u/CookieCrumbs6

Following up on my earlier post about program-specific themes (GWU, UMKC, Brown, Case Western), here are a few more worth knowing about if you're building your school list or working on supplements.

• Siena College/Albany Medical College: is very service-focused. I found that their program ties service learning directly into clinical training. Medical students are encouraged to connect with the community to understand the social aspects of health, which carries the theme through from undergrad all the way into medical school itself. There's also a required volunteer service commitment built into the summer between junior and senior year at Siena. If you're interested in this side of medicine, you should definitely lean on your community service experiences in the supplemental essays. One of them explicitly asks about service too. 
• University of Rochester (REMS) is very research-heavy. The research center is in close proximity to the medical center, so the two have a close relationship at Rochester. They emphasize students driving their own independent research projects rather than just assisting on someone else's. In addition to research, students start clinical rotations as early as year one, gradually building their communication skills and empathy through direct patient interaction. That reflects what the school actually values in students to begin with: when evaluating applicants, they say they look at values like compassion, empathy, and curiosity just as much as aptitude for science.
• Penn State (Sidney Kimell PMM): is very mentorship and community focused. I found that Penn State College of Medicine was actually the first in the nation to have a dedicated Department of Humanities and a Department of Family and Community Medicine. Their humanism is a theme that is built into the school’s actual structure. Students run programs like LionCare (student-run medical clinics) and SCOPE (a collaborative outreach program focused specifically on health equity), which give students hands-on ways to engage with the local Hershey community, not just clinical training within hospital walls. So overall, similar to Siena/AMC in how they are very service focused.

 

The takeaway across all of these: the more specific and mission-driven a program is, the more it matters that your essays actually engage with why that specific mission.

Happy to help if anyone's working through how to frame their fit for a specific program! I’m a current GW BS/MD student and am currently taking on my first four students at no cost for the first few sessions for essay help, and interview prep. Feel free to DM me if that'd be useful.

Following up on my last post about essay structures (Narrative vs. Montage): here's how to actually get from 'I have no idea what to write about' to a solid draft, plus how to revise once you have one. A lot of this comes from techniques and videos I found genuinely useful during my own application process.

Brainstorming exercises, depending on which structure you're leaning toward:

• 5 Things Exercise (for Montage essays): List 5 things in your life that somehow connect. The connection itself is often the theme.
• Tangible objects: Think of a physical object that represents meaningful memories or moments in your life. This is a strong foundation for a montage essay specifically.
• 21 Details: Write down 21 random facts about yourself. The first several will probably be obvious; push through, because the facts that come later (15+) tend to get more specific and unusual. That's often where the most interesting, uncommon topics hide.
• Two lists: Things you love, and things you know a lot about / are genuinely great at.

Questions that can help surface a topic:

1. Is there a story you love to tell?
2. Do you have a tradition in your family?
3. What's a class you'd love to take — or love to teach?
4. "If you really knew me, you would know ___"
5. What keeps you up at night?

After all this, just pick something and try writing it. You genuinely won't know if a topic works until you're a few paragraphs in.

On revision (the part most people underrate):
A complete draft isn't a perfect one. It just needs to (1) actually achieve what you're trying to say, (2) be clear to someone who's never met you (i.e., an admissions officer), and (3) fit realistically within your deadline and how much weight that specific essay carries in your application.

Revision has two real phases, and conflating them is a common mistake:

• Review: just reading and noting what is and isn't working. Ideally with some distance from when you wrote it (right after finishing, you're too close to it to see flaws clearly).
• Alteration: actually turning those notes into real changes. This is different from editing (grammar, typos, formatting). Trying to do both at once usually means doing neither well.

A method I've found genuinely useful for self-review: read your draft four separate times, each with a different mindset

1. Assume it's the best thing you've ever written. Note down why that's true.
2. Assume it's not very good. Note down why.
3. Imagine you're an expert in the field reading. What would they say, and why?
4. Go back through all three and decide which points you actually agree or disagree with.

This forces you out of "too close to my own writing" mode and into something closer to how an actual reader will experience it.

One last thing worth knowing: a genuinely strong essay often takes 7-8 rounds of real revision, not 1-2. That's normal, not a sign something's wrong.

Happy to answer questions if you're stuck on brainstorming, revision, or anywhere in the application/essay-making process. I'm a current GW BS/MD student taking on my first four students at no cost for mentorship, essay help, and application framing while I build up my practice. When we end up working together, this post is honestly a great thing to have already read beforehand, so we can skip the basics and jump straight into applying it to your actual essay. Feel free to DM me if that'd be useful!

I've been seeing a lot applicants get stuck brainstorming because they're missing the actual structural options available. There are really two proven ways to build a strong personal statement:

1) Narrative: a challenge (or series of challenges) and what you did with them. What makes this work isn't how dramatic the challenge is. The quality of insight and reflection afterward is what makes it meaningful. Colleges aren't looking for the most heartbroken applicant; they're looking for someone who knows how to think. You can absolutely write about a hard time in your life, just be careful not to let the essay characterize you by the trauma. Characterize yourself by what you did with it.

2) Montage: a set of experiences or qualities connected by a theme, rather than one continuous story. The best montage essays are both uncommon (something that stands out) and elastic (shows different sides of you). A simple formula that tends to work: a personal object or place that's meaningful to you, layered with a "classical" theme (vulnerability, perseverance, curiosity, etc.) plus something more unique to your specific life that almost no one else could write.

What to avoid regardless of structure: a story with no real reflection or takeaway. This is the single most common issue: writing about what happened without showing how you think. Also worth knowing: some EC topics are so common they need something genuinely distinctive to stand out. That doesn't mean you can't write about them, but it does mean generic treatment of them blends in fast. 

Happy to answer questions if anyone's stuck on which structure fits their story! I'm a current GW BS/MD student taking on my first four students at no cost for mentorship, essay help, and application framing while I build up my practice. Feel free to DM me if that'd be useful

Now that the Common App has officially opened up, I wanted to share how I went about making my supplements program-specific, which was one of the factors that led to my BS/MD acceptance at GWU. 

One disclaimer first: you don't want to change who you are just to fit with what a program wants from its med students, as that defeats the whole point. What I'd recommend instead is presenting the aspects of yourself (still genuinely you) that align well with that specific program.

Here's the process I used while applying, and how I'd approach it now:

When I was applying, I looked into vlogs and content from current medical students talking about their programs. They often discussed what their curriculum emphasized compared to a standard med school curriculum. Not every program has a strong distinct theme like this, but some genuinely do. I remember watching a video from a GW med student who talked about how heavily the curriculum focused on public health. That made sense as GWU, being in the nation's capital, places a lot of emphasis on public health and policy, and admissions there tends to look for students who are passionate about that space.

For GW's version of the "why this program" essay, I made sure to connect my healthcare experiences directly to that focus. Specifically, I wrote about an experience I had as an EMT, where a patient refused care out of fear of the hospital bill, and I used what I learned from that moment to explain my motivation to help drive change in health policy.

Here are some other program themes you may want to consider in your application process, definitely do your own research if you are applying to these programs:

• UMKC 6 year BA/MD: Their structural theme is the docent system, which emphasized a mentorship-driven clinical education that is built around small teams rather than large traditional lectures in the pre-clinical years. 
• Brown PLME: liberal arts integration, of course with the open curriculum (lots of info about this on their website). Additionally, their med school emphasizes community over competition, and they prize diversity in their med school class. Their core idea is that collaboration among diverse individuals, who understand medicine within a social context is what a successful medical environment looks like. They also have a Scholarly Concentrations Program, where students can tailor their medical education around their personal interests (definitely do more research on this if you’re applying to PLME!)
• Case Western PPSP: maybe not as strong a “theme” as the others, but has emphasis on independent research and strength of medical opportunities for students. Students are able to co-author papers, or design independent projects under faculty who serve as mentors. Also has very strong clinical/research opportunities within walking distance: Cleveland Clinic's Center for Reproductive Medicine (fertility research), the Free Medical Clinic of Greater Cleveland (volunteering), MetroHealth Medical Center (ER experience), and the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center (veteran care).

I’m sure there’s definitely a lot more programs that have themes, but I hope this will give you a decent start into thinking about this for your supplements. If you guys have any questions about this or the BS/MD application process in general, please comment, or send me a DM.