Re: med personal statements

[newma_sl@JHUVMS.HCF.JHU.EDU]

Catherine:

Thanks for your helpful response.  It's nice to have my suspicions 
confirmed that there are other WC folks out there who are grappling with 
the same issues.  It's even nicer when they summarize some of the key 
issues at hand more elegantly than I have been able to:  

>  [Our goal is] 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
Y> 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. 

I'd be interested to know what the Dean told you about the readers.  They 
still remain a mystery to me (and I might add that they might be a 
mystery to themselves.  By this, I mean their own sense of 
what they they think they're doing might not jive with what, and I think 
I'm quoting someone else here, what they do does from a larger 
institutional standpoint):  

> 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.


As for the 'weight' the texts are given, I've been told they often act as 
tie-breakers and as fodder for the interviews (the latter often 
presented to me as a 'sting'--Are you really identical to the person you 
say you were on this statement?)

Steve

P. S. I'm not sure if everyone else got a post from Jo Koster Tarvers, 
who was kind enough to let me know of some promising sources.  If anyone 
else is interested in them, please let me know.