Your one-stop shop for all things application related!
You Can Be A Doctor:
Application Guide
What is a personal statement?
The personal statement is a crucial component of the application process and is used alongside your Highers/ Advanced Highers, UCAT score, and interview to determine if you are successful in getting into medicine. It is an opportunity to showcase your motivation, experiences, and qualities in a personal way, allowing Universities to identify ideal candidates who will go on to become good doctors!
In 2025, the personal statement is changing and will now be more structured. You'll have to answer three questions:
-
Why do you want to study this course or subject? (In our case this would be medicine)
-
How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare for this course of subject? (focused on the skills you have gained from school work)
-
What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful? (This is where you can get in your career exploration or work experience like YCBAD's virtual work experience)
This being new means there aren't all that many examples around but the content that Universities are looking for hasn't really changed. If anything, this might actually make it a bit easier to write something. The same 4000 character limit applies as before. While many of the pupils we support will have faced adversity, and you can write about that, you don't need to include everything as any special circumstances or context for your application should be going in your reference (which is a separate thing your teacher writes).
How is it used during the application process?
1. Shortlisting - Admissions tutors will review your personal statement, looking for qualities/motivations necessary for a career in medicine. As most applicants to medicine will have excellent academic achievements, the personal statement is a way of distinguishing those with the desired character, motivation, and experiences which would not be evident from exam results alone. Some of the things reviewers will be looking for include:
-
A realistic understanding of the profession and the long-term commitment it involves, as well as the challenges (and rewards!)
-
Interpersonal/communication skills
-
Leadership/teamworking skills
-
Resilience
-
Time-management
2. At interview - If you are invited to interview, many universities will have time dedicated to further specific questions about your personal statements, going into more detail about your experiences and how they have influenced your decision to study medicine or how they have improved your skills.
Top Tip: Traits of an ideal candidate
The MSC has a great info sheet which gives a list of attributes which medical schools look for in prospective applicants. Each university’s MBChB/MBBS application page will also list qualities they wish to see in their medical students. Be sure to read these carefully and try to relate you experiences to some of the traits. Remember – you don’t need to tick off every single one!
How to get started on your personal statement
Getting started is often the hardest part. Remember that universities are looking for evidence that you have the values and attributes that the Medical Schools Council laid out in their statement. That means that a list of achievements isn't enough, you need to show the reader why that achievement or experience is relevant, and I mean really spell it out.
While a list isn't what the final product will look like, it can be a good place to start. You'll have done loads by the the time you're applying but experiences to talk about can include:
-
A job: working while in high school, even if unrelated to medicine, can show that you have good time management skills, reliability and team working skills
-
Work experience or career exploration: allows you to witness other people in work, and see their communication, problem solving skills and team work in action
-
Volunteering: gives you experience of working in a team, builds you communication skills
-
Spots/Music/Drama/Other Extra-Curriculars: demonstrate motivation, teamwork and personal organisation as you fit this in around your studies
-
Basically anything can go in as long as you can reflect on it and make it relevant to medicine
You then need to start reflecting on each achievement. It is the reflection that the universities are looking for. This is one structure you can use:
-
What did you do: Brief description of the experience
-
Why did you do it: Why was it useful?
-
What did it teach you/How did it make you feel: either skills/attributes the experience has helped you to develop, or skills and attributes you have witnessed in others, which make them a good clinician. This is the most important part of your statement – the interviewers + panel members aren’t as interested in what you did, but more interested in why you think your experience has helped you develop the skills to become a good doctor, or how someone’s behaviour has shown you an example of what you think a good doctor should be.
Here’s an example from my own personal statement (from nearly 10 years ago – eek!):-
Work experience at a local hospital (what I did) provided me with chance to gain excellent insight into both the benefits and challenges of working as a hospital doctor (why I did it). Shadowing medics during rounds in a GM ward exposed me to the difficulties of working in medicine, as some of the elderly patients were hostile and unfriendly to the doctors. Despite this, they were always treated with patience and compassion (what it taught me), something I found very admirable.
Try writing reflections on each of your achievements and see which ones link best with Medicine or being at medical school. This is another structure to try:
-
Briefly describe something you've done
-
Explain the skills or attributes that this has given you
-
Explain why developing that skill or attribute further would be useful for a medical student or doctor
-
Give an example from work experience of a healthcare professional using this skill or attribute
Using either structure (or another one like STARR) try picking something from your list of achievements and writing a reflection aimed at one of the key attributes that the Medical School's Council have given you. Sometimes it feels like you're stating the obvious but that's ok. These are going to be the building blocks of your personal statement.
Why do you want to study this course or subject?
To answer why you want to study medicine you'll need to think carefully about what it is about medicine that you like. Some people include a personal experience of illness and talk about the impact a doctor has had on their life. Others focus more on the continuous learning and helping people. The important thing is that it is honest and clear.
How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare for this course of subject?
The second question is where our building blocks come into play. You should be able to start by combining some of your reflections on different attributes. If you've been a school captain or lead a club you might want to talk about your responsibility and professionalism. You will have got good grades but how did you do that? What skills did you use? More directly, doing Higher Human Biology or Modern Studies (for example) might have got you really interested in physiology or public health.
What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?
This is an area where Widening Participation applicants can really sing. We've all faced adversity of one type or another and even getting to the point of applying to medicine is a huge achievement. To do that, we develop skills and strategies to get around our disadvantage. This is what universities want to hear about! Being a doctor is not easy and we often have to overcome difficult environments and situations. That resilience is key. You can also talk about your career exploration here and hopefully you'll have a few reflections to add in. If you've been writing short reflections for all your achievements, you'll be hitting the character limit in no time!
Bringing it together
Wrapping up and other tips
Other key tips for personal statement writing:
-
The key is to just start writing even if what you start with is really bad!
-
Talk through your reflections with other people who know you well, they may well spot skills you don't see.
-
Get someone to check it over for spelling + grammatical errors before you submit it - this could be your parents, your head of year or your English teacher. Sometimes if you’ve been looking at it for so long you won’t be able to spot even simple errors!
-
Make sure you are honest. If you exaggerate or write about experiences that didn’t really have a great impact on you, this will show up when you’re asked to talk more about it in your interview. The panel will be able to see your passion if you’ve been really inspired by someone you’ve met or an experience you’ve had, so write about things that impacted you
-
Keep it personal: the panel want to know about who you are, and why the things you’ve done have made you want to do medicine. Use ‘I’ and ‘me’ throughout, and reflect on how the experience made you feel or what it taught you.
There are lots of examples available on the Student Room! Looking through these can give you a rough idea, but remember to keep the statement personal to you – it’ll be clear if you’ve just copied.
We are also really happy to look over your personal statement at You Can Be A Doctor – please contact us on advice@youcanbeadoctor.co.uk and we’ll happily read through your personal statement, or give you advice if you are struggling to relate your experiences to being a medical student.