Your Medical Residency Personal Statement is your opportunity to stand out from the crowd and impress Program Directors. It offers a chance to highlight your strengths and the reasons you are interested in the specialty. The Medical Residency Personal Statement can also be used to explain any “red flags” in your application, like interruptions in your course of study, low Step Scores, or extended time since graduation.

To take full advantage of this 1-page opportunity, there are some common mistakes you’ll want to avoid.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in your Medical Residency Personal Statement

Your personal statement should indeed be personal. But, it is not intended to be a space that tells long stories about your childhood, relationships/marriage, or high school/undergraduate experiences. Keep references to these concepts short and concise. Always tie them back to a point that’s relevant to your application.

Avoid telling patient stories where you were more of an observer than an active participant.

Including a patient story in your Personal Statement is a great idea—if you played an active role in the story. Sharing stories where you were only an observer won’t carry much weight at all and should be avoided. If you were actively involved in a patient case that is relevant to the specialty you are applying to, your discussion of the case should be focused on your role and what you learned from the experience. While it’s important that your reader understand some details about the patient, this section of the Personal Statement should be more about you than the patient.

Do not repeat the same experiences that you share in the Impactful Experience section of the MyERAS Application

This year the MyERAS Application will now include an Impactful Experience section, which is an optional section for applicants to share any major hardships or experiences they have had to overcome during their journey to residency. This section is OPTIONAL and should be utilized only for those who feel they have something significant to share. If you do complete this section in the MyERAS Application, DO NOT repeat the same information in your Personal Statement.

Don’t spend precious word count discussing why you want to study in the U.S.

Most International Medical Graduates have similar reasons for wanting to pursue residency in the U.S.: access to new technology and cutting-edge research. Other common reasons include being close to family/spouses and enjoying the culture. Listing these reasons comes across as generic and won’t impress your readers. If you do decide to write about this topic in your Personal Statement, make sure the content is unique and meaningful.

Avoid talking about hobbies that don’t have any relevance to your strengths as a physician.

Your hobbies are an important part of who you are. Hobbies are also a common topic during interviews. Essentially, the only reason to write about hobbies in your Personal Statement is if they are directly relevant to your specialty. For example, if you are applying to surgery and your hobby involves fine motor skills, discussing your hobby makes sense. This is because it is evidence of a strength that’s relevant to your career path.

Don’t limit yourself to the “5-paragraph” theme.

Personal Statements are not college essays. As such, they do not need to follow the 5-paragraph theme. This theme typically includes a thesis statement with three key points and follow-up paragraphs that elaborate on those points. It’s also not necessary to have a conclusion that summarizes your writing. This style of essay is elementary and does not reflect well-developed writing skills. Instead, your Personal Statement should follow the lead of professional genres of writing, like the Cover Letter. So, the introduction should clearly state your purpose (and the specialty you’re applying to). The body paragraphs should be focused and transition well from one to the next. The conclusion should highlight your goals for residency and how you can contribute to the program.

If you need assistance with your Medical Residency Personal Statement, check out Residency Statement! We offer two different services to best meet your needs. So, whether you have a working draft that needs revision and editing or prefer to work one-on-one with a writer to build your Personal Statement from scratch, we’re ready to help!

Your Residency Personal Statement is your chance to shine. After all, you have an entire page to fill with your positive attributes and strengths. If you’ve started drafting this supporting document, you may be wondering just how personal it should be. The answer is…it depends.

Appropriate Personal Content for Your Residency Personal Statement

Relevant background/Childhood experiences

If your background story is relevant to your path toward medicine/residency, it’s a good idea to include it. For example, perhaps you grew up in a family of doctors and spent a lot of time in clinics/hospitals. Or, maybe you had a serious illness or injury and had a lot of exposure to doctors. Other relevant experiences could include:

• Growing up with little access to healthcare
• Spending time caring for a friend or family member who was seriously ill or injured
• Meeting a strong physician role model early in your life

Keep in mind that the Personal Statement is not a narrative-style document, so “story-telling” should be kept to a minimum.

Circumstances that caused a delay in your education

If there are personal circumstances that caused a break in your education, including them in your Personal Statement is smart. Taking care of a sick family member, the death of a loved one, or dealing with personal medical/mental health issues are all circumstances that are appropriate to discuss.

Circumstances that resulted in a USMLE Exam failure

If you have multiple attempts on a Step exam, and there are mitigating circumstances, you can certainly include them in the Personal Statement. Keep your explanation brief, 3-5 sentences, and then transition into a discussion about what you learned/how you have grown from the experience.

