US personal statement examples, marked line by line.
Two primary essays, one for medicine on AMCAS and one for dentistry on ADEA AADSAS, each in a strong draft and a weak one, marked by our team to show what a reviewer looks for. Then real secondary prompts from named schools for the 2026–27 cycle, with what each kind of question is testing and how to reuse your material honestly.
Last reviewed November 8, 2026 by the NextGenMedPrep Admissions Team. Editorial policy
An AMCAS Personal Comments Essay, marked
AAMC asks you to explain why you want to go to medical school, in up to 5,300 characters with spaces. Here is one applicant’s essay in a strong draft and a weak one, marked by our team to show what a reviewer looks for. Switch drafts to see what changes, or pick one kind of mark to follow it through.
Personal Comments Essay
AMCAS · MD · 2027 cycle · Illustrative example
5,011 of 5,300 characters
Spaces count. Plain text only.
Reviewer's marks
The task, in the AAMC’s words
5,011 characters
Explain why you want to go to medical school.
Among the questions the AAMC suggests †: “Why have you selected the field of medicine? What motivates you to learn more about medicine?” The same essay goes to every AMCAS school you designate. † The AAMC’s site blocks automated reading, so this comes from search excerpts of its official page. Check the page itself before you rely on it.
1
Works. Answers the AAMC’s suggested questions on why medicine and what motivates you to learn more, without quoting either, through scenes at the chair and a question the applicant is still working on. Totals and titles stay in Work/Activities; the only dates here are the ones that explain the weak semester. No school is named: the same essay goes to every school designated.
Before I put a needle in anyone's arm, I put two fingers on the fistula and feel for the buzz.2A working fistula hums under the skin, and through a stethoscope it sounds like water rushing through a pipe3. One morning last winter, a man whose arm I had cannulated dozens of times held it out to me, and it was quiet.
2
Works. Opens on a routine, not a rescue: Reliability and Dependability, one of the AAMC’s Premed Competencies, shown rather than claimed.
3
Style. One plain sentence translates the technical detail, so “quiet” lands when the paragraph stops on it.
He said it was fine. It had been fine on Saturday, the waiting room was cold, and could we please get started, because his ride was coming at ten. We were already behind, the nurse was busy with a patient whose blood pressure had dropped, and I wanted to believe him. I didn't cannulate. I asked the nurse to check his arm when she could4. She felt it, listened, and called the nephrologist, and my patient spent the rest of the morning at a vascular access center instead of in his chair. They cleared the clot in time to save the fistula. He was back that afternoon, annoyed that I had made him miss his ride.
4
Works. Stays inside a technician’s job: notice and report, while the nurse assesses and the nephrologist decides. Readers compare clinical claims with Work/Activities. No name, age or diagnosis, so no one could identify the patient.
The nurses who trained me never told me to be brave about it. They told me to do the same check the same way on every patient, so that when something is off I notice it before I can talk myself out of it. Most of the job is like that. I set up machines at five in the morning, weigh people, take blood pressures every half hour, and watch for the small changes the nurses need to hear about. I have learned who wants to talk for four hours and who wants the game turned up. I took the job because it paid more than the campus library and I was covering part of my tuition. I stayed because I liked being the person who notices.
It cost me something at first, and my transcript shows it.5 I started at the clinic in January of my sophomore year, working three early shifts a week, and kept organic chemistry and physics on my schedule because I didn't want to fall behind. My grades that spring were the lowest I have earned. The job wasn't really the problem. My refusal to admit I couldn't do all of it at once was. That summer I moved to the Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday shifts so my class mornings stayed free, started working problem sets with a study group instead of alone at midnight, and went to office hours before I was lost instead of after. Every semester since has been stronger.
5
Works. The AAMC invites comment on “significant fluctuations in your academic record that are not explained elsewhere in your application.” This does it in order: the fact, a cause the applicant owns, what changed, a record the reader can check. Wider money or family context fits Other Impactful Experiences (up to 1,325 characters).
His wasn't the only ride that mattered. Patients asked to come off the machine early all the time, and for my first year I quietly filed that under not taking treatment seriously6. As a junior I asked our social worker whether I could keep a tally for her, with no names, of every treatment that ended early and the reason in the chart.
6
Works. Admitting a wrong first judgment, then testing it, persuades more than any claim to be open-minded. It shows two of the AAMC’s Premed Competencies, Self-Awareness and Understanding Others.
