Sitting down to write your personal statement for residency can feel overwhelming. It's just you and the blank page, and where do you even begin? Keep reading for four tips for writing your personal statement for residency and positioning yourself as a competitive candidate.

Writing Your Personal Statement: 4 Tips for Success

Fact: You're not the only medical student who struggles with this. These pro tips will help you match into your first-pick residency program.

1. Explain Why Your Specialty is Important to You

Program directors want residents who are passionate about the specialty they chose. So, you want to clarify why this specialty is so important to you. Do you have a personal story to share — something that inspired you to go in this direction? Why the deep interest in it? This is something you'll want to highlight in your personal statement.

Here are a few more prompts to get you going:

• Why are you interested in this residency program at this hospital in this city?
• While studying this specialty, what interesting lessons have you learned thus far?
• What do you hope to gain from this residency program?

2. Emphasize Your Clinical Experience

Residency programs are competitive. What makes you different? In your personal statement for residency, you'll want to include things like:

• Volunteer experience (even in your country of origin).
• Hands-on experience.
• Precisely what you do to stay current in medicine in your specialty.

Make it concrete! Fluffy, abstract statements won't mean anything to program directors. Get specific.

3. Give Examples and Prove Your Strengths

If you're interested in pediatrics, it's not enough to say, "Children love me." Why? How do you know? Is there a specific story you can share about a time you connected with a child in a unique way?

What about the feedback you've gotten from your mentors thus far? Have you excelled in a specific way and can share with program directors the exact feedback you've gotten? Have you scored well above average on certain exams or won any awards that your desired program residency might care about?

These are great details to include in your personal statement, in moderation. And on that note...

4. Bonus Tip: Don't Just Rewrite Your CV

Yes, you want to highlight some of the specifics of your clinical experience. However, while you're writing your personal statement, remember that it's not a CV. The program directors already have this, along with your transcript.

Your personal statement is the time to share details they won't get from those other documents. Think of things like your interpersonal skills, your excellent communication, and your motivation for choosing this residency program.

Lastly, we want to leave you with this. Start early. That's a good rule of thumb, in general. If writing your personal statement for residency feels incredibly overwhelming, start early and take it one sentence at a time. In a few weeks, you'll have a complete statement. Don't forget to check the grammar and punctuation, too. (Grammarly is a great tool for this, and it's free!)

You're never on this journey alone. If you need help obtaining a clinical clerkship in preparation for residency, contact CHHA today.