Content to Avoid in Your Residency Personal Statement

Stories About Ill/Injured Friends and Family

Unless you played a direct role in their care, sharing stories about other people’s illnesses or injuries isn’t smart. Your readers aren’t interested in what happened to someone else—even if it made an impression on you. Stick with actionable content that demonstrates your skills and strengths.

Information about your spouse/children

Your Personal Statement needs to focus on you. Spending time writing about your immediate family is not a good idea. Think about it: If your readers are learning about your spouse’s or children’s struggles or achievements, how does that help them understand why you’re a good fit for the program? The same goes for events like divorce. Unless there is specific relevance to your application, avoid writing about this kind of content.

There are, of course, exceptions to these suggestions! If you feel a story about a friend or family member is particularly relevant to your application for a specific specialty, it can be included.

 We hope these tips are helpful as you’re drafting your Residency Personal Statement! If you need assistance, visit us at Residency Statement. Our expert editors and writers are committed to helping you craft the perfect Personal Statement. For more ideas and suggestions for your Residency Personal Statement, read our blog Creating a Well Crafted Medical Residency Personal Statement.

A topic that often comes up for repeat applicants or reapplicants (residency candidates who have applied for one or more applications cycles) is whether or not to reuse their ERAS Application documents. Gathering your ERAS Application documents year after year can be draining, and one of the most tempting documents to reuse or tweak a little is the Medical Residency Personal Statement.

It’s understandable really; most medical students or graduates do not enjoy the tedious task of writing the Personal Statement once– let alone twice or more! Writing the perfect Personal Statement that is engaging, professional, and reflects your best self, while still fitting on one page is time-consuming and difficult for the busy medical professional. You may even feel that you already had a strong document last year; so, if it isn’t broke, why fix it?

However, choosing to simply use the same Personal Statement you used last application cycle or even a slightly edited version presents some dangers. There are plenty of reasons why you should not choose to use your previous Personal Statement draft(s), but below are the top three most important reasons.

Top 3 Reasons to NOT Reuse your Personal Statement

Reason 1: Past Performance

The reality is that if you weren’t successful during your previous residency application cycles, it is unwise to use the same documents you used before. It is possible that something within your Personal Statement or other documents could have gone amiss or presented the wrong message about you as an applicant. The best way to ensure you do not present the same flawed message is to have brand new documents.

Reason 2: The Risk Factor

While somewhat unlikely, it is still possible a residency program could recognize your used Personal Statement if you applied to that program in the past. There may be some element of your Personal Statement (positive or negative) that is recognizable enough for a program to realize they’ve read this statement before. Or, the program could run a plagiarism checker and your Personal Statement could not check out. No matter how slim the chance, you wouldn’t want to jeopardize a new application cycle with last year’s documents.

Reason 3: Live in the Present

You are not the same person or professional you were last year. Your Personal Statement should always focus on the person you are NOW. Assuming you are the type of residency candidate who moves forward and continues pursuing new Work, Volunteer, and Research experiences, those experiences should not be forgotten or only briefly mentioned. Residency programs are most interested in the person you are now, so your new Personal Statement needs to focus on your newest experiences to prove your resilience and growth.

The Medical Residency Personal Statement is one of the most important ERAS Application documents as it functions are your personal introduction to residency programs who do not know you in-person. It is also a document that residency candidates are most likely to want to cut corners or not put in their full effort, especially if you have applied before. Don’t fall into that trap! Residency programs need to see full effort every time you apply, and applying with a used Personal Statement definitely does not send the right message.

Need help creating new Personal Statements or editing your newly written Personal Statement draft? Get the professional help you need at: https://www.residencystatement.com/  

The medical residency Personal Statement is one of the easiest documents to commit harmful errors of judgement which could potentially get your application overlooked by Program Directors and Interview Selection Committees.

Most residency candidates know the more common Personal Statement mistakes like how they shouldn’t plagiarize, lie, or allow for mistakes in spelling and grammar in their Personal Statements. But, there are many additional, more subtle, mistakes you can make which will hurt the strength of your Personal Statement.

