Analysis of my own Personal Statement
A simple checklist that I used to review 120+ Personal Statements
Personal Statement Failure Formula- mistakes that will get you rejected!!!
How to get off your ass and write a great personal statement !!!
Author: Muhammed Ziauddin
Statement Guru interviews Dental School Coach
Hey there,
Very few people know why I started dental school coach. My friend Nived Ravikumar from StatementGuru.com recently interviewed me about Dental School Coach. I usually don’t share my personal stories, but he asked me to be personal.
In the interview I go deep into the following topics:
- What inspired me to be a dentist in the first place
- Why I chose not to attend dental school
- Why I decided to start dentalschoolcoach.com
- The biggest weaknesses I see among pre-dental students
- How to write a GREAT personal statement
- Can playing video games make you a good dentist?
- How social skills make you an exceptional dentist
- How to prepare for your dental school interviews
- A single mistake that can cost you your application
- Word of advice for International Students
- What’s good about my personal statement
- Why I gave out 75 + free personal statement edits?
Go ahead and check out the podcast!
Hope you enjoy listening to the podcast. Please check out Nived’s site and his podcast. He’s a great and friendly guy who goes above and beyond to help students succeed with their personal statement.
Sincerely
Zia
How to avoid these two mistakes you are probably making AND INTRODUCING A SURPRISE GUEST who taught me everything
I learned three great life lessons in a class that I almost failed.
I went against my advisor’s advice and registered for STAT 430. I thought I was going to crush this course. I spend 25+ hours studying on this class. I went to every single office hours. I tried my best, but I walked out with a D+.
That was the lowest grade in that class. This is an upper level class and no one gets below a C at Penn in upper level classes. But, I did. I got a D+.
Looking back, I learned 3 things why I failed that course.
a) I sucked at stat (not math though, I had a 800 on my MATH SAT)
b) I failed to prioritize and worked soo HARD, and,
c) I took too much on my plate without even realizing it.
I wanna explain what went wrong that semester.
First of all, I was taking 6 classes (a thesis class for International Relations, STAT, an upper level chemistry, and an upper level Economics class). They all were really demanding classes and needed a lot of time. I should not have taken that many classes. My advisor warned me not to take such a heavy load.
But I was too much of a rebel. I never listened to her and went with my frivolous thoughts. (I was immature back then.)
The funny part is I didn’t even need STAT 430 to graduate. It was a class I was taking for fun. (Was I crazy or something?)
To be honest, I did not know what I was doing. I was majoring in both International Relations and Chemistry. Why was I doing it? I just wanted to show off and be cool in the intellectual show and tell culture of Penn. Looking back, I was just a big fool.
I failed to prioritize my goals. ( I did not decide to be a pre-dental yet). I was just randomly taking classes to learn stuff. But that was a huge waste of my time because I could not possibly learn everything in the world and there was no method to my madness.
MEANWHILE, My friend and mentor – now a Penn Dental graduate – did it all differently from me.
I want to introduce her in this post. She was really smart about her decisions in college. In fact, she was my tutor for Organic Chemistry, mentor and a best friend for life.
This friend of mine, happens to be the most well-connected person I know. She went to undergrad with me at UPenn and recently graduated from Penn Dental as a dentist. She helped me a lot when I was applying to dental school. Even now, when I need advice about anything, she’s the first person I call.
I think everyone would benefit from our different approaches in life which ultimately led to similar goals.
She is a master at prioritizing and working SMART, not hard. Since her sophomore year in college, when she chose dentistry as her future career, she became laser focused on her goal. In fact, she dropped out of the most prestigious program -Vagelos Program at Penn and picked a relatively EASY MAJOR ( Biology) which had a LOT of overlap with pre-dental requirements.
This freed up her time for extracurricular intellectual pursuits on the side. That pottery class? Sculpture? Film Culture? The Third Reich? Financial Investing? Wharton’s plethora of management classes? Negotiation? Comparative Religion? She had time for it all !
She even had a great social life. She went out, in fact, on most weekends.
How?? Everyone wondered how she managed to carve out such a well-rounded curriculum as a Science major and had a great social life — well it turns out :
Turns out each of these seemingly ‘whimsical’ classes, were thoroughly researched before hand!
