Personal Statement Guide By Doctor Laska

I decided to share my experience in English so that not only Russian-speaking applicants could use
my recommendations.
Personal statement (PS) is an essential part of MyERAS application. As far as I understand,
personal statement is a logic explanation why you are a good fit for the specialty you are
choosing (and the opposite). When I say “you”, I mean your personality, experience, background,
priorities. Basically, to create a good PS you need two things.
First. You need to fully understand the specifics of the specialty you are choosing (what is unique
about IM? FM? GS? EM? ObGyn? Peds?). The biggest problem here is that, in fact, many
specialties share a lot of similarities: evidence-based approach, a need for interpersonal skills, etc.
So make sure that you really talk about something if not unique then at least specific for the
specialty.
Second. You need to fully understand what exactly you have experienced in the past to make the
conclusions about your specialty choice.
I recommend you to work in this order: make a research about your specialty and then think how
you can use your personal story to fit into the specifics of the specialty. You can pick up 3-4 unique
features of the specialty and support them with your experience. Here is an example, a part of my
PS, which I do not recommend to copy, but anyway if you do so, it is your responsibility:
“While studying in medical school I worked as a tutor for prospective medical students. I served as
a mentor for those who needed help learning the foundations of general biology and chemistry.
Now I would like to use that mentorship experience in passing my knowledge on to medical
students. My close interaction with both teaching and learning will become useful in a such
constantly updating discipline as internal medicine.”
So what did I say in this paragraph? I chose one of the specifics of IM (residents play an important
role in teaching of medical students) and explained how my experience can be helpful in this case.
Except 3-4 paragraphs dedicated to the specifics of the specialty, you also need introduction and
conclusion. I noticed that the most common way of introduction is to make a connection between
your origin/hobby and… your specialty choice, again!  This part can be hard. I talked about my
passion for writing poems in the introduction and I was able to logically lead to the specialty
choice. To conclude, I recommend you to sum up WHY you apply to this specialty and to briefly
describe what are you looking for in a residency program (hah).
You can create as many PS as you want which is most commonly needed when applying to
multiple specialties. Even if you apply to one specialty, you can create more than one PS in case
you want to specifically adjust your PS to some programs.
You can edit PS anytime during the season, but you need to keep in mind that editing after
September 15 probably makes no sense, because most of the programs already uploaded your
application. Editing the structure of the text in MyERAS is problematic for some unknown reason,
especially when you are trying to fit the text on one page. Make sure you copy the text from
the .txt file (plain text formatting): using Notepad (for Windows users) or Text Edit (for Mac users).
My tips:
- There should be NO mistakes, including spelling mistakes, in your PS. All commas should be in
place. Make sure you consider general rules of writing whatever professional: do not repeat same
words all the time, make sure you use the best word choice, do not use abbreviations or do not
shorten words (don’t, let’s, I’m, etc).
- No complicated sentences. Your PS should be easy and smooth to read.
- Show positivity, do not use doable negative constructions, do not use “weasel words”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word).
- Do not say anything super generalized or, on the opposite, super detailed about your future
plans.
- Start writing in advance. I started in June. Make yourself read and edit what you create multiple
times.
- After you write PS, send it to as many people as possible if you think their opinion can be useful. I
sent my PS to one of my LOR writers, to my American relatives, including those who are medical
workers, to my friends who are native speakers of English. It was extremely useful. It is one of the
most important part. Make sure you consider all the edits. Instead, you can send your PS to any of
proofreading/editing agencies such as https://alconost.com/en/services/proofreading.
- Honestly, it does not matter if your PS fits on one page or not. Before this year almost any PS
could fit on one page, but this year ERAS settings changed, and PS was commonly extended to the
second page. I could fit on one. According to myeras_residency_user_guide (pdf guide provided
by ERAS every year):
I would also like to share the list of useful resources where you can find a lot of information about
what to say and what NOT to say in PS. Please explore.
Books:
- First Aid For The Match, 5th edition, Personal Statement chapter
- The Successful Match 2017 (I could not find it in internet, so I ordered it), I can say that probably
30-40% of the book content was useful for me
Links:
http://www.tulanemedicine.com/PDFs/Step%204%20Writing%20a%20Personal%20Statement.pdf
https://webcampus.drexelmed.edu/cdc/medpsSample.asp
https://education.uwmedicine.org/student-affairs/career-advising3/year-4/residency-
applications/personal-statement/
https://www.ecfmg.org/echo/personal-statements.html
https://www.studentdoctor.net/2013/03/12/tales-from-an-insider-personal-statement-fails/
https://www.quora.com/Do-medical-specialties-have-to-be-capitalized-Why-or-why-not
According to the last link, I did not capitalize internal medicine, except for one case: “Internal
Medicine residency”.
How important is PS? My opinion is:
- Good PS (the most common scenario) just makes no harm and let programs consider other parts
of your application.
- Excellent PS definitely helps you get more interviews considering you meet other requirements.
- Bad PS (general, cliché, copied, boring, etc) definitely makes harm. Avoid.

I hope you find it useful somehow.

Let me know if you have any questions (Facebook – Anna Laskova, Instagram – doctorlaska).
Remember:
It doesn’t matter what you create if you have no fun. 