How to Write a Personal Statement, as Told by a PA Student (AKA Someone Who Knows What He's Doing)

Writer's block at its finest

Ahhh personal statements. The most tedious part of any professional program application. 

Programs want you to delve into your should and tell your story. "Why medicine?" "Why PA?" "Why MD?" So on and so forth. 

Personal statements can make or break an application. They can give you a leg up or push you down. They are probably the most important part of any application, aside from grades. So if you're anything like me and have an awful GPA, you need a damn good personal statement. Also, if you're anything like me, you probably started freaking out months ago about a personal statement.

A good friend of mine is an upcoming PA student here at The University of Alabama at Birmingham. I have known him for 5 years now and he was a total shoe-in for the PA program. Not only is he a wonderful human, but he's an excellent writer. His personal statement blew me away and I wanted his advice on how to write one.

Here are his thoughts on personal statements:

Compassion for others was the main focus of my CASPA personal statement (PS). Your personal statement will undoubtedly help programs decide if you are a right fit for their school. How in the world do you do that well?!

Use the Resources Available To You

• A school’s vision or mission statement is absolutely invaluable to you for deciphering what a program wants to see in their applicants. My program’s mission is to "educate competent and compassionate" health care providers; imagine the impact that a personal statement centered around compassion for others has on the admissions committee.

• My addendum: John only applied to one PA program. While this advice seems to only apply to people like him, it is always helpful to trace a common theme between your programs' mission statements. What is similar? Do multiple programs seem to focus on a certain attribute or attitude that they want to instill in their PAs? Can you link your personal statement to that? 

Shape Your PS With Collaborative Language

• PA school and medicine in general is a relational profession. Instead of “working as an EMT,” you “solved problems and served my patients for a year as an EMT.” Notice how this kind of language helps paint a picture of an applicant that stands out and has a keen eye for what medicine is really like. At the end of the day, you are entering into a profession that will demand a lot of you. Not only do your patients want and deserve your best, but you will also be working with other members of the care team that will constantly be communicating with you. An applicant that has developed the ability to collaborate well will be a welcomed and attractive prospective PA student. 

Offer a Personal Connection

• Your PS should not simply be a wordy version of your resume. Your experiences, credentials, and certifications will already be in CASPA, so give them information that they will not find there. Namely, what were the life changes, emotions, conversations, observations, and convictions that took place in your life that led you to want to pursue PA school? For me, part of that journey was shadowing an excellent, compassionate PA who went above and beyond to take care of a young girl whose life and family was crippled by a glioblastoma.

A PA program does not want a human medical textbook. They want a human who is going to take care of other humans with excellence and sincerity. 

My program has a pretty clear line in their mission statement about this. UAB has an expressed commitment to developing competent and compassionate PAs in their mission statement. 

I did not explicitly know this while writing my PS, but I am super thankful that this was something that ended up being a great talking point when it came around to interview season, because my main theme in my PS ended up being compassion for others. I wouldn’t personally recommend finding this out as late in the game as I did (and by chance at that!), because when it comes to applying to PA school, you’re not only seeing if that school is the right fit for you, but the school is also doing the exact same thing: they’re seeing how good of a fit you are for them. 

Of course they get the (unfair) advantage of seeing and reading all about your life before even meeting you, which highlights the potential for impact and a positive first impression that a robust personal statement can carry. Highlighting your specific drives and motivations for being in medicine creates a selling point for you through your personal statement. 

The experiences that you have had that fostered those drives and motivations—the things that have made you who YOU are—are precisely the kinds of things you want to write about in your PS. 

Final recap:

• I like that John said to utilize program resources for writing a personal statement, however, he did only apply to one program and this advice is a little more difficult for those of us applying to many programs. 

• However, it is a good idea to look for a common theme in mission statements among several programs

• Knowing the role of the PA is important. Emphasize collaboration and team-based medicine. A PA is a vital resource for medical teams.

• Don't restate your resume! Programs don't want to see that. They want to see why you want to be in medicine above all else.

• My favorite piece of advice:

• DON'T WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE TO START WRITING. A good personal statement takes at least a few months to craft. I had a preliminary draft started in October. 

About John

Hey folks! My name is John Strenkowski. I’m a first year Physician Assistant student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where I also completed my bachelor’s in Biomedical Sciences. After co-founding the UAB Pre-PA Association in 2016, I begun working as a research assistant in the emergency room of a local level 1 trauma center. With a research background in lung cancer, asthma, hematology, and emergency medicine, I hope to practice in one of these subspecialties one day as a PA, and would love to eventually teach at a PA program and further contribute to the development of the PA career. I’m ecstatic to begin a career where I have the opportunity to touch so many lives in tangible, immediate ways through the art of practicing compassionate, excellent medicine. 

Besides working in and looking forward to the medical field, I have played guitar for nearly 12 years in primarily wedding and church settings, and it has SO contributed to my sanity as a person. In my downtime you can find me writing about medicine, reading about medicine, ordering pizza for movie nights with friends, and playing some occasional Minecraft with my siblings and nephews. I am permanently afflicted with a love for french press coffee, and shamelessly geek out about cars, ultimate frisbee, and really clever medical jokes.

I would love to be a resource to you, so please feel free to reach out to me at themusicalpa@gmail.com 

Cheers!
J

You can also find John at https://www.instagram.com/the.musical.pa/