Blog

You are currently browsing the med application essays tag archive.

The Resilience Factor: How Flaws and Failures Can Strengthen Your Application

The Resilience Factor: How Flaws and Failures Can Strengthen Your Application

When the adcoms ask you to write about a flaw or weakness in your essays, and you either fail to offer any or the ones you come up with sound like you are just checking a box – mentioning something vague and generic and not of much significance – you will seem like a fake …

Read More

Writing a Compelling Accomplishment Essay

Writing a Compelling Accomplishment Essay

A fascinating discussion among Accepted’s admissions consultants revealed that MBA applicants don’t always understand how adcoms define an accomplishment, so we wrote this post to help remove the guesswork for you. Here are the kinds of accomplishments you should strive to include in your essay: Examples of Impact and Initiative In your accomplishment essay, providing examples of …

Read More

Finding a Theme for Your Statement of Purpose

Finding a Theme for Your Statement of Purpose

All original essays have a unique theme, and it can take time and careful thought to identify what yours should be. If you go back to the essays we examined in the previous post in this series, you will see that the public health program applicant opened her essay by cleverly presenting her theme in the form …

Read More

Three Ways Writing About Obstacles Strengthens Your Application Essays

When crafting application essays – whether for graduate school, business school, or any other competitive program – candidates often focus on highlighting their accomplishments. And it’s easy to understand why. Most applicants want to showcase their significant achievements, such as leading a groundbreaking project, making a meaningful impact through research, or spearheading a successful community …

Read More

The Importance of Extracurricular Activities for Medical School Applications

You’ve no doubt read about the multifaceted requirements for admission to medical school. This post is an attempt, first, to demystify them a bit, and second, to untangle one of the least understood requirements. The price of admission begins with an excellent GPA and MCAT score. Most applicants have both. The definition of “excellent” varies …

Read More

How Personal Is Too Personal in Your Application Essays?

The personal statement is your opportunity to stand out and make a lasting impression on your target school’s adcom. How can you make your essay original? How much should you tell? And at what point are you crossing the line into TMI? When I applied to college, I wrote a personal statement describing some challenging …

Read More

Four Tips for Displaying Teamwork in Your Application Essays

a team high fiving demonstrating teamwork in applications

Teamwork – and its close cousin, leadership – are highly prized by graduate programs and universities. But if you haven’t worked in a team on any regular basis, don’t worry! You’ve probably got a number of examples of teamwork in your back pocket that you didn’t even realize were there. Consider the following four ideas when you …

Read More

Four Ways to Highlight Your Strengths in Your Application Essays

One of the most important pieces of advice you’ll ever get regarding your personal statements and application essays is this: Show, don’t tell.  It’s a classic writing lesson, and you’ve probably heard it before, but how do you actually “show, not tell,” in your essays?  Simply “telling” is ineffective, because it usually involves boastful claims such …

Read More

Writing an Engaging Essay Introduction

an applicant writing an engaging essay introduction on a laptop

In today’s world, where everything moves at lightning speed, we’re constantly making fast decisions.  This applies to admissions committees, too. The pressure of their job forces them to make very quick decisions about whose applications they will invest more time in and whose will merit only an obligatory but cursory review before being set aside.  …

Read More

Inside Geisinger Med School Admissions with Dr. Michelle Schmude [Episode 600]

Show Summary Welcome to the 600th episode of Admissions Straight Talk! In this milestone episode, host Linda Abraham sits down with Dr. Michelle Schmude, Vice Provost for Enrollment Management and Professor of Medical Education at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, to explore the innovative and comprehensive Total Health Curriculum. Dr. Schmude shares how this evidence-based …

Read More

Projecting Confidence and Professionalism in Essays

So you’ve sat down and brainstormed, and you’re now ready to hit the ground running with your essays. Great! You might be wondering how to best convey your reasons for pursuing graduate school to the admissions committees. What kind of tone or approach should you use? A good rule of thumb is to project three …

Read More

First Drafts of Residency Personal Statements: Let Yourself Go

For many residency applicants, writing the first draft of their personal statement is the most difficult part of the entire application process. And the most difficult part of composing that first draft is often getting the first few words on the page. Don’t fret – even accomplished novelists and famous journalists struggle to get started …

Read More

Your Free, 30-Minute Consultation

Sign up for a free consultation to ask your most pressing admissions and application-related questions, get a profile evaluation, and find out how our team of professional admissions consultants can help you get accepted.

Start Now!