Medicine Personal Statement Review

Absolutely! We know that sometimes you need a quick turnaround. That's why we offer a 24-hour rush option. Just select this option when you purchase your review on our website, and we'll make sure you get your feedback within 24 hours. Don't worry; even with the rush service, you'll still receive the same high-quality, detailed review.

We believe that your personal statement should be a true reflection of your own experiences and voice. That's why we don't write personal statements from scratch. However, we do offer loads of support to help you create a brilliant statement. Our Personal Statement Course with Dr. Jiva will guide you through the planning, structuring, and writing process. And if you need more personalised help, our personal statement tutoring services are perfect for brainstorming your experiences and turning them into an impressive statement with insightful reflections.

We take the privacy and security of your personal statement very seriously. Any documents you send us are stored securely on our password-protected servers, and only your assigned reviewer and Dr. Jiva will have access to them. We've never had a breach of confidentiality, and we're constantly working to keep your information safe and secure.

Our Medicine Personal Statement Review stands out in some key ways:

• Expertise: With over 17 years of experience and a team led by Dr. Dibah Jiva, we really know our stuff when it comes to medical school applications.
• Two-Reviewer System: Every statement gets reviewed by two expert editors, including a secondary review by Dr. Jiva herself. This means you get the highest quality feedback possible.
• Comprehensive Feedback: We provide line-by-line comments, track changes suggestions, a structured analysis of your statement, and detailed marking schemes. We look at every aspect of your writing to help you improve.
• Tailored Approach: Our feedback is tailored to your unique experiences, skills, and target medical schools. We help you create a statement that truly represents you and makes you stand out.

Our Medicine Personal Statement Review service includes one comprehensive review from two expert reviewers. If you want to submit your revised statement for an additional review, you can purchase another review. On average, most students purchase 2 to 3 reviews in total to get their statement just right. But remember, the number of reviews you need will depend on the quality of your content and writing.

We offer different turnaround times to suit your needs and deadlines. Just choose the option that works best for you when you submit your statement.

• Standard Review: 48-72 hours
• 24-Hour Rush Review: 24 hours
• 12-Hour Express Review: 12 hours

Yes, we do! In addition to medicine, we offer personal statement reviews for a range of healthcare-related fields, including dentistry, veterinary medicine, physician assistant, and nursing. If you're not sure if we cover your specific field, just reach out to us, and we'll let you know.

Submitting your personal statement is easy. Just email it to us at [email protected]. We'll start working on your review as soon as we receive both your payment and your personal statement.

Our Medicine Personal Statement Review service works best with completed drafts. But we know that sometimes you might want feedback earlier in the writing process. If you have a draft that's nearly done but still needs some polishing, feel free to send it over. Our editors will give you advice on how to improve it. Just keep in mind that if you send a very early draft, we might not be able to give you the same level of detailed feedback.

Not at all! Our goal is to help you improve your personal statement while keeping your unique voice and style. We'll give you suggestions and guidance on content, structure, and language, but you're always in control of the final decisions. We want your personal statement to be an authentic reflection of you, and we'll work hard to make sure it stays that way. Plus, we never use generic feedback or shared writing between reviews.

Definitely! We know it can be tough to fit everything you want to say into the UCAS 4,000-character limit. If you need help trimming down your personal statement, just let us know. We'll work with you to make your content more concise without losing its impact.

Absolutely! We're here to help you refine your writing and provide suggestions to improve clarity and effectiveness. We understand that writing in a second language can be challenging, and we'll support you every step of the way.

A great medicine personal statement should include:

• Your motivation for pursuing a career in medicine
• Personal experiences that have shaped your decision, like academic achievements, work experience, shadowing, voluntary work, or extracurricular activities
• Skills and qualities that show your suitability for healthcare and specifically why you'd make a great doctor, like empathy, communication, teamwork, and problem-solving
• Reflections on what you've learned from the medical field and how they've prepared you for the challenges and rewards of a medical career
• Your understanding of what it's really like to study medicine and work as a doctor

To make your personal statement stand out, focus on:

• Giving specific, detailed examples of your experiences and what you learned from them
• Reflecting on your personal growth and development, showing maturity and self-awareness
• Highlighting your unique skills, qualities, and insights, and how they'll help you succeed as a medical student and doctor
• Conveying your genuine passion for medicine, how it developed, and your commitment to making a positive impact on patients' lives
• Using clear, concise language and a professional yet engaging tone that reflects your personality

There are many medical schools in the UK that do not consider the personal statement in their admissions process. Some medical schools use it to shortlist candidates for interview and others as the basis for interview questions. Make sure your personal statement is interview-proof and doesn’t include anything you can’t justify or elaborate on. The medical school that give the personal statement weight generally look at:

• Motivation: Do you have a genuine, well-explained reason for pursuing medicine? Have you shown how your interest started and developed?
• Suitability: Do you have the necessary skills, qualities, and understanding of the medical profession to succeed as a medical student and doctor?
• Experiences: Have you done relevant work experience, volunteering, or extracurricular activities that show your commitment and give you valuable insights?
• Reflection: Do you reflect meaningfully on your experiences, showing what you've learned and how you've grown?
• Communication: Is your statement well-structured, clearly written, and free of errors, showing strong communication skills?