After two months most of the reasons were the same one: a van that came at a fixed time whether or not someone's four hours were up, and a two-hour wait if they missed it. One woman spent that wait in our lobby after every treatment with a blanket over her knees, because people often leave dialysis cold. Our social worker took the tally to the transit company, and some pickup times changed. The early endings didn't stop, but they dropped enough that the nurses noticed7.
7
Go deeper. An honest result, with no invented numbers. Missing: what it changed in the applicant. When a patient asks to come off early now, what do they say? One sentence would bring the finding back to the chair.
Then I learned that the physiology was part of the same problem. When a treatment is cut short, the fluid that didn't come off is still there next time, so the machine has to pull more of it, faster, and pulling faster makes cramps and drops in blood pressure more likely. Those are exactly what make people ask to come off early8. I found that in a review article our charge nurse printed for me, read it twice on the bus home, and have been asking her and the nephrologist questions ever since. I still don't understand why two patients can lose the same amount of fluid and only one of them crashes9. I would like to.
8
Works. Answers “What motivates you to learn more about medicine?” with a mechanism the applicant traced, then admits what they still don’t understand. An open question shows curiosity better than saying you love to learn.
9
Style. “Crashes” is floor slang. Physicians and faculty read this essay, and “only one of them cramps and gets dizzy” says it plainly.
Watching the nephrologist round is how I found out what I was missing. She reads the same flow sheet I fill in all morning, and then she asks something I wouldn't have thought to ask. Last month a man had been cramping near the end of every treatment, and she asked whether he had been eating more lately. He had. He'd been ill for weeks, and now that his appetite was back he had put on real weight, so the target weight we were pulling him down to had become too low. She raised it, and the cramping stopped. I had written down his cramps every session. I hadn't known what they meant.
That is the gap between my job and the one I want. I can notice that something is wrong and say so. I want the training to understand why it is wrong, and the responsibility for deciding what to do about it10. I have also seen the heaviest part of that responsibility, when a patient and the nephrologist talk about whether dialysis is still worth it, and it has not changed my mind. I don't know yet what kind of medicine I want to practice, but I know I want patients I see more than once.
10
Works. The answer to “Why have you selected the field of medicine?”, specific to a physician: the training to explain what the applicant can only notice, and responsibility for the decision. It never runs down the nurses who trained them.
I still feel for the buzz on every patient, including the man with the ten o'clock ride. He holds his arm out before I ask now, and sometimes he tells me what he thinks I'll find. He is usually right. I want to spend my career listening to patients that closely, and checking anyway.
Reviewer's verdict
Works
7
Go deeper
1
Style
2
Cut or fix
0
A full-length essay built from one job, used well. It answers the AAMC’s suggested questions on why medicine and what motivates you to learn more, through two moments at the chair and a question the applicant is still working on, shows reliability, self-awareness and scientific curiosity in what they do rather than in adjectives, and handles a weak semester in one owned, checkable paragraph. Clinical detail stays inside a technician’s role, no patient can be identified, and the close returns to the opening with something added instead of a summary. To lift it further: say what the transport finding changed in how the applicant works, and trade one piece of slang for plain words.
Illustrative example, written by our team for a fictional dialysis technician. Do not reuse its wording: AMCAS asks you to certify the essay is your own work.
An ADEA AADSAS personal statement, marked
ADEA AADSAS asks one question, “What motivated you to pursue a career in oral health?”, in up to 4,500 characters counting spaces, carriage returns and punctuation. The same treatment: a strong draft and a weak one of the same application.
Personal statement
ADEA AADSAS · Dentistry · 2026–27 cycle · Illustrative example
4,261 of 4,500 characters
Spaces, carriage returns and punctuation all count.
Reviewer's marks
The ADEA AADSAS prompt
4,261 characters
What motivated you to pursue a career in oral health? In your response, you may wish to describe and highlight your strengths, experiences, background, and uniqueness that will contribute to your success in this career.
ADEA AADSAS sends the same essay to every program you apply to, and you cannot edit it once you submit.
1
Works. Answers both halves of the prompt in order without echoing its words: what motivated the applicant (the first three paragraphs) and the strengths, experiences, background and uniqueness they bring (the rest). It names no school and ends on the scene it began with.
