One of the most common flaws we see in medical school essay writing is an uber trite, overly expository, or totally vague first paragraph. Let’s look at a few examples:

1)    THE UBER TRITE

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a doctor. My parents are doctors, as are many of my aunts and uncles. I grew up playing doctor and always knew that I would go to medical school. …

 There’s a lot of potential for interesting material in this no-no genre. The way to steer clear of cliché is by getting far more specific. Don’t tell us about your family members, tell us about YOU. What was the first memory you have of the medical field? How did this shape you? Bring your history to life! Show, don’t tell.

2)    THE OVERLY EXPOSITORY

In 2008, I graduated with highest honors from Kennedy High School and went on to receive a scholarship for my premed studies at UCLA. I took a variety of courses, from Organic Chemistry to the Ethics of Biomedical Engineering. For my efforts with the Student Health Association, I earned a Presidential Medal and was asked to speak at the Premedical Students group annual meeting. …

The introduction that tries to regurgitate an entire resume in a paragraph will bore its reader before they even get to the end of the first sentence. Try to think about your statement in terms of theme rather than exposition. You want to balance personal fact and history with insightful self-reflection.

The facts are great, but they need to be integrated with a healthy dose of perspective in order to be effective in a statement. The critical question here will be WHY? Every fact presented in a statement should be there for a very specific reason, contributing to the larger theme.

3)    THE TOTALLY VAGUE

I am inspired to become a doctor because it is the most effective way to help people. My passion for medicine, and for service, guides every choice I have made in my life thus far. Applying to medical school is the obvious next step on this path. …

Your first paragraph is the place to grab the Admissions Committee by the eyeballs and insist that you and your statement are worth the next five minutes of their time. You cannot afford generalities in these first crucial moments. Think about impact. Don’t get gimmicky, and don’t get overdramatic. Instead, consider the events and people that have most authentically shaped your interest in medicine. Tell a story that you would want to read. Be specific.

If you get stuck as you start, try the following mantra: I deserve a fantastic first paragraph. And hey, if that doesn’t work, we’re always a click away!

Cheers,

Ivy Eyes Editing

ivyeyesediting.com

If you’re a medical school applicant who has had an extraordinary experience as a patient that led you to consider a career in medicine, you’re not alone. You’re also not alone in struggling to present those traumatic events and challenges in a way that subtly markets you to the medical school AdCom.

It’s easy to get carried away in the drama of a personal story and forget that the most important element of your personal statement is the unique perspective you wield. Hospitalized for a rare blood disease at 17? Kidney donor? Victim of a drunk driving accident? Whatever exciting story you may have to tell, the thrill of it must be coupled with a reasoned approach to your subsequent interest in medicine.

Deifying your medical care providers may seem charming, but it’s no way to show your true dedication to a complex future profession—or almost a decade of difficult schooling. The blanket desire to “save lives” quickly grows old to an AdCom reading thousands of statements that largely repeat the same themes. Instead, ask yourself a few key questions:

• What surprised me most about my experiences as a patient?
• What were the specific actions your medical care providers took that changed you?
• How did my experiences as a patient change my perspective on my own goals and intentions?

Imagine telling your story to a physician, rather than an awed lay-person. What details would be most compelling to a doctor? What might change the way they approached their future patients or inspire them to practice differently? Going beyond the expression of gratitude for a life restored, critical reflection on your medical history can show a sophisticated understanding of the realities of being a physician.

So by all means, tell your most bloody tales of survival in the operating room, but remember to approach them as a potential medical student, rather than a Chicken Soup for the Soul entry.

Cheers,

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com

The life of an aspiring doctor is not unlike the life of a politician: No sooner is one election won then you have to start thinking about the next one. The process of applying to residency begins early in medical school with USMLE step 1, but really starts during the clinical years as you select a field of medicine and solidify relationships with the faculty members who will recommend you. The difference between mastery of the residency application process and several months of nail biting and worry lies largely in advance planning. Here is a guide to the timeline of residency application as well as some tips for minimizing your stress along the way. (Specific dates here are for the 2012-2013 cycle. Dates may change from year to year but the general timeline will likely remain the same. Refer to www.nrmp.org/res_match/yearly.html and https://www.aamc.org/students/medstudents/eras for information about specific dates in the year you plan to apply.)

As soon as you know what specialty you want to go into: Meet with a faculty member, dean, or the residency director of that specialty at your school – anyone who would be familiar with the specialty-specific requirements of the application process. Ask them who you should choose for your recommenders (people in the specialty vs people in other key specialties, recommendations from clinical attendings vs research mentors), what electives would be helpful, what qualities you should emphasize in your application materials.

