Help Guide to Writing Personal Statement for Pharmacy School

A personal statement for pharmacy school is a crucial part of the admission process, which is especially true when it comes to such demanding field of expertise as pharmacy. The major challenge with this type of paper can be briefly defined as follows: a prospect student has to introduce themself in the best way and provide all the relevant information, while keeping the story concise. You should keep in mind that an admission committee will be able to spend only several minutes to study your essay. What they see should be informative and easy-to-read.

Personal Statement for Pharmacy School: Success Factors

personal pharmacy statementPharmacy school education is a highly competitive area, so, to get enrolled, a prospect student should demonstrate not only high entry exam scores and relevant skills but also strong dedication and zeal. The only way that an admission officer can reveal and assess these aspects is by means of the personal story you tell about yourself. And you should know that the final decision is not only about your scores but also about how successful you are with your presentation and explaining what your decision to apply has been driven by. Recommendations collected from practicing pharmacists and/or your former professors can bring you some extra points too.

Show Your Motivation

With successful personal statement, it is important to demonstrate why you have chosen this particular school or occupation. A student’s capacity to provide strong reasons will be certainly appreciated by their admission committee. Note that the latter expects to see, first and foremost, your interest in the occupation along with your understanding of what your future career may look like. Your decision to apply is to be a thoughtful rather than arbitrary act.

When applying to a pharmacy school, avoid providing financial goals as your major motivation, devise a better reason instead. On the other hand, if you pretend to devote your life to solving global life-threatening challenges the mankind is facing right now, don’t overdo with the pathetics and try to be as persuasive as possible. Take your time to reflect upon the subject, write down any options coming to your mind and then include into your paper only those of them which can really add to your statement’s credibility. The rule of thumb here is that one or two solid arguments can have a better emotional effect than a bunch of small and actually meaningless reasons.

Gain Your Internal Conviction to Study Pharmacy

To be persuasive enough with your arguments and impress with good personal statement, a pharmacy school  applicant has to possess strong internal conviction themself. If you actually do not realize what the occupation is about and why you are going to pursue it, you will likely fail to make the reader believe that you are the best candidate to become a pharmacy student. Even if enrolled, you, in this case, will fail to invest the necessary zeal and time to master the profession.

The above considerations help realize how important it is to choose the correct way in your life. To be on the safe side, it is helpful to ask yourself some relevant questions before writing pharmacy personal statement, namely:

  • Is pharmacy really the field of expertise I would like to be in?
  • Given this is a challenging area, what drives me to step onto this difficult way?
  • Have I had any relevant experience to prove my interest in the occupation and my readiness to help people?
  • Do I have any pharmacist role model to follow?
  • What are my strengths to be highlighted in my personal statement to have an advantage over other candidates?

Finding answers to these questions before preparing your application kit will help you gain internal conviction and pass it to a reader.

Some Good Practices to Use

A mandatory requirement to come up with a good personal statement for a pharmacy school is to start early. Take enough time to get prepared well, reflect upon the above questions and define your writing plan.

As a reader will have only a few minutes to scan your text and evaluate your candidacy, make sure your paper is as catching as possible from the very beginning. Do not miss out on the opportunity to stand out among your peers. For the purpose, feel free to add some emotions and personal funny stories to the narration. Don’t overdo with the style experiments though, as the paper should remain pretty academic.

While your performance scores are proven by other documents attached to the application, the only chance for an admission committee to judge your motivation and career goals is from your personal statement. This is actually what you should focus on while composing the text. Make your reader understand that you do realize how difficult the way will be but are ready to do your best to master the profession and steadily advance during and after the study. Showing how you see your future career would be a plus. This helps convey your conviction and dedication. Any evidence of being formerly involved into pharmacy-related activities, on a professional or volunteer basis, will enhance the effect. If such experience is available, describing in details one particular endeavor is a better choice than just providing a list of jobs.

Top 2 requirements for pharmacy school personal statement

  • Submitting a properly organized personal statement essay for pharmacy school is another tool to boost reader experience. To cope with the task seamlessly, define what your text will look like as early as at the pre-planning stage. When writing, stick to the outlined structure to avoid productivity deterioration. The first paragraph should deliver a brief presentation of yourself and an idea of what you are going to discuss below.
  • Remember that grammar can make or break the success of your paper. Even stacked with strong arguments, a personal statement will inevitably be rejected if it is full of grammar and punctuation mistakes. So keep this consideration in mind too to get the most out of your work. Proofread the finished text multiple times; if possible, ask someone knowledgeable for help.

Some Things to Avoid

Along with good practices, there are some things which can destroy reader experience and therefore should be avoided by all means.

Don’t divert from the topic. A personal statement’s task is to capture a reader’s attention and provide them with concentrated information while preventing them from losing interest in your narration. So be as specific as possible. Clean your paper of any unnecessary information, which does not enhance reader experience or can interrupt tracking the core idea. Remember: quality rather than the amount of text is important. This type of paper typically has no strict size requirements to meet.

Never compose this important paper hastily. Prepare thoroughly, write thoughtfully and hone the final text afterwards. A good idea is to take a day of break once the text is ready and then return to it to re-read and make corrections. If the story sounds boring to you, don’t hesitate to start the work from scratch to come up with a new, not an adjusted, version.

Also, avoid using template papers or plagiarized texts. This kind of fraud is easily revealed by a skilled admission officer.

There are many more considerations to be used as a guide during writing a personal statement for a pharmacy school. Learning them is an essential part of the preparatory stage that should never be overlooked.