MMI Undergraduate Club Meeting Minutes, Wednesday, November 2, 2005

Kaplan Personal Statement Workshop

Given by Carole Waters (Carole_Waters@kaplan.com), Operations Manager, Madison Kaplan Center, (608) 255-0575.

Four steps:

1. Understanding “Why”

The admissions process:

  1. GPA
  2. MCAT/GRE
  3. Personal Statement
  4. Letters of Recommendation
  5. Resume (clinical, research, leadership)
  6. Applications
  7. Interviews

2. Brainstorming

Vision and Purpose: Competent Physician, helper of others in ways beyond medicine.
Goals: Accomplishments and Leadership

3. Focusing your themes

Noble vs. Ignoble

Focus on:

  1. Why I want to be a: (eg. Doctor)  - personal motivation
  2. Why I want to be in this specific field

4. Writing and editing

Ten areas to be concerned with:

  1. Tone – Positive, Learn, Contributing
  2. Original, not shock
  3. Paragraphs – 1: Wow, 2, 3: Conclusion
  4. First Person
  5. Right amount of detail
  6. Vivid lingual, never use past tense, stay active
  7. No clichés
  8. Write appropriately, but be yourself
  9. Sell yourself
  10. Limit – if there is a page or word limit – keep it

Proofreading: rewrite at least 5 separate times before letting others read

  1. Read backwards, word by word.
  2. Sentence level
  3. Content
  4. Have a least 3 people proof

In the end, the personal statement should have unity and flow all of your components should come together such that each part contributes to a greater whole and that whole should be, to the best of your ability, a written representation of who and what you are.

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