She front-loaded the work.
– There are many ways to do this: she used the university online course review but did not solely rely on that
– Know who to believe — she always managed to mentally compile and compare first-hand accounts from former students and sometimes these accounts were very eye opening but NOT IN THE WAY YOU EXPECT.
I will leave it up to her to tell everyone here the SPECIFICS of her secrets to Phenomenal Success.
But first, I want you to do me a favor.
I could not attend dental school because of a situation that was beyond my control (my mother was sick). So, I started Dental School Coach with the intention to help people get into their dream dental school. I want to help as many people as possible and it will be only possible by your help. Here’s what you can do to help:
a) Share our blog posts, video on Facebook and Twitter so that others can benefit from it.
b) Give a shout out to Dental School Coach on StudentDoctor.net Pre-dental Forum, if you felt I helped you in any way.
Within a few days, I will release an exclusive interview with this SUPERSTAR friend of mine.
Stay Tuned
What’s coming next on Dental School Coach Blog!!
Many of you have already finished your DAT, completed your AADSAS application, finishing up secondaries, and waiting to hear back for interviews.
As promised, I will write a lot about interviews going forward. But, before starting to do that, I wanted to give you a glimpse of what topics I will cover. Below is a list of topics I’d like to cover.
- Pre Interview
- How to get 100X better at interviewing
- How to research the heck out of schools!
- How to get insider advice from the dental students
- How to some of the most common questions such as a) Tell me about yourself b) What are your strengths and weaknesses? c)Why Dentistry?
- How to talk about hobbies, freelancing careers, and skills that are related to dentistry
- How to answer some of the toughest questions
- How to be TRULY YOURSELF
- How to build an unshakable confidence in yourself without coming across as arrogant
- How to understand the question behind the question and answer the toughest interview question
- What if someone throws a curve ball at you during your interview
- How to save money during interviews
- Interview
- What to wear during interviews
- How to interact with other interviewees
- How to decommoditize yourself and sell yourself during the interview
- How to be likable during interviews
- What questions you should not ask during interviews and what questions you should ask
- Post Interview
- How to send a thank you note and follow up
- What to do when you had a bad interview
- How to strategically network with dental students, adcoms and professors after your interview
This is not a complete list, so feel free to give me suggestions. Just shoot me an email at zia@dentalschoolcoach.com and tell me what you’d like me to cover on this blog.
A simple checklist that I used to review 900+ Personal Statements
As many of you are finishing up with your personal statement, I thought it’d be a good idea for me to share a personal statement checklist that I used to review 900+ personal statements this application cycle. I found this checklist to be extremely helpful. I am sharing it publicly here, because I want to be useful in your life!
So, here’s the checklist that I used to review 900+ PS!!!
Goal of writing a PS: Write a personal statement that will compel the adcom to say, “This kid is interesting, and I wanna meet him/her.”
Introduction:
- Do I have a compelling first sentence that will make adcoms read forward?
- Does my introduction tell compelling stories that make the adcom interested in me?
Content
- Do I tell stories in my essay? Are the stories graphic, memorable and remarkable?
- Do my stories weave together logically?
- Do my paragraphs flow well?
- Is my content emotionally engaging? Are my stories colorful?
- Do I tell stories about what inspired me to be a dentist?
- Did I answer the “Why Dentistry?” and “Why dentistry is a meaningful career?”
- Shadowing: Do I tell detail graphic stories of my shadowing experiences?
- Do I just talk about what I did or do I talk about what I learned and what impact I made in the world?
- Research:
- If I talk about my research in my essay, does it make someone curious about it? or does it make someone say ” This is too much details. I cannot take it”.
- Is it simple to read? Is it fun/interesting to read about my research?
- Am I using jargon, clichés or big phrases?
Conclusion:
- Is my conclusion catchy? Is it memorable?
- Is the reader going to remember me 10 mins/10 hours/10 days after he reads my personal statement?
- Does my conclusion loop back to the stories I mentioned earlier?
Overall
- Do my stories logically flow well ? Do I have an overarching theme in my essay?
- Is each sentence earning its way into my personal statement? or am I just adding junk/useless sentences?
- Is it under 4500 character limit?
- Did I check the grammar?
