Medical School Application Process

00:01 In the application process, students work on something called a "Personal Statement." And the personal statement is very much like the who are you.

00:11 In fact in the class I teach at OSU that who are you leads to the personal statement.

00:16 I want you to think about that who are you and your personal statement.

00:21 Your personal statement is defining you in words for a committee that knows nothing about you.

00:30 You are a complete blank slate to them except for your grades, except for your refrences, until that personal statement is done.

00:38 Now that personal statement is of course your perspective of yourelf.

00:43 That personal statement is the part where I talk about the creativity that has to come through.

00:49 And is the part of the application that students struggle with the most.

00:55 Everything else you can work and you can get if you work hard enough to do them.

00:59 But writing a good personal statement is absolutely difficult because it takes self analysis, it takes honesty, and it takes creative writing.

01:12 The thing I advise students along their pathway, that they often times don't listen to as carefully as they should, is that there's two classes that you should take in any pre-med path that's going to help you to write that personal statement.

01:27 One is a creative writing class.

01:29 And when you are squeezing all those chemistry classes in there and all that science in there, it's very easy to overlook the components of writing and communication.

01:40 Don't miss that.

01:41 You need to have those things as part of your application.

01:47 Take a creative writing class and take it early.

01:49 If you wait till junior you'd to take it, you're not going to have the chance to develop those skills.

01:55 The second class that I think every student should take who wants to go to medical school, to help improve that analytical quality.

02:02 Because you are going to be analyzing yourself is philosophy.

02:06 Philisophy will make you look at the world and think about the world in a completely different fasion.

02:12 If you've never taken a philosophy class, by the time you apply to medical school, you will not write a good personal statement.

02:20 I've never known anyone to do it without taking a good philosophy class.

02:25 That perspective change that happens as a result of the training that you get in philosophy class and creative writing make for an absolutey unique personal statement.

02:38 Now here's where uniqueness is critical.

02:40 Imagine how many letters of application or how many personal statements that a medical school committee is reading.

02:49 Stanford gets 7,000 applications a year.

02:51 Imagine how many of those letters sound like the same thing over and over and over.

02:57 The more you read, the more they sound alike.

03:00 This is where being distinct and standing out will help you to avoid that pile that goes over here that's like everybody else.

03:10 But that takes creativity.

03:12 And that takes insight.

03:14 It takes all those things that we've talked about.

03:16 Because if you don't stand out in that personal statement, you are not going to stand out in other ways.

03:21 Most people apply into medical school have great grades.

03:25 Most people applying into medical school have great references just like you do.

03:30 How do you distinguist yourself.

03:32 That personal statement is criticial to that process.