Re: med personal statements

[Catherine_Imbriglio@Brown.edu (Catherine Imbriglio)]

Steve:

I am very interested in the issues you raise about personal statements for
med school.  This past year was my second year as Writing Center
coordinator at Brown (which is why I'm mostly a lurker on this list,
still).  One of my projects was to encourage med school applicants to use
our services.  They did - we even had conferences with Brown med students
who are beginning to apply for residencies.  We tried to respond to the
pre-meds and (almost) MD's as we would to any other writer who comes to the
Center.

But there _are_ some tricky issues related to this mode of writing; you
insightfully point out a number of them.  My thinking on this topic will
most likely evolve as we see more of these writers, but right now my
principal concerns are pragmatic.  They involve helping the writers imagine
their audience without letting that audience get in the way of their
writing; and helping them responsibly and creatively invent themselves on
the page _for_ themselves _and_ for their audience.  This is no easy task
when so much is at stake.  (For example, how often should one use "I" in a
250-word personal statement?  In a 250-word statement to a scientifically
trained audience?  Writing autobiographically, in other words, is
complicated enough, but there are very specific pressures that need to be
addressed in this context.  And yes, the end result often feels like a
hybrid text, for the reasons that you state.)

What I've done so far is talk to the dean who advises pre-med students; I
tried to get him to construct that audience for me, tell me as much as he
could about these readers, i.e., de-mystify them. He did.  He has also
given me sample drafts from previous years to use for discussions with my
staff.  The dean and I plan on doing more work together to strengthen our
responses to med applicants; your post makes me think that our next
conversation should be about the "weight" of the personal statement in
relation to all the other things that go into the application packet.
Anyway, I would very much like to hear other people's responses to this
topic.

Catherine


Catherine Imbriglio
Coordinator of the Writing Center
Box 1852 English
Brown University
Providence RI 02912
Catherine_Imbriglio@Brown.edu