Your personal statement is 5,000 characters to answer one question: why PA?

Not why medicine. Not why healthcare. Why this specific profession, and what led you here.

In this episode I walk through what actually belongs in the essay. Where your interest in medicine started. What you understand about the PA role, specifically - because plenty of applicants clearly don't. And the experiences that prepared you, told as moments rather than a list.

The other thing I hammer on is staying on topic. Admissions committees read hundreds of these in a season. If your first paragraph is a scenic detour, you've already lost some of their attention. Get to the point and stay there.

I also put together a personal statement worksheet to help you get your thoughts organized before you try to write anything pretty. Start there. Blank pages are miserable.

What I cover:

• What the personal statement is actually asking
• Where to start when you have no idea how to begin
• Showing you understand the PA role
• Choosing which experiences make the essay
• Staying concise and on topic
• Using the free worksheet to organize your thoughts

Resources:

Free Personal Statement Worksheet: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/free-personal-statement-worksheet-download

Free Personal Statement Email Course: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/free-personal-statement-email-course

PA School Personal Statement Guide: https://www.thepaplatform.com/pa-school-personal-statement-guide

Pre-PA Essay Review: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/pre-pa-essay-review

Welcome to the Pre PA Club podcast.

If you want to learn how to become a physician assistant, you're in the right place.

I'm your host, Savannah Perry.

Let's get to it.

All right, we're back for another episode today, and I hope everyone has had a great week.

Today we are going to start talking about personal statements.

So in the Pre PA Club Facebook group, I did a poll to see what you guys wanted to hear about next and what was most important to you in this process and what you had the most questions about.

So I posed a few options there, and the overwhelming vote went to let's talk about personal statements.

So here we are.

And if you aren't a part of that group, please, please join so you can vote on future topics and put your input out there.

So today, specifically, I want to focus on the content of your personal statement.

What should you talk about, what should you avoid talking about?

And how do you say everything that you want to say?

So we'll jump into that and hopefully give you some tips on what direction to take your personal statement.

I realize that it can be extremely hard to say everything that you want to say in 5,000 characters or less.

That's about a little over a page, single spaced.

So you got to fit a lot into that and it can be extremely difficult.

So I get it.

I've read tons of personal statements, if you don't already know.

I work with a website called MyPA resource where I edit statements.

And so during a busy season, I can be editing bunches of statements every week.

And it's very interesting to see how everyone approaches the personal statement a little bit differently.

Sometimes they are really great, Sometimes they need a good bit of work.

So hopefully we can get you to a point where you're first, first draft is close to your final product and is providing the information that the admissions committee wants to know and wants to read about.

You need to keep in mind that the people in admissions are reading thousands of statements.

Thousands.

And so as much as you want to stand out, which is awesome, you also want to make sure that you're staying on topic and that you're getting to the point quickly and that you're being very direct and concise so that they enjoy reading your essay, but that they also learn a lot about you.

And at the end of reading your essay, they walk away and go, oh my gosh, I just need to meet this person in real life and I need to see them at an interview to see if they would be a good fit.

So let's Jump into content.

First, let's talk about the prompt that's typically required of a PA school essay.

If you go through caspa, going to be something along the lines of, please explain why you are interested in becoming a physician assistant or describe your motivations for becoming a physician assistant.

At the end of the day, the prompt is asking you, why do you want to be a pa and how have you gotten to this decision?

So make sure throughout your essay that you're staying on topic to that prompt.

This is a very open ended question and so you have a lot of room to expand on that and to take it whatever direction you want to.

But it can definitely bring up the question of what in the world should I start writing about?

How should you start?

Should you use a story or a quote?

How do you make it clear that out of all of those thousands of other applicants, you are the most deserving candidate for a spot in their PA class or even just for a spot in an interview?

These are tough questions.

So the whole purpose of this essay is to show the reader who you are as a person.

They can look at your grades and your achievements and your awards and your experience, your volunteering, your leadership, and from all of that, they can tell whether or not you have the potential to actually do well in their program.

They're going to be looking at your transcripts and making sure that you show a great academic history of success and upward trends so that they'll know you can do the coursework and pass boards.

But they can't really tell from all of that if you're truly a compassionate person and if you truly understand the role of a PA and what you're getting into and that you really want to serve others through medicine.

