Ultimate Medicine Personal Statement Guide 2024

Personal statement structure

Learn about the best structure of a medicine personal statement as per top scoring medical students and doctors.  Learn how to make a good medicine introduction, talk about work experience and extracurricular activities to stand out in your personal statement. 

How to structure your medical personal statement in 2024

It’s very normal to struggle with how to structure your medical school personal statement - after all, you have a lot to fit into a very small space! There are, of course, various ways that you can structure the piece. Having pooled our collective experience at TheUKCATPeople, we recommend the following tried-and-tested successful medicine personal statement structure and layout:

• Introduction: Why do you want to study medicine?

• Work experience: What experience have you undertaken to explore why a career in medicine might suit you?

• Supra-curricular: How else have you looked into a career in medicine?

• Extracurriculars: What activities do you participate in outside of school and how have these helped you to develop important skills?

• Conclusion: One or two lines to cap off your statement

If you choose to interweave some of these sections, then ensure that you are still covering them all with the required depth - try not to skimp on any! We believe that this is one of the best personal statement templates that allow you to stick to a logical medical personal statement.

How to start a medical personal statement (introduction)

Your introduction is the first impression you will make on the admissions board. They are looking to understand why you have applied to study medicine and select candidates who are passionate and unlikely to drop out when faced with a high workload. 

Remember that they read thousands of medicine personal statement introductions, and you want to stand out from the rest. Try to avoid clichés in your introduction. There are two broad approaches that you can take here, which we believe are the best way to start a personal statement.

1. Talk about a particular experience

You can open your medical school personal statement with an anecdote from either your time as a patient or on work experience. The advantage of this is that it will be totally unique to you. However, if you choose this approach then be careful to ensure that you don’t exaggerate it - most people don’t decide the course of their entire career after a single experience at the age of four, and admissions tutors know this. 

If you choose to reflect on an instance from your work experience, then ensure that you also explain your initial inspiration for wanting to explore what a medical career may entail immediately afterwards.

2. Talk about a passion for science and people

Medicine is often described as the intersection between the sciences and the humanities, but interviewers read this sentence multiple times every single day. You certainly don’t need to have had a medical eureka moment - most people haven’t! 

If you do describe why various passions culminated in a desire to study medicine, however, then be sure to make it unique. It is important this your personal statement addresses why you want to study medicine. Think about the following questions:

• Why are you so interested in science, and caring for people? Did particular experiences prompt this?

• There are numerous careers that combine your interests - having explored a few, what specifically made medicine right for you?

You aren’t going to lose any points for talking about how you came to your decision over time - everyone chooses at some point, and doing so with careful consideration is actually a good thing. Admissions boards are more interested in how motivated you are now than how motivated you were at the start of your journey towards making the decision.

Work Experience Paragraph

It’s not enough to want to study medicine based on your own personal experiences. Admissions boards want to see that you have taken this interest and decided to explore it to make sure that the career really is right for you - mentioning this is also a good way of linking these sections!

It doesn’t matter how much experience you’ve managed to undertake. Everyone’s circumstances are different, and it has been harder than ever to obtain relevant experience during the covid-19 pandemic. 

You should focus less on the content or quantity of what you did (mention this briefly if you like before moving on), and more on what you gained and learnt from it. We recommend that you split this section into two subsections.

Important aspects and positives of medicine

Various aspects of a career in medicine are integral to developing an understanding of it, and it is important to demonstrate that you know what these are. 

You should try to mention as many of the following points as possible: Seeing leadership, good communication skills, teamwork, and empathy. 

These can be dispersed throughout your statement, but in this section, you should talk about specific events that occurred. Instead of mentioning how you “spent 3 days shadowing a GP, and saw the importance of communication between the team,” tell the admissions board about a time when team members had to work together in order to provide the best care possible for a patient with complex, interacting diseases.

Negatives of medicine

It’s great to show that you want to undertake a career in medicine, but it is far from an easy road. Candidates who look at the path ahead through rose-tinted glasses are less likely to think critically about whether it’s for them, and more likely to drop out. 

Admissions boards know this. A key way to stand out from the crowd is to mention a downside of medicine that you saw - for instance, the emotional difficulties or long hours - and to explain why this hasn’t put you off.

This shows that you have a realistic understanding of what a medical career entails, and can also be a great way of transitioning into some of your key values. Perhaps you’re particularly emotionally resilient, or have excellent time management skills?

Supra-curricular paragraph for medicine personal statement

Your supra-curriculars are the other ways that you’ve looked into a career in medicine, beyond work experience. You can use this section to cover points that you missed in the previous section.

Try not to repeat yourself, but instead to build on and enhance what you have already said. Some examples of supra-curricular activities that you may want to talk about include:

• Volunteering: Have you volunteered in a role that involves caring for people, educating people or another relevant skill?

• Courses: Have you undertaken any courses to enhance your understanding of medicine? Massively open online courses are a great way of doing this.

Books and further research: What books have you read to further your understanding of medicine? What lessons have these taught you?

Some recommendations include Paul Kalanithi’s “When Breath Becomes Air,” which explores the contrast between life as doctor and patient, and Atul Gawande’s books such as “Better” and “Complications”, in which each chapter focuses on a different story with a key lesson that you can discuss.

Extra-Curricular paragraph - medical personal statement

This section is your chance to show off all of the activities that you participate in outside of your academics. Similarly to the section on work experience, you should aim to spend less time on the logistical details and more time on what you have learnt.

A good structure is to mention an activity that you do, perhaps briefly something that you have achieved in that activity, and to spend more time on what you have learnt.

You can use this section to add cohesion to your personal statement. For instance, if you have highlighted leadership as a particularly important skill in an earlier section then you should come back to it here by reflecting on a time when you learnt a valuable lesson about leadership in one of your extracurricular activities.

Remember that it’s not enough to say that you improved a particular skill; you must show how. For instance, you may have learnt that a good leader needs to display confidence to inspire their team. These are the kinds of extra-curricular activities in the UK that will help you to stand out in writing your medical personal statement in 2024.

Simply stating that: “I play netball, basketball and football” is not as impressive as describing how: “Playing netball for the past five years has allowed me to enhance my teamwork skills vastly when working in a large group, as I have discovered the importance of building trusting relationships with each team member.”

There are many examples of hobbies and interests in your personal statement that will help make you stand out. Think about sports, music, positions of responsibility or even charity positions that you may have.

Concluding Your Medicine Personal Statement

Your conclusion should be brief - only one or two lines. Don’t save your best point for now - you want to mention that earlier and expand on it. Instead, use this as an opportunity to tie your statement together and conclude with why you are motivated and suitable for a career in medicine.

If you mentioned a specific anecdote in your introduction or used an example of imagery when discussing supracurriculars, then now is the time to return to it. Not only does this remind the reader of a particularly strong part of your statement, but it also makes it one that they’ll remember.

Can you lie on your personal statement?

We strongly recommend that you do not lie on your personal statement.