Residency Application Personal Statement Guide
- By Med School Insiders
- July 4, 2022
- Medical Student
- Personal Statement , Residency Application
The residency application personal statement is an opportunity to detail your professional development over the course of medical school. Why do you want to join your chosen specialty? Why are you qualified to do so? What will you contribute to the program?
Continue reading our residency application personal statement guide for detailed advice on how to craft your personal statement. We’ll also share residency personal statement examples and common mistakes to avoid.
The ERAS Personal Statement
The majority of your residency application focuses on your scores and grades, and this doesn’t shed much light on who you are as a person. If there is anything you feel is underrepresented in the rest of your residency application, your personal statement is the place to highlight it. This is your chance to tell your story the way you see it.
Do not enter this process believing all you need to do is rewrite your medical school personal statement from a few years ago. While they are both technically personal statements, they are very different. When you wrote your medical school personal statement, you were a wide-eyed premed. But residency programs aren’t looking for medical students—they’re looking for young professionals who have earned their doctorate, deepened their dedication to medicine, and immensely improved their medical knowledge.
The success of your personal statement depends on your ability to effectively communicate these changes. Keep the focus of your residency personal statement on your professional development and how your experiences in medical school have crystalized your desire to pursue your chosen specialty.
Why is that specialty the one for you? What unique experiences, skills, and qualities can you contribute to the program? Speak passionately about what you hope to accomplish. Be confident yet humble about what you have achieved so far.
Remember, outside of residency interviews, this is your only chance to share your perspective and provide context to your accomplishments. Why you ? What’s your story?
ERAS Personal Statement Length
The residency personal statement length technically allows for 28,000 characters, but you do not need to utilize this entire space. We recommend keeping your residency personal statement to one typed page, which is anywhere from 500-800 words, depending on your writing.
Don’t try to fill the space to create a longer essay if you’re not actually adding anything relevant or new to your personal statement. Remember, you want to keep your audience’s attention and engage each member of the admissions committee. Being overly long-winded or repeating what they already know is a surefire way to bore committee members.
One page is the standard length for residency personal statements. Be clear and concise with your language.
How to Craft a Personal Statement for Residency
1 | Illustrate Your Growth And Maturity
While residencies are educational, they’re quite a bit different from medical school. Residencies provide on-the-job training for people to acquire their medical license so that they can become a practicing physician. In order to be accepted into residency, your application needs to demonstrate that you are qualified.
Your residency personal statement must reflect your vastly deepened knowledge of and dedication to medicine. You are not the same innocuous premed you were when you wrote your medical school personal statement all those years ago. You are now a young professional with a doctorate, and this must be made abundantly clear to the residency program.
How have you developed professionally? Which aspects of your medical education have meant the most to you? Where have you made the greatest impact, where do you most want to make an impact in the future, and what about your experiences have made it clear to you why you belong in your chosen specialty?
Back up your ambitions with concrete, anecdotal examples of your accomplishments. Residency programs don’t care what you say you can do—they want the proof. Stay humble, but be confident about all you have achieved so far.
2 | Develop a Narrative Across Your Application
Your residency personal statement does not exist in isolation. It’s one aspect of your entire residency application, and that means it must work alongside all of the other components.
Do not simply regurgitate or rehash aspects of your CV or extracurriculars. The personal statement is an opportunity to expand and elaborate on aspects of your life, experience, skills, and assets that are not otherwise noted in your application. Don’t look at the personal statement as one more task to complete, but rather an opportunity to help decision makers see who you really are and why you would make an ideal residency candidate.
Use the personal statement to continue unraveling your personal narrative. This aspect of your application should work hand-in-hand with everything else to establish a clear and cohesive narrative of who you are and why you’re qualified.
Learn more: How to Develop a Cohesive Narrative Across Applications .
3 | Keep Your Word Count Down
You may technically have 28,000 characters, but that is far, far from what you should aim for. The standard length of a residency personal statement is one page in ERAS, which equals anywhere from 500-800 words.
Challenge yourself to be as clear and concise as possible. Show restraint and get your points across clearly and effectively in a short amount of space. Remember, you’re trying to engage your reader and entice admissions committee members. You don’t in any way want to bore them or risk that they don’t finish your personal statement due to its length.
If the first draft of your personal statement is longer than one page, continue editing and revising it until you’ve pared it down.
What aspects are superfluous? What words are not serving a clear purpose? How can you convey the same message in a shorter amount of space? Are there any areas (besides the conclusion) where you repeat yourself?
Utilize clear and direct language. Long sentences written with flowery language you got out of a thesaurus will not impress residency admissions committees.
