
Are you reapplying to PA school and wondering if you should update or rewrite your PA school essay?
There are a few reasons to update your personal statement as a reapplicant.
For one, AdComs at the schools where you've previously applied can compare your essay with the prior year's personal statements.
Secondly, after a year of time, your experiences have hopefully broadened and/or deepened. You definitely want AdComs to know that, right?
Lastly, if you didn't get into PA school on your first try, it could be due to a variety of reasons including a lackluster personal statement that didn't hit the right notes. In that case, you definitely want to take a fresh look at your personal statement.
Below I've condensed this recent blog post into a simple checklist for what to update in your personal statement this go around.
PA School Reapplicant Personal Statement Revision Checklist
1. ______ Get input from outside sources. Have them identify strengths and weaknesses in your essay.
2. ______ Rewrite your introduction. There are lots of options for opening your essay. Try for a new theme (AKA reason for why PA) or a new story about a patient or PA encounter that shifted or enlightened your perspective related to one of your reasons for why PA.
3. _____ Revise the details that have changed from your last application. If you focused on improving your application over the last year, highlight your purposeful choices like starting in a new role, volunteering, and gaining more shadowing. You don't have to say, "Since last applying..." because if you're applying to new schools, it may work against you to note you've been rejected before. But you can say, "In the last year..."
4. _____ Write a new patient story. These will be memorable and hard to let go of, but it's important to show that you continue to make significant connections with patients.
5. _____ Write a new conclusion. If you updated the opening, be sure to connect the new opening to the conclusion. Summarize the main points of your essay, reiterating your why PA. End strong with a vision for your future career as a PA that identifies what quality of care you want to provide, to whom, and for what purpose!
6. _____ Update your writing style/language. Aside from the sections mentioned above, the remainder of your essay likely won't change much, but you can and should update the writing style and language to look fresh. Consider trimming down your back story to tell how you got interested in medicine. Change up your topic and conclusion sentences. Adjust sentence structures. This will give your essay a fully dusted-off feel!
There you have it, your personal statement is ready for its next dance!
Download a printable version of this reapplicant essay checklist:
Single Edit One-on-one Service Supplemental Essays
Additional reading:
View all posts in this series
- How to Write the Perfect Physician Assistant School Application Essay
- The Physician Assistant Essay and Personal Statement Collaborative
- Do You Recognize These 7 Common Mistakes in Your Personal Statement?
- 7 Essays in 7 Days: PA Personal Statement Workshop: Essay 1, “A PA Changed My Life”
- PA Personal Statement Workshop: Essay 2, “I Want to Move Towards the Forefront of Patient Care”
- PA Personal Statement Workshop: Essay 3, “She Smiled, Said “Gracias!” and Gave me a Big Hug”
- PA Personal Statement Workshop: Essay 4, “I Have Gained so Much Experience by Working With Patients”
- PA Personal Statement Workshop: Essay 5, “Then Reach, my Son, and Lift Your People up With You”
- PA Personal Statement Workshop: Essay 6, “That First Day in Surgery was the First Day of the Rest of my Life”
- PA Personal Statement Workshop: Essay 7, “I Want to Take People From Dying to Living, I Want to Get Them Down From the Cliff.”
- Physician Assistant Personal Statement Workshop: “To say I was an accident-prone child is an understatement”
- 9 Simple Steps to Avoid Silly Spelling and Grammar Goofs in Your PA School Personel Statement
- 5 Tips to Get you Started on Your Personal Essay (and why you should do it now)
- How to Write Your Physician Assistant Personal Statement The Book!
- How to Write “Physician Assistant” The Definitive PA Grammar Guide
- 101 PA School Admissions Essays: The Book!
- 5 Things I’ve Learned Going Into My Fourth Physician Assistant Application Cycle
- 7 Tips for Addressing Shortcomings in Your PA School Personal Statement
- The #1 Mistake PRE-PAs Make on Their Personal Statement
- The Ultimate PA School Personal Statement Starter Kit
- The Ultimate Guide to CASPA Character and Space Limits
- 10 Questions Every PA School Personal Statement Must Answer
- 5 PA School Essays That Got These Pre-PAs Accepted Into PA School
- 7 Questions to Ask Yourself While Writing Your PA School Personal Statement
- 101 PA School Applicants Answer: What’s Your Greatest Strength?