They also can't tell from that what life experiences you've had that have gotten you to this point of applying to PA school and actually pursuing your dream of becoming a pa.

So a lot of us have experiences in the past, maybe with family members who have gone through health struggles or a time when we didn't have health insurance or when we kind of realized the difficulties of healthcare from a personal standpoint or had an injury ourselves, and that can influence your decision to become a pa. And so those are some of the things that you want to talk about.

And some applicants do have a lot of hardships on their journey to becoming a pa, but others maybe have not had those intense circumstances.

So I want you to also realize that that's okay if you don't have this huge pivotal moment or pivotal event that made your decision to become a pa, that's alright.

You should not feel inadequate in that situation.

You just need to explain how you did come to this decision and take into account the things that you've done personally and what you've learned on this journey that you think will still benefit you in PA school as a student.

So don't feel like you have to use these extreme dramatic stories in your personal statement if that just isn't you and that isn't the way that you want to approach things.

So before you even start looking at why or how to get started, like the logistics of that and we can talk about that later, you need to figure out and take some time to figure out what you want in your essay and what you want to portray in your essay.

So there are a few goals and main topics that should be included.

And if you want some help with this and I may do another podcast kind of walking you through these.

But on my website I have a free worksheet that you can download.

It's a personal statement worksheet that you can basically I'll email it to you and it kind of walks you through the main questions that you need to answer in your personal statement.

So.

So that you can get started and have a springboard to go from instead of just sitting there staring at a blank word document.

So if you want that, you can go to the paplatform.com click on the Pre PA section and it's under the free downloads.

So that's called the free personal statement worksheets.

Or if you follow me on Instagram, you can just use the link in my profile and click downloads and it'll take you right there.

So these are the things when I'm reading an essay that I want to know.

I want to first know how did you become interested in medicine?

Where did that initial desire to work in healthcare even come from?

And sometimes it's just that you knew you're interested in science and that's the class that you enjoyed the most.

And it just seems natural that you would end up working in medicine.

For me, I think that was part of it.

I mean, I loved my science classes and I felt like I did well in them until I got to chemistry.

That's another story.

But I also my sister had a disease growing up called fapa, which was when she was little, somewhat rare, and no one really knew much about it.

They still don't really know much about it, but basically she would have really high fevers once a month.

And so she was out of School a lot, but we were also in doctors offices a lot, in hospitals even, and she was getting her blood drawn and I was kind of watching these doctors interact with her and my parents and even me.

And some of them were really not that great and didn't really want to try to find an answer and didn't kind of wrote off what was going on.

But I remember the pediatrician who finally took an interest in her case and would look up research articles and send them to us and call my parents and check on her.

And that made such a huge difference in her quality of life and also in how I think she felt about healthcare and how we felt about healthcare.

And it was seeing that positive example that kind of made me go, I want to be that person too.

I want to be the one who's helping people and going the extra mile to make sure that they are as well as they can be.

So that's my personal example, but yours may be different.

But that's kind of.

I want to know when I'm reading an essay where this interest comes from.

And it's not just something that you decided on yesterday.

So beyond that, the next thing I'm looking for is how did you find out about the PA profession specifically?

So when you first found out about PAs, how did that affect you?

Was it something you were interested in?

Was it something you were skeptical of?

Was it when you went to see a pa, did someone tell you about the profession?

In my case, my dad was the one who told me about the PA profession he had gone to see.

He thought he was going to see the doctor, and he ended up seeing a PA and came back and told me that he thought that the career would be a good fit for me.

I was in high school and I never heard of a pa, so that was kind of my first introduction to okay, there's this job out there that is kind of like a doctor, but not a doctor, and I'm very interested in that.

And so that sparked my interest.

And so I want to know where your interest came from and what initially was appealing to you about the PA profession.

So when you first heard it, what stood out to you and made it click with your personality that this might be a good option for you.

So those are two things I'm looking for.

After that, I want to know that you understand what a PA is and that you understand the role that you are trying to get into.

It's very important for PA schools to know that you basically, that you understand a PA is not a fake doctor.

It's a different role.

And it's very important that you understand the teamwork aspect and the collaboratory aspect of being a pa and that you're not some person who's going to get out there as a pa, think you're a doctor, and go rogue and start hurting people.

So you need to understand the differences between a doctor and a PA and how those roles fit together.