The dentist I shadowed at a community health center the summer after my sophomore year started every new patient the same way. Before she picked up an instrument, she asked them to raise their left hand2. "If that goes up, I stop," she said. "Show me." Most people did it once and laughed. One man in his forties raised it slowly, the way you test a step you don't trust. He hadn't seen a dentist in years and had only come in because a molar had kept him up for a week.
2
Works. ADEA’s tips: “Explain a defining moment that helped steer you toward a career in dentistry. Consider using that moment as the focal point of your essay.” This is that moment, and it is unmistakably dental: a patient who can’t speak while being treated.
Before each step she told him what he would feel: cold air, a pinch, then pressure that should not hurt. Halfway through, his hand went up. She had her instruments out of his mouth before it was all the way up, and she waited until he nodded. A few minutes later he raised it again, and from where I stood behind her I was fairly sure he only wanted to know whether she would stop a second time3. She did, with no sigh and no look at the clock. He let her finish.
3
Works. Observation stays observation: the applicant says where they stood and how sure they were, and claims no part in the care. The small guess shows the attention to people the essay depends on.
I have stuttered since I was five.4 By high school I had learned to swap words I couldn't get through for ones I could, and most people never noticed, but I know what it is like to have something to say and watch the other person decide they have heard enough. A patient lying back with a mouth full of instruments has the same problem. That dentist had solved it before she started. Until that afternoon, dentistry had been a sensible plan for a biology major who liked careful work. That was the first time I wanted it.
4
Works. The prompt invites your “background, and uniqueness”, and this is both, told plainly and without self-pity (ADEA lists “Emphasizing the negative” among things to avoid). It also explains why the stop signal mattered to this applicant.
I spent the rest of college testing that with more shadowing5, and since graduating I have worked full time as a dental assistant at the same health center, often beside the dentist I first shadowed. Assisting has shown me how much of dentistry happens before and after the part patients remember. I set up and break down trays, keep the tooth dry, pass instruments, and sterilize everything we use. In my first month I kept letting the suction tip drift onto patients' tongues, which makes people gag, and the senior assistant moved my hand three times in one morning before she stopped needing to6. I have been corrected more in this job than in four years of college, and nearly all of it has been about a few millimeters.
5
Works. Shadowing gets half a sentence. Hours, offices and dates go in Experiences, which has its own Dental Shadowing categories, and ADEA lists “Summarizing your resume” among things to avoid.
6
Works. Hand skills appear where they belong: inside real work, with a mistake and its correction. Neither the prompt nor ADEA’s statement tips ask you to prove dexterity. A correction taken well also shows reaction to criticism, one of the attributes evaluators rate on ADEA’s 2026–27 letter of evaluation.
What keeps me wanting this is how much of a problem a dentist can see and fix in one visit. I have watched our dentist find a cavity on an X-ray, show it to the patient on the screen, numb and fill the tooth, then check the bite with a strip of blue paper7 and adjust it until the marks were even and her teeth met the way they had before, all inside an hour. I thought seriously about medicine in college, and I still admire it. But the moment I kept wanting to be part of was this one, where the person who finds the problem fixes it and checks the result before the patient leaves.
7
Style. Plain words for a technical step: “a strip of blue paper”, not “articulating paper”. ADEA: “Don’t use jargon, clichés or big phrases that you would not use in daily conversation.”
I have also seen the other side: patients who only come in when something hurts, and teeth that could have been saved two years earlier. That is the part of oral health I most want to change8. Many of our patients have put off care for years, because of cost or fear or a bad experience they can still describe in detail, and they arrive braced for a lecture. Our dentist asks what they want fixed first and builds the plan from there, so they have a reason to come back. For one man that meant a front tooth before a job interview, and the molars after. I want to practice in a place like this, where people who have been away a long time can get an appointment9.
8
Go deeper. The right instinct, stated and left. What has the applicant seen work, or helped with, that prevents the toothache instead of treating it? One example would turn an intention into evidence.
9
Works. ADEA: “Dentistry is a service-focused profession and dental school admissions officers look for students who demonstrate their promise to serve the community throughout their lifetimes.” A year of this work and a plain statement of where to practice show that promise.
I think I will be good at the talking, which still surprises me to write. Our patients are often nervous or numb, and it can take them a while to get a sentence out. Numb lips make everyone sound a little like me for the rest of the afternoon. I wait. I don't finish their sentences, because I know how that feels, and waiting means I hear things the schedule would rush past. This spring a teenager who had canceled twice told me, after a long pause, that her last filling had started before the numbing worked. I told the dentist, who gave her more time and more anesthetic10, and she has come to every appointment since.
