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Medicine Personal Statement
📋 47 lines.
📝4,000 characters.
🏆 An opportunity to sell yourself.
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Medicine Personal Statement Review for 2023 Entry
Reviewed by experts
Get feedback from those who know what medical schools want to see
Quantitative mark scheme used
Our experts use a mark scheme to ensure your personal statement is perfect
Get feedback within 48 hours
Fast feedback to give you plenty of time to improve
Personal Statement Importance
“No one can determine your destiny but you. Will it be easy? Of course not. Can you do it? Of course you can. But it requires patience and persistence. Seize this moment of crisis as your opportunity to start fresh, and live your dreams.” – Les Brown
🏆An opportunity to sell yourself
The Medicine personal statement is the first time admissions tutors will assess you as an individual and not a set of grades and results, so it is important for you make a good impression. You will have 4,000 characters (around 500 words) over 47 lines to show how you possess the qualities needed to become a doctor. You should demonstrate your suitability to study medicine, for example, by showing your commitment, team-working skills and excellent communication skills to the admissions panel. Most importantly you should explain your motivation behind studying medicine and use your relevant volunteering and online work experience to show how you have explored the career path.
🏛️ Different universities will use it at different stages in their application process and with different weightings
Some universities do not use it at all, such as Brighton and Sussex* and St Georges*, whilst other universities, such as Manchester*, require an alternative form similar to the personal statement but not your personal statement itself. Universities including Leicester* use it as part of a scoring system alongside other academic components to select applicants for interview. Other universities, such as Liverpool*, use your personal statement in one of their MMI stations at interview. Your personal statement, at universities such as Hull York*, may also be used for shortlisting at any point in the application process. Similarly, at Bristol*, the personal statement may be used to differentiate between applicants with identical interview scores. It is useful to be aware of how the medical schools that you are applying to will use your personal statement.
(*More information will usually be made clear in each of the universities online admissions procedures guidance. Always check the university website for up-to-date information!)
👇 We have provided a table below to give you guidance👇
(The information on the table was accurate at time of writing)
We at The Aspiring Medics do our best to ensure our information is up to date; always check the university website for up-to-date information
The Experience Bank
🏗️Build your experience bank
An experience bank is essential in order to give you the framework to base your personal statement reflections around. It will help to ensure that your personal statement is as concise as possible. Without a clear strategy or intention, it can be very easy to write waffly answers that just waste the character count as opposed to showing your realistic insight or skills that you have developed.
💱Learning to reflect is a skill
Learning to reflect is an essential skill as a doctor. The greater you are able to build up the habit of using the STARR technique, the better your insights will be. This will not only help you when writing your personal statement, it will also be effective for interviews at your chosen medical schools.
⬇️Download your FREE Experience Bank
Our FREE Experience Bank gives you a framework to help you reflect upon your answers; it is based on the Medical School's COuncil Statement on the core values and attributes needed to study medicine. Check it out!
Personal Statement Tips
💯Quality not quantity
One of the most common questions we get from A-Level students thinking of applying for medicine is: ‘What work experience should I do?’ While work experience is very important the reassuring caveat is that you don’t necessarily need month long experience in hospital wards or surgical theatres to get into the med school of your dreams. The way you reflect and present it in your personal statement or talk about it in an interview makes all the difference!
🏛️ Reflect using the STARR technique
Try and consider at least all of these things:
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What did you learn?
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About yourself?
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About medicine as a career?
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About your motivations to be a doctor?)
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What skills were you able to develop?
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What did you observe in others that impacted you?
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The way you saw people operate in the real world may have surprised you or motivated you or even just shown you an aspect of the caring professions that you hadn’t thought of before.
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How did it impact your view of the medical/care based/customer focused profession?
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What downsides did you observe? What are the challenges faced by the people you saw?
Med schools want students who are aware of the realities of medicine before they sign up to a long degree. After all, the students are an investment and they don’t want students who will drop out when they realise a doctor isn’t like the TV shows. Having everything written down in front of you then allows you to really pick out what stood out and what you want to talk about. Allowing you to be concise in your personal statement and clear in interviews.
What universities want to know is what you’ve learned from your work experience. Our second top tip is to sit down with a blank piece of paper and reflect on the experiences you’ve had even before you consider putting it in your personal statement.
Medicine Personal Statement Review for 2023 Entry
Reviewed by experts
Get feedback from those who know what medical schools want to see
Quantitative mark scheme used
Our experts use a mark scheme to ensure your personal statement is perfect
Get feedback within 48 hours
Fast feedback to give you plenty of time to improve
💉 Relating it to Medicine
Here is where you really stand out when talking about work experience. A strong and personal link from the work experience to how it influenced your desire to be a doctor is where you really show off. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve got experience in a hospital, a care home, a primary school or even a morgue - the way you relate it to medicine is what matters.
Our top tip here is don’t get bogged down in exactly what you did, procedures you saw or niche operations you shadowed - hopefully med school will teach you all of that anyway! Instead, really focus on showing or telling them what you learnt or observed and how that relates to your ambitions in a clear but concise way. If you can convince them that you can gain valuable skills and insight from work experience then your much more likely to convince them that you’re suited to their course where they hope to train you to be a doctor from time spent on a ward.