Also identify someone 1-2 years ahead of you in the process who applied in your specialty and is willing to answer questions during the process. Older mentors are helpful – especially folks in the dean’s office who have extensive experience with the match – but people who have just gone through the process will be in touch with the most current quirks and may even have specific feedback about the programs you are interested in.

During clerkships and subinternships: Identify faculty members with whom you have a good working relationship, who seem to think you are doing a good job, and who would write a strong letter of recommendation. If possible, choose 5-6 people, knowing that you will only use 4 letters. Word to the wise: Sometimes that famous-but-uber-busy division chief may not have the time to craft a letter than shines. Use your judgment.

May of third year: Begin preparing your CV and a draft of your personal statement. These do not have to be the final drafts – likely they won’t – but many recommenders will ask for them and you want to have a reasonably polished version at the ready.

June: Officially ask faculty members to recommend you. It can be helpful to meet face to face. They may ask you about your career plans, goals, and the kind of residency programs you are looking for. Don’t be afraid to answer definitively based on your current thoughts. If major things change during the application process, be sure to touch base with them so that their letters reflect the most up to date information. Provide them with everything they need – ERAS form, CV, personal statement, envelope or fax number for where to send the letter. It can also be helpful to establish a gentle deadline: “I am planning to submit my application on September 1^st. Would it be ok for me to check back with you at the end of August to see how things are going?” Choose a date that is 1-2 weeks before your internal drop dead deadline to accommodate late letters.

July 1^st: The MyERAS website opens and you can begin populating your application, but you can’t submit your application until September.

July-August: Revise, perfect, and finalize your CV and personal statement. Check in with your recommenders at the agreed upon time to make sure they are on track to finish your letters in time. If you asked 5-6 faculty members, you will be ok if one backs out at this point or doesn’t finish in time. Finish populating your ERAS application.

September 1: Registration opens for the NRMP match. This registration is separate from MyERAS and is required to submit a rank list and match.

September 15: Applicants can begin submitting applications and programs can begin downloading applications through ERAS. It is a good idea to submit your application on or as soon after this date as possible, but it is better to submit a polished application several days or a week later than to submit a less-than-perfect application on the first possible date.

October 1: The MSPE (Medical School Performance Evaluation) is released to schools. Many programs wait for the MSPE to being offering invitations. Interview invitations will begin to arrive after this date if they haven’t already. If possible, schedule your first interview with a program you are not as excited about to give yourself the opportunity to practice. Interviewing is exhausting. We recommend avoiding more than three interviews in a week and more than two interview days in a row.

November-January: Interview season. Stress-reduction tip: Do not check baggage containing your interview suit. This is the time for packing light enough to carry on. Do not plan travel for the morning of the interview. The interviews begin early—typically 7am—so there is little margin for error or mishap. Arrive the night before.

Last week in January: If you have identified a top choice, send a letter of intent to the program director. This should be a one page email detailing why the program is your top choice and should contain the phrase “I will be ranking your program number one.” It is absolutely taboo to send a letter of intent to more than one program or to rank someone else first once you have sent this letter. Do not do this! Your reputation in your chosen field will suffer.

February 20: Match lists are due. Stress-reduction tip: Create and submit a rank list at least 2-3 days prior to the deadline or earlier if you are planning exotic travel for around this time. You can always change your list, but if disaster strikes and your computer dies at 11pm, you get stranded with no passport in Siberia (this actually happened to someone we know!), or you get hospitalized with stress-induced hysterical blindness (this has not yet happened to someone we know), you will still be able to start residency the following fall.

March 15: Match Day!

Cheers,

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com

Though you may be focusing your greatest effort (and fear) on the personal statement, your CV is the backbone of your residency application. You will use it to populate ERAS. You will give it to recommenders to help them prepare your LORs. It can also serve as the starting point for your personal statement. Crafting your CV early and well can avoid kinks in the process later on.

The CV for residency is different from the resume you would bring to a job interview in another field, so general resume-writing guides may not apply. Whereas a typical resume might be ordered by relevance to the job in question, a medical CV should always be organized chronologically. We suggest reverse chronological order. The information on your CV for residency should go back to college. Luckily, high school is finally behind you.

The CV should be 1-2 pages long and easy to read. This means Times New Roman or Arial font, size 10-12. You can use bold print for headings and italics for your job titles, but avoid fancy layout elements. Each section should have consistent formatting, so that the reader is quickly able to zero in on the different elements of each entry (year, job title, etc.) Leave enough white space to keep the page readable.

