Get into Medical School - Write the Perfect Personal Statement

Very sensible and helpful advice that is succinct and related in down to earth language. The first part of the book provides general guidelines for writing your personal statement and structuring it appropriately. These are helpful and a lot of the advice is common sense but it is still good to have it retold. The bulk of the book is full of actual personal statements that students have successfully applied and been accepted into medical schools with. These are then further split into two sections. The first selection of personal statements are all followed by a critique of their positive and negative attributes and suggestions for improvement. I found the analysis and breakdown of the statements very helpful. By the time a student has gathered all their information together and are ready to start writing their statement they invariably find that they have too much. The analysis of statements in this book helped by helping you become more critical or ruthless when it comes to getting the word count down e.g. remove flowery language, don't be verbose, does that sentence actually tell the medical admissions officer anything about the applicant? There is also information as to which medical schools accepted that particular statement which is interesting as I didn't realize that it can help to tailor your statement to particular medical schools; as some place a greater emphasis on academics while others may play greater importance on evidence of a wide range of experiences. The latter half of the book has more examples of personal statements but these are not critiqued. I enjoyed reading the book. It goes without saying that all medical applicants are invariably bright, have similar experiences, skills and interests so the challenge is how can you stand out from the crowd? This book offers plenty of examples and suggestions.

I bought this book for my daughter to help her to apply for medical school, my daughter says that the book had helped her to write the perfect personal statement which she received 4 university interviews and she also got an offer.

Bought this book near the end of summer as I had no personal statement written as of then and I had to have a draft in for the start of September. I had tried many times to write one but I had no idea where to begin and what to put in it. This book had a 100 examples of personal statements to read and they help you to formulate new ideas and give you ways to put your words down on the page. It even takes you step by step through writing it which I thought was really useful. I got the first draft written pretty quickly with this book and I my personal statement turned out really well, it flowed nicely, had structure and was well written even though I wasn't confident with it's content. This even book helped me to say my work experience, extra curriculars and such in a way to make it sound more impressive which is good. Unfortunately I cannot comment on how successful I was with said personal statement because in the end I decided not to do medicine - sorry! I do think I would have done quite well with it if I had applied though and so would recommend this.

This book was definately a big help for me when writing my personal statement. Coming from a small comprehesive school and the only one to apply to medicine in a couple of years i wasn't offered much help from teachers. It provides information on how to set out your personal statement and how to start the daunting task. It then gives you loades of examples to read through and get ideas from about particular topics. It obviosly helped me write a good statement aswell as i got interviews at 3/4 places i applied to. I would definately reccomend to anyone writing a personal statement for any medical schools.

After not being sucessful on my first attempt at applying to medicine, I thought this time round I would do everything I could to give me a better chance. This book is full of useful tricks,hints and ideas which I had not heard before about how to write a personal statement and everything is based on evidence (ie they show you loads of sucessful examples). This book is also good if you're stuck on ideas of what to do to make you stand out when applying, voluntary and work experience wise. A good starting point for anyone considering applying to medicine.