How should I speak about my EPQ in my personal statement when applying for medicine?

Hi! I’ve attended the medic mentor conference on how to get into medicine and they said not to talk so much about a specific field of medicine in your personal statement as it may sway the admission officers opinion on whether to consider you as your so focused on one part of medicine or you may offend them, so I was wondering how would I incorporate my EPQ on bilingualism/neurology in my personal statement for medicine as it isn’t to do with medicine as a whole but rather cognitive performance. I’m really interested in neurology as a specialty and will probably pursue it but i was told not to overly focus my personal statement on it. I would appreciate anyone’s opinion on this!

Reply 1

TSR Hippocrates

Hey there, thanks for posting a question in the Medicine forum. :biggrin:

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Reply 2

Swansea Students

Official Rep

Hey @nxhid !

I remember writing my personal statement being super stressful at first haha - and you’re definitely right that you shouldn’t write all about just one specialty - if for no other reason that it means you might not be able to write about all the different things that interest you.

That being said though - don’t feel like you can’t write at all about the areas you find interesting! Med school is meant to prep you to be a great generalist so you’re prepared for whichever path you choose; but a big part of what unis are looking for in a personal statement is your passion for the subject. Having an idea of the area you find exciting and having shown enough initiative to write an EPQ around it is a great way to show that passion.

There’s a lot of shades of grey between not mentioning any one area of medicine whatsoever and writing all about one subject - I would probably:

•

Touch on the specialty you find interesting, and then link it to why you wrote your EPQ

•

Very briefly explain what your EPQ was about/anything especially relevant

•

For extra bonus points and to do really well, then try to link writing your EPQ back to how it’s prepared you for medicine more generally - has it made you aware of a particular skill involved in being a doctor, made you more empathetic towards the experience of patients, brought up something about how the healthcare system works that you didn’t realise, shown you how your passion for science can go on to help others, etc?

As long as it’s one aspect of your overall piece, then mentioning your interests and especially your EPQ is great - just make sure you talk about all the other stuff that unis want to see too.

Hopefully that’s a handy place to start from - I’d also recommend looking at TMP’s guide to how different unis use your personal statement for med to get a feel for how and when the schools you’re interested in will be using what you write. And if you’re looking for any more advice on your personal statement - there’s a really good video by another one of our med students with some great tips; and a useful general guide here too - or feel free to ask :smile: