The personal statement might be the most important essay you ever write. That can be overwhelming, but it doesn’t need to be. Start by creating a list of anything that comes to mind when you think about important parts of your pre-PA journey. It could be patient stories, shadowing experiences, or classes you took. It could be a childhood memory, aspects of your personality, or an impactful person in your life. After making the list, decide which ones are most important to you. Admissions committees can see grades, test scores, and hours of experience elsewhere on your application, but the personal statement gives them a chance to know who you are.
Be professional, but also be real and personal. Use details that show your motivation to be a PA and some of your soft skills that are not evident elsewhere on the application, such as interpersonal skills. Find a central theme to tell your story and go from there.
It is important to remember that there will by many, many drafts of your personal statement. Start by writing something, and then choose the parts that work and change the parts that don’t. My advice is to be ready to revise over and over again and ask people for help in doing so. By the time I submitted my application, I was on my twentieth draft. I asked ten different people to help edit; the end result was a personal statement that I was incredibly proud of because it showed who I am.
In addition to asking for help, it was also beneficial to use either Google translate or the read aloud feature in Word to listen to my personal statement out loud to catch grammatical errors or oddly phrased sentences. I originally saw this tip on Pinterest and highly recommend it.