The Do's of a Personal Statement Infographic

ECFMG is not only involved in the processing, dispersion of documents and certification of international medical graduates, they also do have a pretty helpful section that deals with other aspects of residency application. At their ECHO (ECFMG certificate holders office) resource section I found some Do’s pertaining to personal statement. Instead of list after list of pointers that are available on other sites, I decided to make a infographic highlighting the key DO’s of your personal statement. The Infographic is shown below

The DO's of a personal statement

Key things to consider are

1. Keep your personal statement honest – don’t hide failures, or disciplimary actions etc. instead use it to explain why you had issues in the first place.
2. Your passion for medicine, life long learning and service to alleviate the suffering of humanity must be explicit in your personal statement
3. Always make a mention of personal anecdote or experience that shaped your life.
4. Keep the personal statement length to one page. No need to crank out a Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky here.
5. Make sure you have a clear explanation of why you want to come to US for training, leaving things behind in home country
6. must make a clear and succinct description of what makes you tick, what makes you unique and what are your special skills
7. Discuss your future plans in your statement, let the reader know what your career goal is and how you see yourself in the future.
8. Have friends and family read your piece and give comments, don’t take comments too personally, if their opinion matters, make appropriate changes.
9. Must read your personal statement at least 50 times (okay.. many times) for errors in spelling, grammar, sentence construction and content.

No matter what specialty you apply to, be it family medicine or psychiatry, pediatrics or any other, you MUST focus on your personal statement and make it the best literary masterpiece that you can create in your life! For the DONT's of a personal statement read on...

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