10
Works. ADEA asks you to “Discuss how you would contribute to the profession and patient care.” Here it is a habit, waiting, with a result a reader can see, and the applicant passes what they heard to the dentist instead of acting on it.
Our dentist now lets me explain the hand signal to new patients while she reviews their X-rays. I stutter on the word "stop" about half the time. Nobody has minded. They raise their hand, I wait, and then we start.
Reviewer's verdict
Works
8
Go deeper
1
Style
1
Cut or fix
0
A full-length statement that answers the ADEA AADSAS prompt the way ADEA’s own tips suggest: one defining moment as the focal point, a personal background told without self-pity, a year of real work in place of a list of hours, and a concrete account of what the applicant will bring to patients. Hand skills appear once, inside the work. It names no school and could go to every program. To lift it further: back the line about prevention with one example.
Illustrative example, written by our team for a fictional dental assistant. Do not reuse its wording: ADEA AADSAS asks you to acknowledge that all work is your own.
AACOMAS gives you 5,300 characters, counting spaces, carriage returns and punctuation, and publishes no prompt. It asks you to keep the statement general, because the same essay goes to every program you apply to.
Show why osteopathic medicine. Three items on AACOM’s list are about osteopathic medicine itself: motivation for it, knowledge of it, and time spent shadowing an osteopathic physician.
Put the philosophy in your own words. AACOM’s first tenet is “The body is a unit; the person is a unit of body, mind, and spirit.” Describe something you saw that fits it, such as OMM (also called OMT) used on a patient, rather than reciting it.
Texas is different. UNT Health Fort Worth TCOM and Sam Houston State’s College of Osteopathic Medicine take applications through TMDSAS, with a 5,000-character essay.
What osteopathic medical schools look for
AACOM’s own list, word for word.
Are well-rounded
Demonstrate strong communication and interpersonal skills
Have a record of community service
Have a record of leadership
Have some clinical experience
Have participated in a variety of extracurricular activities
Come from diverse backgrounds
Are motivated to pursue a career in osteopathic medicine
Possess knowledge of osteopathic medicine
Have shadowed an osteopathic physician
The last three are the ones an MD essay sent unchanged is least likely to show.
After your primary application is verified and sent, schools ask their own questions. These are real ones for the 2026–27 cycle, quoted from four schools’ own pages and grouped by what they ask. Schools can change their prompts each year, so read your schools’ pages for your cycle before you draft.
Not everyone is invited. Case Western’s 2026–27 invitations went only to applicants with a verified AMCAS application and an MCAT score of 502 or higher.
They arrive in summer. Case Western planned its invitations for the week of July 13, 2026, and Cincinnati for mid-July onward. UCSF Dentistry asks its questions inside ADEA AADSAS itself.
The unit changes. Case Western and Cincinnati count characters, spaces included; Texas Tech counts words, and some of its questions list no limit.
The four schools quoted here
MD · AMCAS
Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine
Cycle
2026-2027 Application Cycle (page updated June 3, 2026)
Counting
Characters: “spaces are counted as characters in our secondary application platform.”
Invitations
Emailed throughout the week of July 13, 2026, to applicants with a verified AMCAS application and an MCAT score of 502 or higher.
Each prompt is quoted from the school’s page as it read on November 8, 2026. The advice beside each group is ours.
A challenge, a setback or adversity
What it tests
How you respond when something goes wrong, and whether you learn from it. Case Western asks outright for how you got through it and what you learned about yourself.
How to answer it (our advice)
Pick a real difficulty of a size you can explain in the space. Spend most of the words on what you did and what changed in you, and end on a habit you still use.
Case Western: Personal Challenge
2,000 characters · required
“Please describe a significant personal challenge you have faced that helped shape you as a person. Examples may include a moral or ethical dilemma, a situation of personal adversity, or a hurdle in your life that you worked hard to overcome. Please include how you got through the experience and what you learned about yourself as a result.”
Texas Tech (TTUHSC)
No limit listed
“Describe a meaningful setback in your academic, professional, or personal journey. How did you respond, and how has that experience shaped the habits, skills, and mindset you have developed to succeed in medical school?”
Texas Tech (TTUHSC)
200 words
“Have you experienced any hardship or adversity; personally or professionally? If yes, please share your experience with us.”
