How to Avoid a Cliche Personal Statement

You will either hook your audience in the first line or lose them forever. In your personal statement and in life. Students in other career paths like finance and marketing learn this actively. They have to be able to pull you in to make a sale.

But you’re all here because you want to be doctors, not salespeople. So I’m here to tell you that to become a doctor, you have to borrow some of the principles taught in sales.

I know it sounds icky to say it like that, but it’s the reality of the world we live in.

My husband and I have both sat on admissions committees. We've ranked medical students for residency and fellowship. And we were chatting once about the first lines we read that literally made us want to stop reading.

It sounds unkind, I know it does. And, of course, we don’t “stop reading” we do continue to give each student’s fair shot, but the thing is, once we read one of those opening sentences that “turns us off,” the entire rest of the personal statement is seen with a skewed lens.

We’re all only human after all, and we are all victims of cognitive bias.

The good news is, your job isn’t to change human behavior and recreate the medical admissions process — you just need to figure out what to write so you essay isn’t fighting an uphill battle for the rest of the page.

So let’s get some basic ones out of the way. If you were going to use any of the following I need you to hit delete real quick.

"Ever since I was a little girl, I knew I wanted to be a doctor." ❌

"Medicine is the perfect intersection of science and helping people." ❌

"I have always been fascinated by the human body." ❌

"When my grandmother got sick, I realized..." ❌

These are not bad sentences because they're poorly written. They're bad sentences because they sound like every other application in the pile. And the moment your reviewer has that thought, you've lost them completely. It’s the bias clouding their judgment.

We’ve read hundreds of these. Our brain is categorizing you before you've had a chance to make your case.

So how do you avoid it?

Start in a moment, use descriptors well.

The strongest personal statements I've read don't open with a declaration of intent. They open mid-scene. You are somewhere specific. Something is happening and the clinical experience is the backdrop, not the focus. The reader doesn't yet know where this is going, and that's exactly why they keep reading.

Some examples (if relevant you can ‘steal’ these and make them your own, or let them inspire you):

"It was my first time in the operating room, and I stood quietly in the corner, wishing desperately to be closer to those drapes, adorned in blue, scalpel in my hand… Until the alarms started going off. The nurse yelled at someone to hit the code button. Things were moving very quickly in front of me. I desperately tried to disappear into the wall, to make way for the responders rushing towards the crashing patient."

"Standing at the front entrance, I wasn’t sure if the clinic I went to was the right place. It looked run-down and old, with small square windows and beaten bricks. More like a prison than a place of healing. An older gentleman shuffled forward on his cane, pausing briefly to offer me a kind, toothless smile. ‘Are you helping my doc today?’ he asked. This was it. The place where I could actually make a difference someday. Maybe today.”

"She asked him again, slower this time, ignoring his explanation, as if she didn’t hear it at all in the first place. ‘Wait, so what exactly is lymphoma?’ and the oncologist I was shadowing that morning leaned forward his warm eyes on hers, with the cadence of someone who has done this hundreds of times. He gently held her hand as he explained it again, this time slower, emphasizing the word cancer. Not to be cruel, but to make sure his patient understood the battle ahead and to let her know he would be there with her.”

I wrote these sentences from moments built during real past experiences.

I want you to think of moments like that in your own lives. Really think about how they moved you and write the words that come out. Don’t stress too much about the grammar and flow during the first draft. You’ll refine it later, but get the words on the page.

Talking like a doctor is a skill. Most applicants don't have it so that’s where you can shine.

Here's the other thing. In medicine, we kind of have our own language. When I review an application and a student writes the way they think a doctor talks versus the way a doctor actually talks, I notice immediately. I can tell the students who have spent time in a clinical setting versus those who watched a lot of Grey’s Anatomy.

The students who have spent real time in clinical environments or talking to real doctors don't sound like pre-med students trying to impress. They sound like future colleagues who have already begun the transition to this noble career.

That difference shows up in your personal statement more than anywhere else in your application.

Practical Tips

Before you write a single word, answer this: what is the one moment from your clinical or academic experience that no one else applying to this program could have had? AKA - What is your unfair advantage?

Read your draft out loud. If it sounds like a mission statement, a speech, or something you'd put on a poster, it needs to be rewritten. And if you used AI for inspiration, make sure you heavily edit it to make it your own and have another human read it to make sure the “robot” parts are fully worked out.

Get feedback from someone who has actually read applications, not just other applicants. Another premed telling you your essay is good is not the same as a physician telling you it sounds authentic.

There is a reason some students sound like doctors before they ever get to medical school. It is not natural talent. It is exposure, mentorship, and practice presenting in clinical settings.

More on that next week.

-Dr. Samarrai

PS: Our physician-run Clinical Scholars Grand Rounds Symposium will be opening for a second time this summer thanks to the overwhelming number of applications. If you were unable to join our first cohort, apply for free here. You get documented clinical hours, an opportunity to join a research project as well as a chance to earn a letter of recommendation from a doctor / surgeon based on your presentation!

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