- Do I come across as likable? Will the adcom be interested in interviewing me?
Hope you find this checklist to be helpful in assessing your own PS! Wish you all the best as you write the final drafts of your personal statement.
Need more help with your essay ? Check out the personal statement review services
Personal Statement Analyzed: A good enough PS that got me into Penn, UCSF, Pitt, Rutgers, and NYU
As promised, I have analyzed my personal statement in the following video. You can read my personal statement in this blog post or you can find it here. Enjoy =)
Muhammed Ziauddin Personal Statement for Dental School
‘Shri Ramajeyam!’ chanted the village magician back in Bangladesh, as he tried to heal my grandmother’s toothache for 40 Taka (equilivalent to $0.50 in the US). The cheap hocus pocus failed and ultimately, an oral screening at a local hospital diagnosed an oral lesion in her mouth. However, it remained untreated because of my family’s limited finances.
These financial challenges that have continually haunted my family have helped ingrain the value of patience within the very essence of my personality. Our patience in reapplying for the Diversity Visa Lottery over and over finally paid off the 9th time, when we won. We thought our financial distress would improve, so we happily left for America. But, surprises ensued. Extreme poverty, accompanied by a sudden cut in Medicaid forced me to curtail my visits to the orthodontist, but I continued to wait, as I had always been, for a change in fortune.
That change came when my orthodontist halved my fee after sympathizing with my situation. This drew me to a dentist’s prerogative to demonstrate compassion. The importance of a good patient-doctor relationship stood out even more when I shadowed Dr. Pinto, an oral surgeon. During his interaction with a medically compromised patient, who was suffering from a prior iatrogenic procedure, I saw how dentists not just treat the local symptoms of pain, but also address it in a systemic way. This interactive process reminded me of my time leading mentoring program as an International Youth Scholar, in which I mentored a Somali refugee named Abdi. Being psychologically vulnerable as a result of having faced a civil war, initially, he appeared reserved. With my consisted efforts, I built rapport with him as he slowly opened up about his struggle in the refugee camp, his love for soccer, and his dream to study in the U.S. With my encouragement, he applied and received a scholarship at Syracuse University. I will never forget his smile when he gave me the news. It reaffirmed the holistic nature of a dentist’s influence on an individual’s systemic as well as psychological health.
In addition to treating individuals, I want to expand the influence of dental awareness on a community-wide scale and I began this by targeting my local Philadelphia community. I co-founded the Community Dental Disease Prevention Society aiming to reduce the prevalence of dental diseases. We conducted workshops at low-income schools in the city. Despite the initial lack of interest among students, gradually the number of workshop participants grew as they could relate the workshops to their real life experiences. Here Tagita, a first grader shared her story of waiting for a dental appointment due to her family’s financial incapacity, reiterating the inaccessibility of the dental care provision. Meanwhile, high school students expressed concerns about the increasing prevalence of dental malpractice. This made me extend our goals to educate dental providers of iatrogenic dentistry. Additionally, we also set about spreading scientifically based awareness in dispelling damaging propagandas such as those spread by the Fluoride Action Network about the harmful effects of water fluoridation.
Aside from my involvement with the community, I found personal gratification and further enhancement of my endurance while I was taking a sculpture course. After the caffeinated nights and clay-stained hands at the studio, looking at my first project – a clay bust of Abraham Lincoln, an unprecedented sense of pride flooded through me. Right then, I knew that in order to be fulfilled I would need manual involvement in my future profession.
The unique opportunity offered by dentistry to integrate my manual dexterity with my love for science further drew me in. My passion for science grew in a crowded lab-hood at my organic synthesis lab, where I endured repeated tedious phases of optimization of the reaction conditions. Ultimately, I experienced a deep sense of satisfaction as I produced newer molecules in high yield culminating in a co-authorship of a paper in Organic Letters.
Perseverance gained throughout my life and from my involvement in science, arts and community activism makes dentistry a perfect match for me. Be it campaigning against iatrogenic dentistry via CDDPS, or making someone like Abdi smile confidently, dentistry has allowed me to consolidate my ideals. As I continue to advocate for increased accessibility to dental care for financially disadvantaged patients, I understand that progress will be slow; for now, I vow to stay focused, stay patient.