And usually the best way to do that is with your shadowing experience or work experience with a pa.

If you can say, I've seen this in action.

I've seen a PA work in a pediatric clinic and a patient came in with a sore throat and the PA was able to comfort the parents and make the child feel better and do a strep test and figure out it was positive and prescribe the medications needed.

You've just told me that you understand how a PA can work by themselves and all of the different things they are able to do for a patient.

On the flip side, you can say, I also saw a PA in orthopedics who went and did pre op on a patient, but then came back and collaborated with the supervising physician before surgery.

You can also show that collaboration in your statement as well.

And so using those firsthand experiences and discussing what stood out to you, what was appealing to you, what you saw as just a great thing that you want to be a part of, will help your statement to be stronger.

And using those experiences gives you more credibility.

So I do, throughout your essay, want to see that you have taken the time and done the research to show that you know what a PA is and that you know what you're getting yourself into and that it's something that you really are passionate about and want to be involved in.

So beyond that, I want to know what you've done to make yourself qualified for PA school and for becoming a pa. What experiences and steps have you taken to make sure that you are going to be able to do as well as possible?

So this can be your health care experience.

If you've worked as a CNA or an EMT or a medical assistant or whatever patient care and healthcare experience you've gotten, I want to hear about that and I want to know what you've learned from that experience in regards to patient care that you're going to carry forward with you as a PA student and into your career.

One of the admissions directors at my program would always say that when she's evaluating a candidate, and this is in reference to interviews as well, she's looking for someone who will be a great classmate and a great colleague.

And so you need to show that beyond just being a great pa, you're going to be a great PA student.

And I think when I'm reading these essays, that's something a lot of people lose sight of and lose track of and don't really address.

They get really focused on I'm going to be a PA and this is the type of PA I'm going to be.

They forget that they're actually applying to PA school and that you have to be a student first.

So make sure that you're also showing that you have the academic capabilities to succeed as a PA student and that you are well prepared in an academic sense to complete the program without any issue.

So those are some strengths.

Basically you want to talk about your strengths and it's best.

Usually we can talk about structure and editing things like that in a further episode, but usually it's best if your essay is chronological.

Try not to jump around with these things.

It should make sense when the person's reading it.

Kind of the story and the process you've taken to get here.

And then in your conclusion, you just want to sum all this up, not introduce anything new and, and just summarize those strengths that you have for the PA program that you're applying to.

But you don't want to make that specific because CASPA doesn't translate that.

But okay, I think that's a lot to get started with.

But again, you can download the free personal statement worksheets from my website.

Another option is myparesource.com has a free personal statement workshop and it's actually a video workshop where you can watch little videos.

It doesn't take that long.

I think it's maybe 30 minutes worth of videos.

But there's a lot of discussion in there as far as content and editing and what should and should not be in your essay.

When it comes to maybe talking about discrete discrepancies and grades, they discuss that.

In my opinion, I think if there is something on your application that could be seen as a discrepancy or could in your mind prevent you from getting an interview, I think it's worth discussing.

So if you had a bad semester and got poor grades throughout a whole semester, that's probably worth mentioning and explaining what happened and giving the reader confidence that this was a one time thing, not something that's going to happen in PA school.

If you have maybe one C. I don't know that you have to discuss that.

As long as your GPA is still great, but in an interview setting you would want to be able to discuss that.

Other things you might want to address, any significant time off of school, definitely any run ins with the law.

Hopefully that's not an issue but if it is you definitely need to be able to experience.

But yeah, I would definitely recommend the personal statement workshop as well.

If you're looking for more help with your personal statement and as always you can join the Pre PA Club on Facebook.

It's a Facebook group and we have a lot of great members in there who are constantly answering questions, asking questions and myself and the owner of mypa Resource, Brian, we both pop in there and try to answer questions periodically too.

So so lots of options for you there.

And as always, if you enjoyed this episode as we wrap up, I would love a review on itunes and if you can click the five stars if you liked it, that would be great.

That just helps other people to find us and let me know what else we should talk about.

So feel free to leave that in your review if you have an idea for a future episode.

I've got a couple great interviews coming up for you, so stay tuned for those and I'm always open to suggestions.

You can email me, contact me on Instagram.

It's just at the PA platform and I look forward to seeing you next week.

Thanks guys.