Medical Admissions Essay: How Am I Unique? - Continued

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Why Medicine? | How Am I Unique? | How Am I Qualified?

3. This applicant describes the unfortunate circumstances of his childhood. He does so without seeking pity, instead focusing on how these circumstances shaped his character. Here a connection to medicine is natural: "I spent a great deal of time trying to care for my mother, a fact of my young life that I think later on may have subliminally drawn me toward a career in medicine. Besides instilling within me a desire to help others who are ill, my experience with my mother also heightened my sensitivity to other people and the difficulties with which they sometimes must cope." The writer goes on to back up his heightened sensitivity by describing his work assisting a doctor in rural Mexico—itself also a noteworthy experience.

4. This applicant details her commitment to martial arts: "Martial arts and medicine. They seem worlds apart, but they both have played significant roles in my life and for reasons that are surprisingly similar. They both offer challenge, require great discipline, and necessitate a goal-oriented approach." In this case, the activity itself is far from unique, even among the specific population of medical school applicants. Nevertheless, the qualities she has cultivated in her experience and the way she ties them to medicine provide a new dimension to her candidacy. This essay is an effective example of how you can turn even a standard extracurricular activity into a unique strength by using illustrative personal details and an insightful perspective.

Again, these examples are only a few of the possible routes you could take. There are even more obvious routes for which we did not include examples, such as extraordinary talents in athletics or the arts, or extensive work experience in another career. One particularly delicate issue is how to approach diversity. If you are, for example, a minority, foreign, or older applicant, you should not hesitate to use this to your advantage. To do this effectively, however, you need to show how your background has shaped your life in some tangible way and possibly tie that in to how you plan to contribute to the school's community. You should not mention it for its own sake and suggest—even implicitly—that you expect some kind of special attention, because you risk offending the reader or coming across as manipulative.