We recommend brainstorming and planning your personal statement at least 6-8 weeks before your intended submission date. This allows ample time for self-reflection, drafting, seeking feedback, and refining your statement. However, it's never too early to start thinking about your experiences and how they have shaped your decision to pursue medicine. Avoid leaving it until the last minute, as you'll likely be balancing personal statement writing with your A-Level or university studies, and UCAT preparation. Also note that Dr Jiva will be off on maternity leave in September 2024, so if you’d like your personal statement reviewed by her, we highly recommend writing it over the summer.

There are several effective ways to start your medicine personal statement. Here are a few ideas:

• Start with a powerful anecdote or personal experience that sparked your interest in a medical career
• Open with a thought-provoking question or statement that engages the reader and sets the tone
• Highlight a key skill or quality you have that aligns with what it takes to be a great doctor
• Talk about a significant event or experience that influenced your decision to pursue medicine

The key is to avoid clichés or overly broad statements. Focus on creating a unique, memorable opening that reflects your personality and motivations.

A good structure for a medicine personal statement should make it easy for the admissions tutors to read and understand your key points. Many schools recommend a paragraph for each of these: motivation, work experience, volunteering, and extracurricular activities. But we've found that a skills-based approach works better for medicine personal statements. It helps you avoid repeating yourself, ensures you reflect on your experiences, and allows you to fit more content in. Here's a sample structure that works well:

• Introduction: Discuss how your desire to study medicine started and what confirmed your decision
• Skills-based paragraphs (3-4 paragraphs):
• Each paragraph should focus on a specific skill, quality, or group of related skills
• Start by clearly indicating what skill(s) the paragraph will discuss
• Give a specific example of how you saw this skill demonstrated by a doctor and what you learned about its importance
• Discuss a specific example of how you've demonstrated this skill yourself
• End with a reflection on how this skill is relevant to medicine
• Conclusion: Summarise your key skills and reaffirm your passion for medicine

The UCAS personal statement has a strict limit of 4,000 characters (including spaces) or 47 lines of text, whichever you reach first. It's important to be concise and make every word count while still providing enough detail to show off your experiences, skills, and motivations.

A strong medicine personal statement should:

• Showcase a variety of relevant, real-life experiences, focusing on reflection and personal insights
• Link your experiences to your motivation for pursuing medicine, the skills you've developed that will make you a great doctor, and insights you've gained about the profession, patients, the NHS, or patient experiences
• Be personal, conveying your thoughts, feelings, and emotions about your experiences
• Be specific, demonstrating your unique personality and the type of team player you are
• Have good grammar and structure, using active voice and simple language, with some well-placed, insightful buzzwords
• Make it easy to read, with a clear introduction, skills-based paragraphs, and a conclusion
• Be authentic to who you are - don't just say what you think admissions tutors want to hear

To showcase empathy in your medicine personal statement, try the following:

• Give specific examples of times you've shown empathy, like in volunteering or caring for a family member
• Reflect on how your interactions with patients during work experience deepened your understanding of empathy and its importance in providing compassionate care
• Talk about how you've developed active listening skills and the ability to see situations from others' perspectives
• Describe times you've offered emotional support or adapted your communication style to meet others' needs
• Connect your examples to the importance of empathy in building trust with patients and providing patient-centred care

Remember to be personal and specific in your examples, conveying your own thoughts, feelings, and growth in relation to empathy.

Some of the most common mistakes we see in medicine personal statements include:

• Listing lots of experiences without actually reflecting on them or providing insights
• Expressing negativity, like focusing on weaknesses or comparing medicine to other healthcare professions
• Using buzzwords incorrectly, making illogical reflections, or using overly complex vocabulary without backing up statements
• Following a generic structure that focuses on separate paragraphs for motivation, work experience, volunteering, and extracurricular activities, instead of using a skills-based approach
• Failing to demonstrate a clear, genuine motivation for pursuing medicine, often because you have only focused on a single healthcare shadowing experience without explaining why you were interested in the first place, or only using childhood anecdotes without showing more recent insights. Although it may true that your fascination for the human body started at a young age, you also need to show what you have done more recently to learn about being a doctor. Include what confirmed your desire to pursue a Medicine course.
• Neglecting to showcase a range of relevant skills and insights, often because you use multiple examples that demonstrate the same skill. You do not need three different examples that show your communication skills or interpersonal skills. Instead, think of examples that show what you have not talked about yet in your personal statement. This could be time management skills, teamwork, problem-solving, leadership skills, or analytical skills.
• Not proofreading thoroughly, resulting in grammar errors, typos, or inconsistencies