personal statements start… personally. Of course, it doesn’t have to be a lightbulb moment or anything, but even one experience that piqued your interest may work really well as a starting point. Maybe it was dissecting a heart in a Biology class or watching some cool surgery.

Similar to interviews you can’t just be romanticising Medicine. It’s tricky to balance this because, despite the need for realism, nobody likes reading something full of doom and gloom. Realism should always be optimistic – talking about the positive outcomes of a conversation you saw, for example.

Work Experience and Volunteering

I’ll start by saying it’s totally fine if you didn’t actually manage to get work experience. Most of your friends who did get some probably got it through some weird sort of nepotism or just got really lucky in applying somewhere that actually reads your applications. In the worst case scenario, you can always do some virtual work experience and talk about it – I found myself talking about it more than my real work experience in interviews, sometimes.

During work experience at a GP surgery, I started to appreciate the impact doctors have on a larger, community-wide scale. The focus on preventative medicine with smoking cessation and dietary clinics showed me how important it is to teach people how to take control of their own health. Inspired by this to help my local community, I volunteered at homeless feeds and helped to host a sports day for Cerebral Palsy Midlands. I realised that simply listening and understanding can go a long way to help the vulnerable.

It’s worth noting that it can actually be quite nice to have experience that wasn’t just in a big hospital. The community aspect of GPs (or even pharmacies) and preventative medicine is rarely talked about in personal statements and can provide a nice angle.

Volunteering can be a bit tricky to talk about. Even if you’ve spent months cleaning up at the local care home you may spend hours scratching your head about what you actually learned. Not to worry, though. Most will be satisfied you did some in the first place and as long as you can make it seem like it, in some way or other, demonstrates the qualities of a good medic you can say you did simple things like listening and being a companion.

Sell Your Skills

My communication skills have improved by mentoring GCSE students and supervising a science club, in which I have learnt to break down complex topics into simple chunks. Leading a weekly debating workshop in a primary school developed my teamwork skills, which I saw were critical for the multidisciplinary nature of the wards. A particularly memorable experience was when I encouraged a shy child, who had recently joined the class, to speak in front of his new classmates. As he spoke about why pizza was better than ice cream with newfound confidence, I realised that sometimes a guiding hand is all individuals need to achieve their goals.

Strangely, most people will leave the section where they concoct and vaguely relate life experiences to how they show leadership or communication skills until the very end of the statement. But… nobody reads that far. It’s probably a miracle if they even got past your introduction without at least psychologically ticking you as a yes/no.

Moreover, including the stories earlier in your personal statement is more valuable because it usually just makes for a more engaging read anyway. Even if it’s unique, everybody talks about work experience but actual unique stories are hard to come by and thus ever more exciting to read if you’re reading thousands of applications.

If you’re in a sports team and helped someone understand something for chemistry class, you have all you need to talk about your myriad of communication and leadership skills already. If you aren’t the captain of your hockey team, though, you can still make it clear you’re the ideal doctor material 🙂

Playing the guitar and doing gymnastics help me cope with stress. Apart from improving my dexterity and coordination they have also improved my ability to assimilate and share new practical skills quickly. For example, I made gymnastics video tutorials to help keep my school community active during lockdown. Although a challenge, my time management skills were refined as I balanced this with mounting coursework.

I sort of sandwiched the next section with the two paragraphs of this section. Don’t to be afraid to play around with ordering – the cool stuff needs to go first. Obviously maintain some degree of flow, but bear in mind that you will inevitably losing reader(s) and attention every sentence you write.

You’re going to write some boring stuff in your statement. There’s nothing inherently about playing guitar that will make someone think that you are medic material. Nonetheless, you can use words to manipulate and craft a short tale of how doing some coding actually made you problem-solving genius.

Super-curricular Stuff (or, the Oxbridge Section)

To broaden the scope of my scientific knowledge I read various books. In particular. Matt Ridley’s “Genome” fascinated me by telling a story of how our DNA holds a record of our evolutionary history. I also undertook scientific investigations such as experimenting with reciprocal inhibition for my Biology coursework. Furthermore, after learning about global health trends in Geography. I wrote an International Baccalaureate extended essay into how the nutrition transition affects the health of indigenous communities. I recognise Medicine is not purely scientific, though. I gained a greater understanding of unique ethical challenges such as the Charlie Gard case through listening to BMJ podcasts and reading articles.

In short, you can probably ditch the mentioning of a book if you’re not applying for Oxbridge and replace it with something more aligned to what your universities would be interested in. If you genuinely found it cool and are stuck for content, it may still be worth including.

The Charlie Gard and Genome thing in my statement is an example of how I was trying to leverage my ability to include whatever I wanted to hopefully get to talk about whatever I wanted at interviews. I don’t think any of my interviewers ended up reading my statement, but oh well.

Conclusion

Having spoken to both junior doctors and consultants, I have realised that the profession increasingly involves caring for patients with incurable conditions. Atul Gawande’s “Being Mortal” offered a powerful message – one of the most rewarding aspects of being a doctor is helping people with what medicine can’t do. Amidst the revolutions in modern healthcare, guiding and empathising with patients who have challenging issues is at the heart of the physician’s role. Although at times the sheer responsibility doctors have seems daunting, I am determined to join the profession as I feel it would fulfil me deeply.

I think the conclusion is a nice place to mention something a bit new, maybe a bit rare or unique. Maybe the insight of some famous author in the medical world, for example. Even if by some miracle the reader gets to this stage or even if they skip to your conclusion and don’t read anything else, I think it’s more useful to have a message than a summary of the characters you wrote before.

A Few Words about Style

1) Keep your sentences short and get rid of fancy vocab.

That’s a way better strategy that doing something like this: with improperly used colons and something that seems like a logical train of thought in your head but that will invariably, undoubtedly, unfailingly, habitually make your readers struggle and pause.

2) It’s ok to hit the line limit before the character limit.

I purposefully kept some of the 40 lines blank for new paragraphs instead of indenting. Cutting down of course felt impossible at times, but I’m sure you can agree that even this much more succinct version came with a lot of fluff 🙂

Everyone indents so maybe UCAS has a clever way to re-format to make it more readable, but honestly reading shorter statements seems blissful when you’re reading a bunch of nonsense anyway and it will make you a better writer.

Enjoy writing! 🙂

Most of the photos here come from Unsplash!