Residency Personal Statement Tip #2
Residency Personal Statement Tip # 2 : Don’t Discuss Irrelevant Achievements.
Sometimes applicants have a tendency to discuss things that are completely irrelevant to the practice of medicine. Talking about winning your high school tennis title, or the chess club championship is not interesting for residency directors to be reading about. If you are going to talk about an achievement outside of medicine (which is fine), you need to then explain why you are mentioning it and how it makes you a better, stronger applicant. For example “I honed my skills in strategy, and logic by participating and winning our school’s Robotics Challenge as an undergraduate. This experience helped me by forcing me to thoroughly plan and build projects not unlike planning the steps to a surgical procedure. This ability to take complex problems and break them down into logical steps will help me as a future surgeon.” DON’T mention something just to brag or “show off.”
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“During my second year, there was an All India Medical Schools meet in which I won the Silver Medal in Ping Pong. I was the only student in that year to win a medal of all the medical schools from my state. I remember the welcome party which was arranged for me and the words which my Principal said to me, “we are proud to have a student like you in my medical school”. In the subsequent years I won several medals in various sports and games and won the title “sports achiever of the year” for two consecutive years. This boosted up my confidence that I can handle my studies along with other curricular activities” – from a real essay
Again, How does Ping Pong relate to this applicant’s suitability to becoming a resident? Is your future residency director looking for a Ping Pong Playa?!
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