Disclaimer:
The following article was originally written in 2009 for the University of Toronto medical school admissions essay. Although the advice here is still useful for general medical school essays, since 2012, the University of Toronto medical school changed its admissions process to require the applicant write 4 Brief Personal Essays instead. Don’t fret – I have a written a new step-by-step guide to help applicants with these new 4 Brief Personal Essays.
Over the first four parts of this series, we looked at the overall message we wanted to convey through our essay: that we are proven serious about medicine, that the career makes sense for us, and that the reader will be thoroughly convinced to do whatever it takes to help us become a doctor. We also looked at the three guidelines/questions the University of Toronto admissions committee wants addressed in the essay, and what to consider when approaching them.
So now that you have your overall plan, as well as the main content for your essay (i.e. how you will answer those three guidelines), how do you put it all together?
While there is no “correct” way to write the essay, I think there are some important aspects to address, discuss, and debate. I will give you my thoughts on these aspects, as well as insight into how I approached them, not as necessarily guidelines for what you should do, but rather, guidelines about how to consider thinking about formulating your own approach.