7 Lesser Known Mistakes are:

1. Lack of flow – How your Personal Statement is organized reflects your inner state of mind and stability. If your Personal Statement shoots off on tangents without resolutions or your paragraphs are messy and disorganized, it may show Program Directors and Interview Committees that you lack focus or maturity. Each paragraph should have a clear point with evidence to support the point. Make sure all of the ideas you introduce are relevant to the paragraphs and Personal Statement as a whole.
2. Overused Language and Grammar – When writing your Personal Statement, you always have to keep your audience in mind, who’s reading your document? In this case, it’s Program Directors, and Interview Selection Committees who have read thousands of Personal Statements throughout the years. At this point, most Program Directors are sick of hearing medical cliches. Cliches are overused ideas and language that have been used so many times they are no longer considered original or interesting. For example, simply saying “I love medicine, because I love helping people,” is a cliche. Turn cliches into unique experiences by building the idea into a story with lots of personal details. Also, be wary of repetitive sentence structures such as using “I” too much. For example, don’t say, “I love Internal Medicine, I rotated in Michigan, or I worked hard.” Try to vary how you are phrasing ideas or you will bore Program Directors no matter how interesting your life and experiences have been. 
3. Unprofessional Content/Formatting – The Personal Statement is meant to be treated as a professional document. While the content written should be a reflection of you, there are still topics you should avoid such as religion, politics, or your opinion on moral issues. Remember, any number of people could read this document and if they disagree with your opinion on a touchy subject, it could affect your chances with a program. Also important to note is the formatting you use. While ERAS may now allow you to use new formatting tools such as bolding, italics, underline, or strikethrough– this does not mean you should use them! Think of all the professional documents you’ve ever written, did you ever use any additional formatting options? It may be tempting to use formatting to stand out, or look unique, but your life and writing should be what stands out, not the format of your Personal Statement. Using unprofessional formatting options shows Program Directors that you are not confident in your writing and need to resort to cheap tricks to get their attention. Not a good first impression!  
4. Exaggeration – Exaggeration, or overstating yourself, can be just as bad as lying on your Personal Statement. If you are trying to make yourself look better, it’s easy to fall into the trap of exaggeration. This is especially true for those in their fourth year or who just graduated from medical school and may not have a lot of clinical or research experience to draw from in their Personal Statement. So you might, for example, say you were the leader of an extensive research project, when you really only participating in select parts. Leader may sound better, but if you get caught in a lie during your interview with a program or they find out through researching your background, this will be a lot more harmful than the lack of experience. Try to be honest but positive in your Personal Statement, and focus on what you have rather than what you don’t have.   
5. Improper focus – By the time you are writing your medical Residency Personal Statement, you should have some clinical or medical work experience under your belt. If you’re a medical student, it may be tempting to add in too many details about your undergraduate years or other experiences that have little to do with your medical strength in an effort to pad your Personal Statement. Program Directors want to know what you’re like now as a medical professional, not as an undergraduate in college. This is also true for the subject of the Personal Statement– YOU. You may want to give credit to a mentor or favorite professor, but remember the Personal Statement should be mostly about you. You don’t want to waste precious Personal Statement space on someone else when Program Directors are trying to get to know you, not your mentor. 
6. Getting the wrong Personal Statement help – It’s easy to find a friend who has strong English grammar and writing skills, and think they will be enough to look over your Personal Statement properly. For example, you may think you’re all set if some Harvard graduate reads your Personal Statement. But, the person you get to help you must be strong in English and also well-versed in residency. Anyone who looks over your Personal Statement should be aware of certain specialty characteristics and conflicts such as saying you love working with children in a Personal Statement meant for General Surgery which has other specialty focuses. 
7. Underestimating the Personal Statement – Arguably, the worst mistake a residency applicant can make is underestimating the value of the Personal Statement. Some applicants convince themselves that no one reads the Personal Statement, but you never know how much weight an individual program puts on Personal Statements. While some may just glance over your Personal Statement, a larger number of programs will actually read your Personal Statement and make judgements about you based on the contents. Your Personal Statement says a lot about you from how organized and well written it is, to the content you include. If you underestimate the power of your Personal Statement, you are missing out on an opportunity to show your best self to Program Directors.

In summary, the medical residency Personal Statement is a powerful tool in your residency application, but it’s also one of the easiest places to make a mistake that hurts your professional and personal image. Without realizing it, you could accidentally come off as unprofessional, lazy, or a liar.

Some good ways to prevent mistakes are:

• Proofreading carefully
• Researching other well-written Personal Statements
• Asking friends, mentors, or colleagues to read over your Personal Statement
• Getting professional help with editing or writing your Personal Statement

AAMC’s® ERAS® system generally makes small changes to their systems to improve performance and generally make life easier for medical residency applicants. This year, they’ve made quite a few big changes to their timeline, but there was an unexpected change as well.