Health and the conditions of a life
What it tests
Whether you have seen how a person’s circumstances shape their health, and whether it changed how you think. It rewards one specific observation over a survey of social issues.
How to answer it (our advice)
Start from one person or one moment you saw yourself. Say what you had assumed, what you saw instead, and what you now do or notice because of it.
Case Western: Context of Care
1,500 characters · required
“Describe an experience (or experiences) that changed how you understand the relationship between a person’s health and the conditions of their life.”
Why this school, and what you would bring
What it tests
Whether you know what this school does and can show that your record already points toward it. Generic praise fails here.
How to answer it (our advice)
Use the school’s own pages: name a program, a value or a patient population, and tie each one to something you have done. If a sentence still works with another school’s name in it, rewrite it.
Cincinnati: Mission Fit
Page says “a total of 2000 characters” · required
“Describe your interest in the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. Which opportunities or resources would you pursue as a student, and why are they important to your goals?”
UCSF Dentistry
1,500 characters · required
“Why do you want to join the UCSF community? Please state briefly how you will contribute to the UCSF School of Dentistry.”
UCSF Dentistry
1,500 characters · required
“What is important to you in selecting a dental school? How will you make your decision about which school to attend?”
Texas Tech (TTUHSC)
No limit listed
“TTUHSC has a values-based culture. Its core values are One Team, Kindhearted, Integrity, Visionary, and Beyond Service. Choose one core value that you believe represents your greatest strength. Explain why you chose this value and how it will contribute to your success and impact in medical school.”
Texas Tech (TTUHSC)
100 words
“Do you consider yourself from West Texas or as having West Texas ties? If yes, what town or county did you reside in, or what other factors would you cite?”
Something in your record a reader might worry about
What it tests
Honesty and ownership, and evidence that the problem is behind you. A plain explanation reads better than a defense.
How to answer it (our advice)
State what happened in a sentence, take responsibility for your part, say what you changed, and point to the record since. Where a school allows “N/A” and nothing applies, use it.
Cincinnati: Personal Growth
Page says “a total of 2000 characters” · required
“Discuss any elements of your application that you feel might be concerning to the Admissions Committee. (This could include explanation of metric trends, institutional actions, legal violations, etc.). You may answer N/A if there are no concerns you would like to discuss.”
Texas Tech (TTUHSC)
250 words
“Have you experienced any road bumps in your academic career? (low academic performance, dropping, retaking, or failing courses, etc.) If yes, please explain your circumstance.”
Cincinnati
Re-applicants only
“Are you a UCCOM re-applicant? Explain how you and your application have changed since your previous submission, and tell us what you have learned along the way.”
Your path: the time before medical school, and after it
What it tests
Purpose. A gap year read as a plan, and a career goal specific enough to be believable without pretending you have chosen a specialty.
How to answer it (our advice)
Say what you did or will do, and why. For a career question, describe the setting and the patients more than a job title, and keep it consistent with the rest of your application.
Case Western: Gap Year(s), optional
1,000 characters
“If applicable, please reflect on the time you are taking between college graduation and medical school matriculation, including why you chose to take a gap/growth year(s) and what you will be doing or have done during this time.”
Case Western: Career Goals
1,000 characters
Lerner College (5-year) applicants
“What does your ideal career entail fifteen years after medical school graduation?”
Texas Tech (TTUHSC)
100 words
“Please share with us your ideal practice. For example: Where would you practice? Who would your patients be? What would your specialty be?”
Anything else you want us to know
What it tests
Whether you can judge what a reader still needs. It is a place for context the rest of your application does not hold, not for another essay.
How to answer it (our advice)
Use it only for something new and relevant: a circumstance, an update or an explanation. If you have nothing to add, leave an optional question blank rather than repeat yourself.
Case Western: Additional Information, optional
2,000 characters
“Is there any further information that you wish to share with the Admissions Committee that may not be captured in the rest of your application?”
UCSF Dentistry: Optional question
5,000 characters
“Please use this space to tell us anything additional that you believe is relevant to your application for admission.”
Reusing material honestly
You will answer many prompts from a handful of experiences, and that is fine. What matters is that each answer starts from the question it was given.
Reuse the experience, not the paragraph. One role can answer a challenge prompt and a context-of-care prompt, but they ask different things, so write each answer from its own prompt.
Do not repeat your primary. AAMC’s advice for the primary essay holds here too: “Try not to duplicate information provided elsewhere in the application.”
