Free help and advice on how to write the perfect UCAS personal statement for medicine.

 

5 Top Tips on Writing a Brilliant UCAS Personal Statement for Medicine

Your UCAS personal statement is your chance to show the medical school whether you have some of the skills and motivation to be a doctor (or dentist). Here are some useful top tips to help you.

Has to be personal to you. No clichés or poetry.

The personal statement must be in your own words and personal to you. Remain professional at all times. Do not try and attempt humour or include poetic phrases as the document is intended to be professional and formal. Your word count is precious, and you cannot afford to waste any space on statements that have no value to your application. And honestly was it really your ‘dream’ from nursery school to be a doctor? The number of students we see who include phrases that are factually (and perhaps medically) dubious is astounding. Remember medical school tutors are trained to spot these things.

Be wary of using companies to write the complete statement for you. If they are using generic templates (which many of them are), you run the risk of your statement being flagged up as a copy of someone else’s. How medical schools deal with candidates who are not honest on applications is the topic of another blog but you can assume the outcome is not good. You application would at the least end up in the bin. Write the statement in your own words and in your own style.

Make it fun and stand out from the rest. Engage the tutor. Don’t bore them to death.

Don’t just wrote long lists of your achievements. Explain why being form prefect will benefit you as a medical student and what skills you have learnt. Explain the skills that you have learnt and what you enjoyed about the activity. Make your response relevant to your career as a medical student and future doctor. Don’t write long sentences that do not follow You will bore the tutor. The first person that goes through your statement may not be a doctor and not even from a medical background. They may have hundreds of statements to go through and yours needs to stand out and not end up in the bin.

Your personal statement will likely come up again in your MMI interview. Know it inside out and prepared to be challenged.

Don’t include anything that you are not prepared to talk about and elaborate on at interview. If you include any hot topics in your statement, patient cases or any factual statements in our statement be prepared to talk about them.

If you have any achievements outside academia, make them relevant

Do you have any trophies or awards? Perhaps you have won a prize in a local art competition or excel at sports. Don’t just list them but think how they could help you as a doctor or a medical student. Artists tend to have excellent manual dexterity and if you have played for your school sports team think about leadership and team working skills (for example). However, remember you are going to medical school to primarily how to be a doctor and not a sports person and you should limit this section of your personal statement to no more than 20%.

Finish at the end neatly. There is no Part 2.

Don’t leave any cliff hangers or stop in the middle of nowhere. Your final paragraph should be concluding remarks.

How can Blue Peanut help me with my UCAS personal statement for medicine?

We can check your statement to ensure you have included everything that is relevant for a medical school application. You can even book a session with a medical school tutor to help you write your first draft in your own words. If you come book a place on our medical school interview course, you get our UCAS workshop included so reserve your space now!