This year, ERAS announced they would be allowing several additional formatting options on the Personal Statement page such as:

• Bold
• Italic
• Underline
• Strikethrough
• Bullets
• Numbering
• Align Left
• Center
• Align Right
• Increase Indent
• Decrease Indent
• Insert hyperlink

A Note from ERAS: “Personal Statements created outside of MyERAS should be done in a plain text word processing application such as Notepad (for Windows users) or SimpleText (for Mac Users). Personal Statements created in word processing applications not using plain text may contain hidden and potentially invalid formatting.”

But, what does this mean?

While it’s kind of ERAS to allow for more freedom in formatting for the Personal Statement– just because it’s available, doesn’t necessarily mean you should use these options.

The medical residency Personal Statement is a professional and formal document, and should be treated as such. You wouldn’t normally use bolding, italics, underline, or strikethrough in a formal document as these are looked at as unprofessional.

You should NEVER EVER use:

• Bullets – All content should be in paragraph form, bulleted lists are lazy!

• Numbering – For the same reasons as bulleting.

• Centering – Not considered proper formatting for a professional document.

• Align Right – For the same reasons as Centering.

You may consider using:

• Align left

• Increase/Decrease indentation

• Insert hyperlink

Use these tools with caution. Aligning left should be ok, because this is common formatting for any written paper. However, indenting can eat up valuable space in your document. If you choose to indent, consider not putting spaces between your paragraphs (this is not advised as it makes the document harder to read).

If you have a professional website, possibly consider hyperlinking to that website to help Program Review Committees get to know you better beyond the Personal Statement. But, this will only work if the Program Director is reading the Personal Statement on a computer as opposed to a print out.

These new changes to the Personal Statement formatting options are exciting, but remember to use common sense when deciding to use any of them. If you are in doubt, it’s better to go without.

Your medical residency Personal Statement has a powerful impact on how programs view you, not only as a professional, but also as a person. You have a lot of material to cover in a very short amount of time– which is why you don’t want to waste precious space on mistakes which may hurt your image in the eyes of program application review committees.

Below is a list of the worst mistakes you can make on your Personal Statement.

• Plagiarism– This may seem obvious, but every once in awhile a residency candidate runs out of time before the Main Residency Match® opens for applications or the Post-Match SOAP®  kicks off, and decides to use words that do not belong to them. Copying and pasting phrases or sentences from the internet is one of the easiest ways to ruin a Personal Statement and possibly get your whole application discounted in the process.

• Negativity– Everyone has challenges and struggles they face on the path to becoming a doctor. You may have gotten sick, lost a family member, failed an exam, or faced financial difficulties. It’s tempting to bring up all of these circumstances in your writing as a reason or excuse for how they affected you (gaps, red flags, etc.), but putting negative sentiments in your Personal Statement shows programs you are not able to face adversity with maturity and adaptability. If you can’t grow and learn from your past, how can they expect you to handle the ups and downs of residency?

• Format Errors– There are some general rules residency candidates should follow with regards to formatting a Personal Statement such as:
  1. The length should be around a page (600-800 words)
  2. Paragraphs should be single spaced with one space between each paragraph
  3. There cannot be any special characters in the text ex. bold, italics, color, or accents

• Grammar Mistakes– Perhaps you didn’t read over your Personal Statement well enough, or you didn’t know about a specific grammar rule, but a mistake in grammar shows sloppy workmanship. As you re-read your Personal Statement, keep an eye out for:
  1. Punctuation (commas, periods, quotes, etc.)
  2. Spelling
  3. Sentence syntax (how the words are arranged)
  4. Redundancy (using the same words or ideas too close together)

• Cliches or over-used language– A cliche is writing and language that has been used so many times it has become more of a joke than a meaningful idea. You have to remember that residency application review committees read thousands of Personal Statements each year and it is up to you to avoid tired or worn out ideas or language. Of course, there are only so many reasons people want to become doctors, but you can make these reasons as unique as you are by adding your own personal stories. For example, it’s ok to say your dream is to be a general surgeon, but you need to validate the thought by adding your own personal story to make the content unique. What happened to you to make you want to be a surgeon?

• Templates– If you are pressed for time or don’t know how to write your Personal Statement, you may be tempted to turn to the internet for guidance. While it’s ok to use samples or templates for inspiration, to strictly follow a template takes away from the overall quality or individuality of your document. The use of a template makes a Personal Statement seem very stiff and awkward. You want a Personal Statement with your unique flair and a nice flow to the writing, not something that looks like you just filled in the blanks. Also, if you know a template was used, there is a good chance programs will figure it out too.  

