A personal statement (PS) is a 1-page document expressing information about you and your aims and career goals! It is personal so it is only you! Not him or her or them! This is exactly comparable to “how to sell yourself in one page?”
The PS has to be done in an organized homogeneous and harmonic way, showing clearly the progression and flow of ideas; making it look a lot like an exciting story about a medical graduate!
Some websites to help you write the PS:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/642/01/
http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/Personal-Statement-term.htm
https://www.studential.com/applying/personal-statement-writing/guide
I also like to use some interactive way to learn how to do that by searching for youtube videos. They are more enjoyable and you get the idea perhaps faster than reading it through a passage.
There are also websites that help you with proof reading and give critiques but for a large sum of money, www.essayedge.com . So you better find some friends to help!
To be honest with you, a personal statement needs about 1 week of brainstorming and 2 weeks of writing and one last week of revision and augmenting its effect! Make sure you put that in mind! Even if you are an English native speaker, you really need time to do that. If you feel you are not good in writing English, make sure you ask for help from friends or people who have done it before or worst case scenario, you pay a company to help you. Make sure you start preparing for the personal statement as one of the first things, as it takes much time and efforts more than anything else. Some medical schools would have a guidance counselor for personal statements too.
The Easy way to remember what to include is the following, perhaps each one needs a paragraph more or less (according to how diverse you are):
Intro – Why MD – Why specialty – What have I done – am I special? – Closure
Each of the following idea should be in a paragraph and each paragraph should contain 5-9 sentences. If you have more than that, no one is going to spend time reading it. There should be a smooth transition between each paragraph which should make your PS more interesting to the reader.
Do not use abbreviations but also try to write in a clever way to write as much as you can about yourself in such limited space. Try not to repeat words and a good tip is to use word which can give you other synonyms for any word you choose. This website would do the job https://www.easycalculation.com/word-count.php
Confidence is great but don’t be so cocky and arrogant in your writing. Make sure you read at least 10 personal statements before you even start brainstorming for your PS.
All the applicants would have the same form of a letter so as to make all letters look the same. Fonts and colors might greatly affect someone’s evaluation for a letter and thus they have put specific and strict features of a personal statement.