on June 4, 2019

Writing your personal statement could be the hardest portion of your AADSAS Dental School Application. Here are some tips to help you write yours!

Five tips for writing your Personal Statement!

1) Start writing early

I personally went through 30+ drafts when I wrote my personal statement. Although you may not go through this many revisions, it is still a good idea to start early so you could finish your personal statement before June! Keep in mind, you’re going to need time to send your personal statement to your advisors and make their suggested updates. People aren’t always the best at getting back to you in a timely manner as well. SO, don’t make the same mistakes I made and start writing early.

2) Show. Dont Tell.

This is probably the best advice I could give in this entire blog post. Admissions officers aren’t looking for a summary of your resume or your application. For that matter, you want to be reflective in your personal statement. What that means is that you’re giving an in depth explanation of what you learned during your extracurricular activities. I’ve included some examples below that show what a personal statement paragraph should look like.

Meh

Growing up in Anchorage, Alaska was very cold and didn’t cultivate any experiences for me to explore dentistry. I spent most of my time hiking and snowboarding. I started focusing more on dentistry when I accompanied my mother to her dental appointments and translated for her in Korean. She had to have her central incisors extracted which made her feel weird about her smile. This event inspired me to become a dentist.

This is purely a summary of my experience and initial exposure to dentistry. It does nothing to actually take the reader through what my mother and I were feeling at the time and how this motivated me to pursue dentistry.

Better

Growing up in Alaska gave me the unique opportunity to explore the wilderness and learn basic survival techniques. Interestingly, I found myself more drawn to the medic side of my boy scout training. This interest was further established when I began accompanying my mother to her dental appointments so that I could translate for her. I was intrigued by Dr. Smith’s ability use both his find hand skills while restoring my mothers mouth. There was an art to his precise movements and each procedure was executed with surgical precision. Seeing my mothers new smile provided by an astounding dentist inspired me to pursue dentistry.

This is also semi-summative but also spends too much time talking about Dr. Smith rather than my own experience of going to the dental office with my mother.

Excellent

I didn’t find dentistry because I had a parent that was a dentist nor an environment that cultivated an interest in healthcare. Anchorage, Alaska was a place where the pace of life moved very slowly and every free moment was spent doing outdoor activities like hiking or snowboarding. But when my mother’s oral health took a turn for the worse, I began accompanying her to all her dental procedures. It was a confusing time for both of us, as she knew very little English and I was just a seven-year-old boy struggling to translate why she would have to extract her upper central incisors. Although my first exposure to the dental field started from an unfortunate event, our trips to the dental office instilled a motivation for me to search for a deeper understanding of her condition.

This not only takes the reader through what my life was like in Anchorage, Alaska but also gives the committee a sense of why I was so motivated to pursue dentistry.

3) Choose Who edits your P.S. Carefully

I made the mistake of asking my Lenscrafters manager to edit my personal statement during my first application cycle. While he was very qualified to give pointers for a pre-optometry student, he gave me some odd advice on how to “focus the lens of the personal statement as if the reader was looking through the eyes of a dental patient.” The result of this personal statement was something very abstract and artistic rather than concise and reflective. Moral of the story is, choose who you want to edit your personal statement wisely and keep the amount of people you get feedback from to a minimum.

4) Jump into the meat of what you’re trying to say.

You only have 4500 characters (with spaces) to reflect fully on why you believe dentistry is the only career that is right for you. If you waste valuable characters on setting up the environment and gradually phasing the reader into the “AHA!” moment of your personal statement, you will quickly lose the interest of your reader. Starting off strong will allow you to give a bold statement and back that up with proof from what activities you chose to highlight.

5) Be Authentic!

This definitely goes without saying but don’t try to use an abstract story of when you chipped your front tooth while riding a bike. I’ve heard from admissions faculty that this is not only cliche but a sure way to get your application set aside. Admissions officers read through thousands of personal statements and could see through when students aren’t being completely honest. Be the best version of yourself that shows schools that you’re a student with some awesome experiences that will aide you in becoming an amazing dentist. Not some child that fell off a bike.

Final Advice

With all of this said, I want to leave you with one final piece of advice:

After you have finished your personal statement, read through it as if it is a letter to your future patient. Ask yourself. Would you want YOU as a dentist?

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For Pre-Dental Students

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Writing a good Personal Statement