What's the most important thing to write about in your persona statement when applying to medical school?

Personal statements give you the opportunity to write about yourself, show off your achievements and basically say why you want to do medicine.  

There are a lot of things to mention from school accolades to involvement in sports, but most importantly, medical schools are wanting to see that it is Medicine that you are wanting to do.  The best way to show that is by describing the work experience that you have done.  The most important thing to remember with this is that the medical school will not be looking at how much work experience you have done, but more 'what did you learn from it?' It's easy to make up that you spent 3 weeks with a GP, but much more difficult to make up what you learnt from it.  A good way of doing this is by giving examples of what you saw and describing how you felt about this. This all shows that you are interested in understanding medicine.

So, in essence:

- Write about your medical work experience

- Give examples of what you saw or a situation

- Describe what you learned from this

For example: "I spent two weeks with a GP observing the difficult decisions made on a day to day basis.  The GP's role of determining which of the several chronic coughs was due to something more sinister highlighted the importance of vigilence and concentration in the medical world."

OR

"I spent one month volunteering at the local hospice. Witnessing the care of patients nearing the end of their life by both nursing and medical staff illustrated how important compassion and kindness are in medicine."