u/laparotomyenjoyer

Hi all, 

I was fortunate enough to be accepted to a medical school this year. My cGPA is lower, so I have reason to believe my personal statements played a larger role in my acceptance. I have had some people reach out and ask me to review ECs and personal statements. 

After reviewing 10-20 personal statements, I have some general thoughts/themes that I have noticed. I thought I would share them in case it helps anyone else while writing theirs. 

Disclaimer: I do not proclaim to be an expert, I think a lot of the admissions process is luck based, and I may be entirely wrong about anything I write. Please do not treat what I have written as gospel. I am also not selling any services and have never charged to review a personal statement.

1. Avoid broad abstractions. Statements such as “Ever since I was a child, I have always been fascinated by the human body and driven by a deep desire to help people.” Or something to that effect. They eat up limited character count, don’t provide the reviewer much about you specifically, and are uninteresting in the world of medical school applications. That character count would be far better spent describing the experiences you have no doubt worked so hard on. 

2. Specificity is important. For example, reviewers will read potentially thousands of statements discussing people’s volunteer experiences. Specify where you volunteered, name the place, name a person even. If you are trying to make a point or connection about your experience, the specificity makes the statement unique and more memorable. 

3. Avoid awkward phrasing. Many times, while reading statements I had to reread lines several times before understanding what they were trying to say, let alone convey. Admissions committees will be reading thousands of statements; I'd guess they don't spend long trying to decipher an unclear line. I found this particularly common when people tried to write more ‘fancy’ if that makes sense. Having another person read your statement, or reading it aloud, is a great way to combat this. 

4. Answer the question. It is no good writing a beautiful response for it to not directly address the question being asked. When writing mine I found myself constantly going back to ask myself if I was answering the question. 

5. Avoid typos. Surprisingly, I found quite a few typos and grammatical errors (especially incorrect use of semi-colons). It’s easy to think you don’t have them, but please read through carefully to avoid them. 

If you’ve read this far through, thank you. I hope that at least something here is helpful to those of you writing your personal statements. Good luck everyone!

edit: I do not do paid reviews for applications (nor will i accept money if you offer it) but I am happy to review them for free as my time allows :)

Hi all,
I’m looking for a tablet to use with the Jetclock Air application. It will not be used for anything else. I care about a good image, a sleek device, and a device that does well being constantly plugged in.

Budget is pretty flexible, I previously looked at the Lenovo Legion but wondered if there is a better or cheaper option. Hard budget I guess would be 500USD.

Thank you so much in advance.

Just bought a 65” XR8B for an apartment I’m moving into soon. Ideally wanted a 65” Bravia 8ii but it felt just a little too expensive. I saw this XR8B open box (best buy’s own) for $960cad ($684usd) and bought it because I thought it was a great deal, but now I’m worried it won’t be bright enough for day use in an apartment with large windows, as I keep reading that the 8ii is superbly bright, much more so than the 8i (same panel as XR8B from what I understand).

Should I have ponied up for the 8ii or should this suffice? I have 30 days to return it. It’s my first TV. Thank you in advance.

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