• Giving other people the credit– It’s one thing to consider someone your inspiration or mentor, but remember this is a Personal Statement. Dedicating a whole paragraph to the professional achievements of your mentor is a waste of space that should be used to talk about your achievements. You can use a mentor figure or favorite professor as an anecdote for your growth as a doctor or a segway, but keep the shout out short.  

• Bad organization– Even the best, most fascinating content in the world can get lost if your Personal Statement is not organized properly. If your ideas are all over the place and there is no discernable organization to your thoughts, your document will lose much of its meaning, and without meaning, your Personal Statement is fairly useless. Avoid rambling and tangents. Stick to a 4 to 6 paragraph essay format with a thesis of your professional goals, body paragraphs for each goal with personal and professional examples, and a conclusion to tie it all together.

• Being generic (no specialty focus)– According to a Program Director survey conducted by NRMP called Results of the 2014 NRMP Program Director Survey, the Personal Statement is one of the top 5 factors used to judge whether or not a residency candidate will be invited for an interview. The Personal Statement is used not only to judge you as a person and professional, but also your dedication to the specialty you are applying to. Each specialty has its own unique set of skills and traits it values. What Surgery residency programs want to see in a candidate is very different from Pediatrics residency programs. Therefore, make sure your writing is specialty specific to demonstrate how fit you are for your chosen field of medicine. One Personal Statement does not fit all.  

It is surprisingly easy to ruin a Personal Statement by being too negative, formatting it incorrectly, using templates, wasting space on the wrong topics, or being too generic. The Personal Statement is too important to rush through and submit to programs without proofreading and checking for the mistakes above. Make sure you re-read your Personal Statement multiple times, and get a fresh set of eyes, like a friend or professional service, to ensure you are not making the mistakes listed above that could cost you an interview.  

“[A] quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious business.”

(The Record Lie)”

― A.A. Milne, If I May

I’m not sure when the shift happened, but at some point it became very popular to use quotes in writing. Suddenly, Gandhi and Confucius were gracing every essay and article. People were using them to sound smarter or grab the reader’s attention– without having to think of anything for themselves. As the epidemic grew, the less powerful quotes became in writing until we reached quotes saturation. Present day, quotes from famous or wise minds have become more detrimental in formal writing than helpful.

This especially goes for residency Personal Statements. Like any essay, a Personal Statement needs a hook or “grabber” to draw in Program Directors and give you the chance to stand out as a candidate. I know it’s tempting to quote someone you feel has a better or funnier grasp of English than you, but here are three reasons why you should not quote a public figure in your Personal Statement.

1. Plagiarism: 

Plagiarism, the bane of every English teacher in existence. Fortunately for them, and unfortunately for you, there are plagiarism checking tools that application review committees can run Personal Statements through to make sure your writing is your own.

Many plagiarism checks will flag any quote, even quotes within quotation marks, and report there is at least one case of plagiarism within your Personal Statement. If a program is less diligent about reading through Personal Statements, that one flag might be enough for them to throw out your Personal Statement altogether, even your whole application.

Don’t put yourself in that position.

2.  Space :

This may seem like a simple reason, but in a document where you need to cover a lot of personal ground in a short amount of time, you need to consider every piece of content you are including. Any Personal Statement should aim to be exactly one page with spaces between each paragraph. This gives you less than 3,000 characters to properly introduce yourself, share your medical life story and leave the program director in awe of what a great candidate you are.

Why would you waste any of that precious space on someone else’s words?

3.  Cliche/Overused Tactic

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among stars!”

– Les Brown

A cliche was an idea that was once original, but has been used so many times it causes readers to roll their eyes when they encounter such a tired idea. There are some quotes you hear or read so often they have lost any emotional power they once had, like the quote above.

With the use of a quote, that eye-rolling effect will be translated to your Personal Statement. You may have wanted to inspire the Program Director reading your Personal Statement, instead your paper has lost validity from the start– which will be hard to gain back.

Keep your paper original and valid, leave the quotes in their books and movies.

Quotes almost always do more harm than good when they are used in your Personal Statement. They might trigger a plagiarism checker, take up valuable space, and are so cliche they make your writing less credible with their very presence.

With all of that said, there is one exception to the “No quotes” rule, personal quotes. A quote from a close family member, friend or even yourself is original and special. If something your grandfather said inspired you to become a doctor, than by all means share it. Just make sure he wasn’t quoting his favorite book first!