"personalized" personal statements

I don't know anyone who wrote multiple personal statements in ortho aside from those who had separate ones for gensurg/prelim backup programs. I'd just write 1. I doubt half of the interviewers even read the PS.

Some programs specifically request certain information either be included in the PS or a second PS be sent with that information.

For some of the programs that requested this, I did it and for some I did not. It did not seem to affect whether I got an interview there or not. And given the large number of programs most people apply to, it is not reasonable to do it for all of them. If there is two or three programs you really like, don't waste time writing them a special PS, go do an away rotation there and knock it out of the park. That will mean infinitely more for your chances of matching.

I did it. I had something like 25 personal statements. They were generic, with the school's name inserted in a few sites. I only did it at the top programs I applied and had a generic one for the rest. It took me all of like 30 minutes to just use find and replace in microsoft word.

It may or may not have helped, but it was mentioned positively on a few interviews.

I think you should do it. Lots of programs are regionally based, so make sure they know why you want to be there: inlaws, siblings in the city, it helps. Also, if you are in a region for med school other than where you grew up, they may not know that and thnk that you would not be interested in the midwest, northeast etc unless you mention it to them. It is free to tell them this stuff, it doesnt take long, and if they dont read it, then you havent lost more than a few minutes of your time. And this whole process takes much more than a few minutes. It is so labor and time intensive, if you can add a little about why you are interested in the program, go for it. Having gone thru the process, I was amazed at how sensitive these places are that you dont really want to go there. You really want to go where you can match, but these fancy hospitals in these amzing med schools are a bit insecure. Give them a reason to interview you and know that you want to be there. My two cents.

I think you should do it. Lots of programs are regionally based, so make sure they know why you want to be there]I also agree with this. If you have any ties to a region whatsoever, make sure to emphasize this.

Ditto. Especially when applying across the great divide that is the Mississippi. From my experience, it's apparently unfathomable to some folks that you could actually move across it.

Hrm. I highly disagree with most of the above posts. You will have to do it for a few specific programs that require it, but otherwise I would not recommend it for the following reasons:

1. If you personalize it like above, you risk the unfortunate error of putting another school/region's name in, and then getting rejected very easily. Or worse off, get to the interview, and then find out it happened by one of the interviewers, and have them point it out. By that token, you will have most likely tanked your interview, wasted a weekend, money, and even more probable, wasted an interview you could have spent somewhere else. I know, this sounds rediculous, but when you apply to 50-70 programs, there is a high probability of this happening.

2. Any time that you may have spent working on customizing could have been spent making your "generic" PS better. In my opinion, this is a better use of your time.

3. Most people barely read the personal statement. If anything, it only hurts you vs helps you. If you have an error in a PS b/c you made 30 of them, that will hurt you. If you say something about the region or school which may be untrue or even more likely, not how the application reader feels about their institution, it may hurt you. Consider the following: If I was at a middle of the road program, and thought it was more of a blue collar program, and someone said that they liked our place b/c it is partially academic or whatever.. I'd be like.. wtf is this guy talking about? We have NO academics? But then the program director may be like.. oh yeah.. we definitely are academic, I like this guy...

I'd rather not make a point about something to risk a negative evaluation versus try to impress.

..............

Remember everyone, the point of the application process is to be memorable, but not stand out. You're going about it the wrong way if you think your application should shock and wow.. That doesn't work, and usually backfires. I will give you an example.

When I was applying (the first time around) I put in my application that I was an avid surfer.. which is true. I thought it would be a good idea to put that because it would make me standout. I thought it would be interesting... Guess what, that idea worked.. everyone thought that was interesting on my interviews.. But you know what they also said? They said.. we have no surfing around here.

You know that during the ranking sessions they looked at me and said 'what about the surfer dude'... 'oh, he'll never come here b/c he can't surf'.. or worse yet 'ahh, you know surfers, they're lazy'... at that point it didn't matter how good my application was or whatever.. but I made the mistake of putting something on there.

The application folks want to see the cliche. They want to see the guy who worked his butt off, did sports medicine, was on a sports team in HS/college, etc... Better yet, they want that self-rightous stuff like 'heal the children of africa' type trips (which are nice, and very good on the behalf of whomever did them.. but some people take too much stock in things like that..)

nevertheless, the key is to fit in with the group. They want everyone to fit in.. remember that.

We're medical people.. by default, we have a little obsessive compulsive sense to our work ethic. This is a good thing, but naturally, we think, if we have the time, let's go ahead and spend 100 of hours on the application making everything perfect. Naturally, we want to do the same thing for the personal statement. I'm telling you, you're better off analyzing the hell out of your application and including what you think has the most high-yield.. sounds impressive, but at the same time, fits in with the orthopaedic crowd.

When I applied, I thought I was the cats meow because I ran a computer consulting company. I had a multi-million dollar business with dozens of employees... Do you know how many people asked about that? They didn't care. It had nothing to do with orthopaedics in their minds. They couldn't relate. And here I thought that it spoke to my intelligence, my gotoitness or my work ethic.. nope.. no one cared. If that wasn't a humbling experience.. I don't know what is
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Anyway, that was a little advice plus a little rant.. to show you how crazy this process is. Just go through your application as is, and make it the best you can. Make it the most concise and be done with it. Trust me, that's the best manuver.

Hrm. I highly disagree with most of the above posts. You will have to do it for a few specific programs that require it, but otherwise I would not recommend it for the following reasons]

I completely disagree with not writing personalized PS. Sure, you make good points but with ortho getting more and more competitive, you need to do everything to increase your chances at a given program (especially programs you are very interested in).

I applied to quite a few programs and wrote 20+ "personalized" PS to the programs I was most interested in. I added a short 3-4 sentence paragraph on the end of my PS stating my interest in the specific program, any family ties I had to the area, and concluded with a generic "it would be an honor to train at ____ university."

If you spend the extra time (for me, it only amounted to an extra 3-4 hours total) doing this, I feel it can give you an extra edge (no matter how small) over someone with similar stats when the committee is deciding who to interview. The truth is, programs want people who want to be at their program. Your number one job during interviews is to convince a program 1) why you want to come to their program, 2) why you would be a great addition to their program, and 3) that you would fit in well at their program. Why not start by including a little bit of that in your personal statement?

Specific points that I also disagree with are:

1) Sure, people will tell you there is always the possibility that the wrong PS will get sent to the wrong school. If you use common sense and keep your PS organized by saving them as something you can keep track of, it is easy to ensure you are sending the correct PS to the correct program.

2) If you haven't started it already, start working on your PS now. You want to have your PS done and proof-read by as many people as possible before ERAS even opens up. I agree that you want to spend as much time as possible getting your generic PS perfect, but spending a few extra hours personalizing it should amount to a very small fraction of your time spent on the whole thing.

3) People read your personal statement....IF it's good. The argument that nobody reads your PS is garbage - almost every interview I attended told me they really enjoyed my PS and it was something they remembered about me while going through applications.

Although it appears that we don't agree, ROL and I are in agreement.

If you're going to do it for a few programs (1-20) that you are really interested in, it's okay. For me, I applied to over 70 programs. I wouldn't attempt to do it for 70+ programs.

If you're going to do it, make sure you have something genuine to say that shows you really know something about the programs.

For me, I maybe only knew about 20 of the programs I applied to (in depth.)

I was happy to match anywhere, but at the same token, if I had my choice, I would not be thrilled (on a personal level) to goto 20+ programs. This would lead to ingenuine (word?) BS personal statements. I personally, am not a fan of doing something like that, and I would never want someone to read through my BS and not grant me an interview based on that.

So caution to the wise.
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