5 Ways to Make Writing Your Personal Statement Easier

Writing a personal statement is hard, there’s no denying that. You have those 4,000 limited characters to convince someone that you do really want to study Medicine, show them you understand what it’ll involve and that you’re suited to it. But guess what…there are ways you can soften the strain and make the process a whole lot easier.

1. Listen to your background thoughts

It’s hard to sit in one place and write the whole thing up, phrase it perfectly and to sound as impressive as you want. Before you start the actual write-up it’ll be helpful if you briefly brainstorm what you want to include and then switch your brain on to constantly think about the personal statement in the background. Keep a notebook or your phone handy and jot down and phases that come to your mind, words that you want to include etc. This is a bit like a brainstorm, but will supposedly be more effective as you’re giving yourself the room to think about it properly. When you come to writing it up, you’ll definitely find some of these phrases helpful and they’ll help to really make that difference in your personal statement.

2. Use a guided writing structure

You may have loads of ideas and impressive words floating around your mind, but quite often it helps if you’re a little more grounded when you’re actually writing up a draft. You may feel as though you need to have someone talk through it with you, telling you what to include in each paragraph or a little help with where to put in an example or two. I specifically designed my personal statement planner with those concerns in mind, making it the first and only planner that takes you from 0 words to a whole personal statement in 10 simple stages. Using the planner will ensure you have a strong structure and that you’ve included all the important elements.

3. Read your work experience reflections

You’ll probably find yourself doing this multiple times through the writing process to make sure you haven’t missed out any vital experiences or learning points. Each time you read over them, they’ll likely trigger something you can create a paragraph about, an example you can include or you may even have a phrase or two you can copy directly from there. Using your own ideas to inspire your personal statement – it doesn’t get better than this!

4. Read successful examples

There’re plenty of medicine personal statements you’ll be able to find online that will be helpful to have a read of. Whilst you must be very careful to make sure you don’t copy any phrases, it can be useful to see how others have done it and succeeded. Certain aspects of a particular personal statements may stand out to you, whereas there might be certain things you don’t like. There’s no right or wrong so it’s all down to your own personal preference. Having a read of different personal statements may give you a better idea of what you want yours to read like and also give you an indication of whether you’re on the right track.

5. Ask for feedback

This is really important, because as good as your personal statement may sound to you you need to make sure others are impressed by it too. I’d say the more people you can get to read it the better as taking all the different opinions on board will possibly help to make it more likely that the admissions tutor reading your personal statement will be satisfied. Pester your family, teachers etc, and on top of that I also think it’s worth getting a review from someone who doesn’t know you so they can look at it with a fresh pair of eyes and really constructively critique it. There are companies who offer personal statement reviewing services, but they tend to ask for extortionate amounts of money which isn’t worth it as the review tends to be rushed and you don’t even know who is actually reading your personal statement.

I however, offer a much more affordable and personalised service. I know you’re all students so I’ve made the service as affordable as I can on the basis that I will be personally spending up to an hour scrutinising each personal statement. The reviews will be cheaper the earlier you submit and I’d highly recommend it based on the excellent feedback I receive. Click here to submit your personal statement for review!