The Mentor Exericise
Sometimes, the best way to think about your future self, who you want to be, and what you want to achieve, is to think about those mentors and role models in your life whom you most admire. Since medical school admissions committees want to understand from reading your medical school personal statement what role you hope to play in their medical school, how you will contribute, and what you will get involved with as you move towards your desired specialty and future career, we think it’s important to reflect on who you hope to be in the future.
This exercise will not only play a part when you sit down and write your personal statement, but it will also help as you write secondary essays and prepare for interviews.
STEP 1: On a document, make two columns.
STEP 2: In the left column, write down those people from your personal life (such as a relative, friend, someone from your community) whom you admire or consider a mentor or role model. These should all be people with whom you have worked directly.
STEP 3: In the right column, write down those people from your professional or school life (such as doctors, researchers, professors) whom you admire or consider a mentor or role model. These should all be people who have played a direct role in your life. Be sure at least one of these people is someone who practices medicine.
STEP 4: Select a maximum of three people from each column whom you consider the best representation of someone you’d like to emulate in the future.
STEP 5: For the people you selected in STEP 4, write down the roles each of them played. You should only be using nouns for this exercise.**
Examples include (in no particular order!):
- Clinician*
- Warrior
- Researcher
- Scholar
- Educator
- Advocate
- Change agent
- Champion
- Thinker
- Leader
- Life-long learner
- Spokesperson
- Ally
- Provider
- Team player
- Creator
- Innovator
- Writer
- Author
- Musician
- Speaker
- Globe trotter
- Entrepreneur
- Policy maker
- Communicator
- Healer
- Team player
- Self-starter
STEP 6: Now, highlight the specific roles that are most important to you and that you hope to embody in the future either in medical school or beyond!
STEP 7: Now you have one significant piece that will help your compose your medical school personal statement outline.Â
Keep these lists on your desktop to reference as you compose your personal statement, secondary essays, and application materials.
JESSICA FREEDMAN, M.D., a former medical school and residency admissions officer at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, is the founder and chair of MedEdits Medical Admissions and author of three top-selling books about the medical admissions process that you can find on Amazon.
