Wonderful 48 hrs

Since my first posting I have actually accomplished many things.

First of all, I have a working draft of my personal statement. This is a huge accomplishment for me because I am been working on this thing once a week for the past month because I had serious writers block. I highly recommend the Kaplan's personal statement workshop .

 I sent it to a couple of different people, one who is currently my thesis advisor because I trust that he can help me with the grammar and style problems. I also sent it a copy of it to a friend who is currently a fourth year medical student. She only knows my from work and not much of my background and I hope I can gain a sense of the statements impact from her.

Here are some tips that I have found over the last few months from different workshops about personal statements

• It is like your first interview, it is the best indication of who you are
• you want them to keep reading, they might be reading hundreds of personal statements. 
• Consider what makes you unique. What are your experiences? What have you learned from them?

DO

• tell one or more stories that illustrate you
• Find a theme that unites your stories
• Explain your motivations
• Write more than the minimum of 5,300 characters you can always go back and cut away

DONT

• Reiterate your resume
• exclusively write about "why I want to go to medical school" or "I want to help people"
• boring or arrogant 

Again these are not my personal suggestions rather I have attended a number workshops and above is the common points they all expressed in one way or another. I have been told by a number of people to expect 2-3 months of revisions with at least 3-6 drafts. Writing is a weak point of mine and I expect it to take me more than 6 drafts. I have also begun the search for letters of recommendation which I find very difficult to do because I hate asking people for anything. I will keep everyone update on how this progresses.

Yesterday I retested in verbal and I received a 9 on my verbal section which is a jump of 4 points from my original practice test. I found that Examkrackers was the most help for learning how to take the verbal section. If you have another suggestion please let me know.

In my next post, I am going to compile a list a free MCAT practice test sites. Cause lets face it I am in college and I am very poor.

Well I finally need to wrap up and go study because this day has been crazy and not a lot of studying has been accomplished.