The purpose of a personal residency statement is somewhat different from the one you wrote in medical school. You are now applying for a specific area of medicine, and you must adapt your essay accordingly. Sending a slightly modified version of your essay at a medical school is not recommended. By following the five recommendations below, you can create a great personal application for your residence application.
- Engage the reader from the start. You want your reader to be interested from the very beginning of the essay. Program managers are often short in time and are more likely to disguise your essay if it has a generic, flat or boring beginning. One way to start an essay is a personal vignette — a quick snapshot of the moment in your life associated with your decision to apply to your chosen area.
- Do not focus on why you wanted to be a doctor. This theme is appropriate for your medical school. Now that you are a doctor, what are your reasons for going to this particular area?
- Show how your character traits and character will serve you well in your chosen field. Program managers want candidates to be well suited to their field. As a medical student, you learned that different personality types are better suited for certain specialties. Therefore, if you are applying for psychiatry, you can discuss how you like to listen, solve the emotional needs of patients and spend long periods of time communicating with patients. If you are applying for surgery, even if you have some of these same qualities, your personal application is probably not suitable for sharing them.
- Describe how you stand out. Your application for residency is still a good opportunity for you to stand out. Is there something unique in you that especially attracts you to this field? Do you succeed in certain extracurricular activities that can actually share some characteristics with your chosen field? An applicant with artistic abilities can discuss her talents, including her attention to detail, agility and creativity when applying for a field, such as plastic surgery. An expert skier can compare the tide of emergency medicine with an attempt to overcome a difficult slope.
- Address your shortcomings (if necessary). The only example in which I would recommend to eliminate the shortcomings is the fact that these shortcomings are especially glaring. A bad score in step 1 or even a bad grade is not worth discussing. Disciplinary measures that have been taken against you in medical school may qualify as what you would like to refer to. This is a difficult situation and can be risky. If you consider it necessary to substantiate or explain something, first ask yourself the following two questions: a) Is it worth mentioning this question? b) Does your explanation legitimize the flaw? If your answer to both of these questions is yes, the topic may be worth including in your essay.
Good luck!
