Need Assistance Revising My Personal Statement - Please Help!!!

[Confused 20]

Thanks to anyone who provided any input.

[NikolaTesla]

Confused 20 :
I have recently received an offer of admission for the May 2010 Semester. And I would like offer some words of advice
First I would like to say that I am very sorry to hear about the unfortunate circumstances and incidences that you have had to go through; I sympathize with you, as a child I received an inch long scar on the back of my head from a bad fall on a playground. And I constantly got picked on, laughed at, called a retard and such by mean children. It negatively affected me socially until I matured in highschool and just stopped caring... I noticed that many people had many other misfortunes (some were MUCH worse than mine and yours) and they all get picked on too. Some people have an unevenly proportioned face or body, some wear glasses/braces, some have weight problems, some have self esteem issues, some have scars, some have unusually high or low pitched voices, I think all in all that everyone has something in their lives about them, their body, their personality, that makes them experience low self-esteem. IMHO, I have learned that it is all in what kind of attitude you learn to have about your own misfortunes, and try to focus on being grateful for what you have.

My important piece of advice that I can give is, your essay is descriptive and fairly well written. However, I have noticed an alarming trend in your writing in that the majority of the essay tends to be NEGATIVE. You even start your essay by asking a VERY NEGATIVE rhetorrical question. I would change the intro and focus on a moment that you made you decide to persue medicine. A POSITIVE anecdote.. not so much negative instances you have had to go through. Bad circumstances, your weaknesses, the negative impact of your voice and alopecia on your self-esteem and social skills, the tough luck you seem to have been delt by life I suppose. However, one thing I can suggest is SELL yourself!. BE POSITIVE
Focus on your STRONG POINTS, your social skills that you think would make you u a good DOCTOR... not a sympathy case for the admissions committee to look at and think "well I feel bad for this unlucky applicant, but i can't see any evidence of him giving us for why he thinks he would make a good physician"
I hope you understand what I trying to convey.
Focus on what you think your strongpoints are, discuss what you characteristics you think you have that would make you stick out in comparison the the hundreds and hundreds of other applicants. Don't focus so much about how your social skills and self-esteem have been so negatively affected, focus on examples that you think would make you stand out as a STRONG, SKILLED, MATURE, AND RESPONSIBLE individual; in other words OUTLINE WHAT YOU THINK YOU HAVE TO OFFER. Another thing I can say is try not to focus so much on the fact that you WANT TO assist " or HELP" ( Hint dont use HELP, AID, ASSIST: use words like treat, heal, console, etc) mainly patients with alopecia. Its great that you want to help patients who are in your shoes, but also remember that there are patients WITH MANY OTHER DISEASES OUT THERE that you want to help/treat as well.
Another piece of advice I could give you is avoid using unnecessarily rich vocabulary consisting of terms that they know you can obviously look up in a thesaurus... ie instead of writing " I have a plethora of " etc.... try "I have an abundance of". Just keep it straight forward, and in the words of GREAT advice I was given by my professors, and friends: Speak from the heart ( which you have, but try and focus more on POSITIVE stuff though) and just say what you really truly feel deep down in a relatively straightforward and concise way. Don't write what you THINK THEY WANNA HEAR, write the stuff that just comes from the soul... You can't fake SINCERITY...
Best of Luck to you....

[Confused 20]

Thank you very much for your input. I greatly appreciate it and will adhere to your advice. If you don't mind, would you be able to share your statistics? Did you take the MCAT? When did you apply?

[NikolaTesla]

I applied May 2nd of this year, and got an interview in June

[Confused 20]

Thank you very much for sharing your statistics. Your credentials are very impressive. Would you be so kind as to give me input on what you think are my chances of acceptance?

[NikolaTesla]

Complete Physics, and Orgo chem II
Get some reference letters from M.D's
and write the MCAT and get at least 26 or so...
And you're good!