Fit each school’s limit and unit, and read every answer for another school’s name before you send it.
Keep it yours. Case Western’s page expects “original writing that reflects their unique ideas and experiences.” Anything you submit can come up at interview.
Illustrative example: a fictional applicant who ran the Saturday intake desk at a free clinic, opening answers to two of Case Western’s 2026–27 prompts.
Case Western · Personal Challenge · 2,000 characters
Asks for a challenge that shaped you, how you got through it, and what you learned about yourself.
The first Saturday I ran the intake desk alone, I sent a man home after a three-hour wait because his paperwork had no proof of address, and I was sure the rule was the rule. By the time I learned the clinic made exceptions for people without a fixed address, he had gone.
It opens on the applicant’s own mistake, because the prompt is about what they did next: the rest of the answer covers the month spent learning every exception, and the habit of asking before saying no.
Case Western · Context of Care · 1,500 characters
Asks how an experience changed your understanding of a person’s health and the conditions of their life.
A man at our intake desk told me he had stopped taking his insulin in July. He had not forgotten it: the shelter where he slept had no refrigerator he was allowed to use. Until then I had read “nonadherent” on a chart as a choice.
Same desk, a different moment. This prompt is about what the applicant saw and how it changed what they understand, so the opening puts the patient’s circumstances first.
Neither opening repeats a sentence from this applicant’s primary essay or Work/Activities entries. Each starts from its own prompt.
Questions about US example essays
It is capped at 5,300 characters, spaces included: a character count, not a word count. AAMC’s own pages describe the length differently (about one page in one place, about one and a half single-spaced pages in another), so go by the count, which AMCAS enforces. Use the space the essay needs: a complete essay a little under the cap beats one padded to reach it.
AAMC says the essay is where you explain why you want to go to medical school. Among the questions its 2027 Workbook suggests: “Why have you selected the field of medicine? What motivates you to learn more about medicine?” It also suggests saying what you want schools to know that the application does not show elsewhere, and that the essay can cover unique hardships, challenges or obstacles, and “significant fluctuations in your academic record that are not explained elsewhere in your application”. Treat these as starting points, not a checklist.
Yes: “What motivated you to pursue a career in oral health? In your response, you may wish to describe and highlight your strengths, experiences, background, and uniqueness that will contribute to your success in this career.” The limit is 4,500 characters, and spaces, carriage returns and punctuation all count. The four Texas dental schools use TMDSAS instead, with a 5,000-character essay and a new dental prompt for Entry Year 2027.
Not unchanged. AACOMAS has the same 5,300 limit and publishes no prompt, but AACOM says osteopathic schools look for students who are motivated to pursue a career in osteopathic medicine, know what it is, and have shadowed an osteopathic physician. An essay that never mentions osteopathic medicine shows none of that. Keep your material, and add a real reason for the DO path, such as something you saw while shadowing a DO, in your own words.
It depends on your list, and not every school invites everyone: for 2026–27, Case Western invited only applicants with a verified AMCAS application and an MCAT score of 502 or higher. Each school sets its own questions and limits. Case Western’s four-year MD program asks two required questions (2,000 and 1,500 characters) plus optional ones; Cincinnati asks two, with what its page calls “a total of 2000 characters”; Texas Tech counts words. Case Western’s page set its invitations for the week of July 13, 2026, and Cincinnati’s for mid-July onward.
Reuse your experiences and your research, not your paragraphs. Two schools can ask about a challenge in different words and at different lengths, and an answer written for one prompt rarely answers another well. Rewrite from each prompt, trim to that school’s own limit and unit, and check every answer for another school’s name before you submit it.
Name specifics from the school’s own pages (a program, a clinical site, a stated value or the population it serves) and connect each one to something you have already done. Texas Tech, for example, asks you to choose one of its core values and explain how it will contribute to your success; Cincinnati asks which opportunities or resources you would pursue, and why. If a sentence would still work with another school’s name in it, rewrite it.
For feedback, within limits; not to write them. The AMCAS certification allows mentors, peers, advisors and AI tools “for brainstorming, proofreading, or editing” as long as your “final submission is a true reflection of my own work and represents my experiences.” Schools can set their own expectations for secondaries: Case Western’s page says large language models “can lead to homogeneity, a lack of authenticity, and minimal reflection in personal writing” and expects original writing. Anything you submit can also come up at interview.
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