- 12 Secrets to Writing an Irresistible PA School Personal Statement
- 7 Rules You Must Follow While Writing Your PA School Essay
- You Have 625 Words and 2.5 Minutes to Get Into PA School: Use Them Wisely
- What’s Your #1 Personal Statement Struggle?
- 31 (NEW) CASPA PA School Personal Statement Examples
- How to Prepare for Your PA School Interview Day Essay
- Should You Write Physician Associate or Physician Assistant on Your PA School Essay?
- Meet the World’s Sexiest PA School Applicants
- PA School Reapplicants: How to Rewrite Your PA School Essay for Guaranteed Success
- How to Write a Personal Statement Intro that Readers Want to Read
- PA School Reapplicant Personal Statement Checklist
- How to Deal with Bad News in Your Personal Statement
- Inside Out: How to use Pixar’s Rules of Storytelling to Improve your PA Personal Statement
- Ratatouille: A Pixar Recipe for PA School Personal Statement Success
- Personal Statement Panel Review (Replay)
- Mind Mapping: A Tool for Personal Statements, Supplemental Essays, and Interviews
- Start at the End: Advice for your PA School Personal Statement
- Elevate Your Personal Statement: Using Bloom’s Taxonomy for Impactful Writing
It had been a long week of senior fall finals and an even longer day of anxiously waiting in a cold surgery waiting room. My friend was having knee surgery and her parents were not able to come into town until the day after, so I was relaying updates to them and spending the night in the hospital post operation. When the surgery was nearly over, the doctor came out to talk with me in person and her parents over the phone. He assured them the procedure had gone well but they were still worried and confused by the medical jargon. An hour later, the physician associate came out. He was warm and able to explain clearly how the procedure had gone from anchoring the tendon to the last stitch he himself put in. I could hear how it put my friend’s parents at ease. It was yet another experience confirming the conclusion I had made long before to become a PA.
It has always seemed natural for me to go into some form of healthcare since I was raised by a family of healthcare professionals. My mother is a registered nurse, father an anesthesiologist, maternal grandmother a nurse, and both grandfathers well-known and respected surgeons. I remember asking my dad endless questions about definitions of unfamiliar medical terms; I was very proud that I could say big words such as “anesthesiologist” as a small child. I was eager to learn all I could about how and why things worked while combining it with a passion for helping others. Once I reached college, I was excited to choose kinesiology as my major so I could explore several professions that would allow me to do both. I do not know specifically when I became aware of PAs, but I began to notice them more as I worked and volunteered in a variety of settings. I realized it was exactly what I was looking for.
I have been able to speak with or observe many PAs since coming to this realization. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell who the PA is in the hospital settings. Many of them work seamlessly with their doctors while also having a great deal of autonomy. I saw this more clearly when I shadowed an ENT PA as he visited with patients in the clinic. He could diagnose and prescribe on his own but would discuss cases with the lead doctor from time to time. A similar dynamic was evident with a surgical thoracic PA I shadowed. She showed me how the thoracoscopic tools worked to cut and seal the lung as she carefully removed a tumor from a COPD patient. She gave me the opportunity to hold the tumor while she installed the chest tubes and stitched the incisions.
Shadowing and interning were great for gathering information about the role of a PA, but I wanted to do more to build my experience. I decided to earn my EMT certification while still in college and was thrilled at how it was a practical parallel to my kinesiology studies. Additionally, it led to the post undergraduate job I am in now, working in an ER, where I have been able to assist in the care of a variety of cases and learn new skills. Recently, I assisted in a case involving a middle eastern child who had a deep laceration in her leg. She was panicking, not letting anyone near her, and her parents could not speak English well enough to explain what had happened. After waiting for her to relax a little, I asked a very important question: what her favorite color was. She said pink and we tried to list all the things we knew of in that color. She even taught me how to say it in Farsi while we put in the IV and prepared to suture the gash.
Despite my surety in choosing this career path, I have struggled to answer the outwardly simple question of “Why do you want to be a PA?”. The combination of my upbringing and variety of experiences brought it to my attention and I have not been able to let it go. While I cannot pin down precisely when I decided to be a PA, I know I what kind of PA I want to be. I want to be warm, easy to understand, and engaging the way the orthopedic PA was with my friend’s family post operation. In the end, it is a simple question to which I have only a simple answer: because it is right for me.
I feel really good about this and consider it a final draft. I worry that I may be too long even though it does not reach the official character limit. Otherwise I am ready to submit it unless there are any glaring errors.