4 | Start Early And Give Yourself Time
Starting early will give you the time you need to brainstorm, outline, write, revise, and edit your personal statement. Even though you’ve written a personal statement before, the residency personal statement is a different beast entirely, and it will require plenty of your time and attention.
Start thinking about your personal statement at the beginning of the year, many months before application season begins. Start by brainstorming ideas and reflecting on your time in medical school. What have you learned? How have you changed? What values do you continue to hold? Why were you drawn to a specific specialty?
Keep a journal or online document where you can continue to add your ideas and thoughts for your residency personal statement. By late spring or early summer, you should be outlining and writing a first draft of your personal statement.
This timeline will give you a few months to continue to revise and edit your personal statement.
View our breakdown of what you should prepare and work on each month leading up to residency: Residency Application Timeline and Month-by-Month Schedule .
5 | Take Time Revising and Invest in Professional Editing
Remember to allocate adequate time to the feedback and editing process. Spell checking tools are okay to start with, but remember these tools are only bots, and they will not be able to catch all mistakes or contextual issues.
Review your essay many times over yourself and gather feedback from qualified friends, family, acquaintances, or by hiring a reputable editing service. Whether or not you need to hire a service depends on if you know editors with adcom experience or who are intimately familiar with the residency admission process. For best results, look for an editing service that utilizes doctors with real admissions committee experience.
Learn more: How to Choose the Best Medical School Admissions Consultant .
Example of Residency Personal Statements
Utilize examples of successful residency personal statements to get a better idea of what admissions committees are looking for. It’s important that you use these examples to strengthen your knowledge of what’s expected, not to guide your own topic. Your own personal statement will be completely unique to your medical school journey, your specialty preferences, and what makes you an ideal candidate.
View our database of Residency Personal Statement Samples from real students who successfully matched into residency.
These sample personal statements are for reference purposes only and should absolutely not be used to copy or plagiarize in any capacity. Remember that plagiarism detection software is used when evaluating personal statements.
If you still feel stuck after reading residency personal statement examples, try completing a variety of prompts to get your ideas flowing. For example:
- What is your greatest strength, and how can that strength be applied to your residency?
- What major failures or setbacks did you encounter during medical school, and what did you learn from those experiences?
- When did you first know you wanted to become a doctor?
- What values are the most important to you?
- What do you believe is the most important trait to have as a doctor?
Utilize our 25 Medical School Personal Statement Prompts to Spark Ideas .
Residency Application Personal Statement Mistakes to Avoid
Common pitfalls are common for a reason. Admissions committees see these mistakes time and time again, no matter how many times medical students are warned. These common mistakes come into play when students rush their personal statement and don’t put adequate time into receiving feedback and acting on that feedback.
Avoid the following common residency personal statement mistakes.
- Don’t treat your residency personal statement like your medical school application.
- Don’t miss spelling or grammar errors in your essay. Ensure you have plenty of time for revisions and editing.
- Don’t list your accomplishments or rehash your CV and extracurriculars.
- Don’t use a thesaurus to come up with larger, more complicated words.
- Don’t overuse the word I. Doing so makes you more likely to state your accomplishments instead of telling a story.
- Don’t state the obvious or use clichés, such as your passion for science or wanting to help people.
- Don’t ignore the feedback you receive from experienced editors or editing services.
- Don’t speak negatively about another student, physician, or healthcare professional.
- Don’t lie or make up stories. You may be asked about anything in your personal statement during interviews.
- Don’t discuss anything in your personal statement that you won’t feel comfortable speaking about during residency interviews.
- Don’t plead for an interview or opportunity.
- Don’t procrastinate on your personal statement. You should be thinking about it months before your application is due.
- Don’t submit your personal statement before gathering feedback from multiple, reliable sources.
- Don’t use a personal statement editing service that does not utilize real doctors with admissions committee experience.
Residency Application Personal Statement Editing
Med School Insiders can help you prepare a stand out residency application that will help you match into your ideal program. We offer a number of Residency Admissions Consulting Services tailored to your needs, including comprehensive personal statement editing .
Our residency personal statement editing services include careful analysis of content and tone in addition to insights on how to improve your essay to impress residency program admissions committees. Your essay will be edited by a real doctor with admissions committee experience who knows the residency program admissions process inside and out.
For more strategies as well as the latest medical school and industry news, follow the Med School Insiders blog , which has hundreds of resources, guides, and personal stories, including a detailed guide on the residency application process. Read our ERAS Residency Application Guide , which is updated each application cycle.
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