Here is the personal statement that I used to apply to Cambridge. I removed sensitive information (about others) in []. Huge thanks to people1 who helped me proof-read this essay and I hope this helps you in pursuing your dreams.
[INTRO]
Medical science enthralls me for it integrates many fields to provide wide clinical applications: basic physical properties like nuclear decay are used in Tc99 to diagnose embolism. Each stage in the complex chemical reactions behind biological processes can be utilised to treat diseases.
This is a summary post of the medical school application process.
If you read Chinese, this Zhihu answer is where things got started.
The whole application can be broken down to the following aspects:
Curriculum Class performance Research Other interests BMAT Interview Leadership The central theme is about being interesting.
In fact, I believe this is everything that I need to write… The specifics are more or less repeated elsewhere, so I will come to them only when I got time.
This is an important mental model that I have been building over the past few years.
Interesting means attention-capturing. Attention is the currency that we are trading in the information age. Thus, the value of almost everything can be assessed on whether they are interesting.
Being interesting has two components: relevance and uniqueness.
To me, a film star’s divorce is unique but not relevant; medical school applications from a student with straight-A grades but nothing else is relevant but not unique.
Recently I have received many questions on medical school interview so I thought it might be good to share my tips with you.
First, congratulations on receiving an interview invitation. It means that your application has passed the first few steps of screening and now you should discard any inferiority complex (if you have any) and believe that you have as much chance of getting in like any other people if you can shine in the interview.