There is no hard and fast rule for the order of CV headings, but the following format can serve as a guide. Omit any categories that are not applicable. Keep in mind that the content and order of CV elements will change at each stage of training. What follows is targeted to the residency applicant:

Education: College, graduate school, post-baccalaureate pre-medical courses

Medical Education

Current and Past Training (for people who have already started or completed a residency)

Board Certification (if any)

Licenses (if any; do not include your license number, just the issue date)

Honors and Awards: Include any “with honors”/”cum laude”/”with distinction” designations earned with your undergraduate degree. If an award is not self-explanatory, offer a brief description. (Ex: “The M. Potter Award, awarded to the best senior paper in archeology”)

Research Experience: List the name of the lab or mentor as well as 2-3 bullet points on the nature and outcome of your work.

Publications/Abstracts: Boldface or underline your name. If an abstract was later published as a paper, include only the paper. List publications in an accepted bibliography format (MLA, AAAS, APA). You can include papers that have been submitted, accepted with revisions, accepted, or published. Do not include publications that have not yet been submitted.

Presentations: Only include presentations for which you were the presenting author.

Work Experience: You don’t need to be 100% comprehensive here, but include any job that occupied the majority of your time for any stretch of time (see below for more on this). Include 2-3 bullet points on your responsibilities and accomplishments for each job.

Volunteer Experience: DO NOT PAD! See below for more on this. Include 2-3 bullet points describing the nature of your involvement, leadership roles, and outcomes.

Institutional Service: Service on committees

Activities: Organized sports, cultural activities, arts organizations. Note any leadership roles associated with these activities.

Membership in Professional Societies: ACP, AMA, AAP

Certifications: BLS, ACLS, PALS, phlebotomy, EMS

Skills/Interests: Include foreign language and the level of fluency (“Native fluency in written and spoken Spanish, intermediate fluency in spoken German”). Be selective in your list of interests; choose 4-5.

Leave no gaps: By looking at your CV, the reader should be able to construct a complete and unbroken timeline of your life from the time you entered college. If you took six months to paint watercolors in Belize, mention this somewhere in your CV with the dates. Otherwise, residency directors will wonder if you were in drug rehab. (If you were in drug rehab, no need to include that on your CV, but you do want to address it elsewhere in your application. We are happy to help.)

Focus on meaningful endeavors: It is tempting to crowd your resume with impressive-sounding volunteer and extracurricular activities, but residency directors will see right through a padded CV. Limit yourself to activities that resulted in measurable outcomes or leadership experience. Barring that, you should have participated in the activity either intensively (aka full-time for two weeks) or regularly for at least six months.

Know your CV! You should be able to speak knowledgeably and without advance notice about any publication or activity on your CV.

Cheers,

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com

One of the most basic and useful pieces of writing advice is to write with the reader in mind. This applies to any piece of writing, from cover letter to love letter. Writing is often as much about who is doing the reading as who is doing the writing, and in the case of admissions writing, there needs to be an elegant dance between the two. If you are applying to medical school, residency, or fellowship, the people reading your application and your personal essay will be doctors, so it is important to think about what is important to doctors and what kind of readers they are. (Warning: Blatant generalizations ahead! But hopefully useful ones.)

Doctors as a group are very busy people who are trained to synthesize information and make decisions quickly. They are both masters of recognizing patterns and also of tuning in to the unique aspects of an individual story. They are good listeners but not endless listeners. By definition they are veterans of the education system and have gone through at least three but usually many more application cycles.

With these qualities in mind, here are some tips for how to write with your doctor-reader in mind:

Make your beginning count: Your first few sentences are like the chief complaint that the doctor reads before entering a patient’s exam room. No matter what happens in the room, the chief complaint will be associated with the patient in that doctor’s mind. Also, your reader may be pressed for time and their experience of the first few sentences may determine how closely they read the rest. Draw the reader into your narrative early and try to arrive at a central theme by the end of the first few sentences or at most the first paragraph.

Substance over style: Say what you mean in as succinct and elegant a way as possible. Avoid overly flowerly or complex language. There is no need to dust off your thesaurus.  Instead, keep your tone consistent and focus on making the content strong and coherent.

Speak to the qualities a doctor would want in a colleague: Maturity. Reliability. Good judgment. Good social skills. Empathy. A commitment to excellence and scientific rigor. The doctors who select medical students or residents are choosing the individuals who they will be entrusting with the care of their patients. This is not the place for risk-taking. If it seems a little off the wall, leave it out.

If possible, select recommenders who can also speak to these qualities in language appropriate to the doctor-reader: Your poetry professor who writes exclusively in rhymed couplets may not be the best choice.

Do not pad your resume: Interviewers and program directors look at dates and duration of involvement for activities. They have been through the process many times both as applicants and reviewers, so do not expect to outwit them. If you find yourself questioning whether or not to include something, don’t. Be ready to sound knowledgeable in conversation about everything you include anywhere on your application.

Cheers,

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com