- Section 1: How NOT to answer “Why Medicine” and “Why do I want to be a doctor”
- Section 2: How to answer Why Medicine in your medical school essays
- Section 3: How to answer Why do you want to be a doctor in your medical school interviews
- Section 4: Why Medicine examples
Reasons to Avoid when stating your
"Why Medicine" Response
- I want to help people
- I want to practice culturally-competent care
- I want to make a connection with people
- I want to improve people’s lives
- I want to help the underserved
- I find the human body fascinating
Let’s go through common, generic reasons we read in our medical school personal statement edits and why these “why do you want to be a doctor” reasons do not convince us.
Note: we have updated these reasons based on essays we’ve read in the most recent medical school application cycle.
Stay away from these vague “Why Medicine” responses in your personal statement and secondary essays
Reason #1: I want to help people.
- Why we don’t love this response: You can help people in literally any profession. This response is not specific enough to healthcare, let alone clinical medicine.
Reason #2: I will be a great doctor who practices culturally-competent care.
- Why we don’t love this response: We are big fans of being cognizant of your patient’s cultural and how it may affect his or her health. However, “culturally competent” care is not becoming a buzz word. Oftentimes, when we students write about this in their medical school essays, they write, “As a physician, I want to provide culturally competent care” without giving any substance to that statement. IF this idea is important to you and you want to include it in your personal statement, then you have to make sure to give a clear example of what culturally-competent care means to you. Finally, remember that you can provide culturally competent care as a Nurse and as a Physician Assistant. So, you still have to a discuss reasons why you want to be a doctor, and not another health care provider.
Reason #3: I want to make a connection with people.
- Why we don’t love this response: We think this reason is very vague and you can make a connection with people in any other service-oriented industry. You do not have to go into medicine or healthcare in order to make a connection with people.
Reason #4: I want to improve people’s lives.
- Why we don’t love this response: Similar to “I want to help people,” you can improve people’s lives in a variety of fields.
Reason #5: I want to help the underserved.
- Why we don’t love this response: The phrase “helping the underserved” is too common these days. In fact, through the hundreds of personal statements we have read in the past 2 application cycles, we’ve read “helping the underserved” in 70-80% of medical school applicants. Talk about not standing out! If you want to help underserved communities, we fully support you. But, our Cracking Med School Admissions team wants you to be more specific in HOW you want to help the underserved or if there are specific populations you want to serve. Ideally, you will include personal experiences with underserved communities. For example, our students who have matriculated into medical school have written about helping refugee populations. Other have discussed that they want to do health policy research on how socioeconomic factors affect access to healthcare. See how these levels of specificity will provide the reader with more insight into your specific interests in improving healthcare.
Reason #6: I find the human body fascinating.
- Why we don’t love this response: While this reason is geared towards the medical profession, we also read this fascination with the human body among PhD candidates. If research and the pathophysiology behind our human bodies is what excite you about the practice of medicine, you have to also say why you want to work with patients rather than focus completely on biological research.
Reason #7: I enjoy learning about science.
- Why we don’t love this response: Using “I enjoy science” is a worse reason than “I find the human body fascinating. There are many career paths outside of patient care where you can follow your zeal for science. For example, an individual can work in drug discovery with a biotech or pharmaceutical company. There are other careers in the healthcare industry like medical billing that do not require a medical degree. Furthermore, you can be a scientific researcher, including in non-healthcare fields like botany, veterinary science, food science, and geology. Basically, saying that you like science is too generalized for another individual to believe you want to go into medicine. You have to say more specifically why are you pursuing a career in medicine.
How to Answer Why Medicine
in your Medical School Essays
The first place you should explain why you want to pursue medicine is in your medical school personal statement. Most premed students apply to medical school through the AMCAS.
The AMCAS personal statement prompt is the following: ““Use the space provided to explain why you want to go to medical school.”
Your personal statement should really reflect why you want to go into medicine. Additionally, your AMCAS work & activities descriptions as well as your medical school secondary essays should support your med school personal statement’s rationale.
A winning framework to responding to the “Why Medicine” and “Why do you want to be a doctor” questions consists of the following:
Step #1: Provide context and your initial interest in pursuing medicine
- Questions to answer: Do you have any role models who are medical doctors? Did you have any early experiences with medicine that greatly affected you? Were you a patient as a child? Did you have to take care of any family members? Did you consider other careers before deciding on a career in medicine?
- Why this is important: Providing initial context from your life experiences can help your interviewer to understand some of your initial environment and how you may have arrived at the decision to pursue medicine.
Step #2: Highlight reasons for wanting to pursue medicine
- Questions to answer: Why are you passionate about health? Did you study science in school? If you did not study science, how will what you studied help you in becoming a great doctor? How did you cultivate your interests in healthcare and did you pursue any activities or research to do so?
- Why this is important: By describing how your interests in healthcare have developed, your interviewer can gain a more nuanced understanding of your scientific curiosity and affinity. This is often the metric they use to determine if you will remain inquisitive, enterprising, and capable of absorbing and driving scientific knowledge forwards in medical school and beyond.
Step #3. Give examples of your experience and activities
- Questions to answer: Are you passionate about health? Did you study science in school? If you did not study science, how will what you studied help you in becoming a great doctor? How did you cultivate your interests in healthcare and did you pursue any activities or research to do so?
- Why this is important: When you are asked these open-ended, common medical school interview questions, you want to give evidence of how you have already tried to make an impact in medicine and healthcare. We strongly encourage students to bring in stories and personal experiences. For example, let’s say you are interested in improving patient care for individuals with disabilities. If you give example of how you worked with a child with autism or did research around improving outcomes for individuals with disabilities, these personal experiences will show the interviewer your passion and experiences.
Step #4: Describe your desire to use your passion to make a positive and direct impact
- Questions to answer: Have you engaged in community service work to help others? How does it make you feel and why is it important to you? Why do you want to pursue a career based around service?
- Why this is important: This section provides a basis for why you are interested in dedicating yourself to a career of serving others. It is also crucial to help you describe why medicine, in particular, is the kind of service that you are interested in doing and why you seek to be a physician and not serve others in a different capacity. Excellent answers will incorporate one’s scholarly endeavors and extracurricular activities. They will link their activities with their career goals.
Step #5: Describe any other reasons and what you hope to accomplish in medicine
- Questions to answer: Why do you want to go to medical school – specifically, wre there any unique reasons that are not covered in the other steps for why you are interested in medical school? How do you plan to use your scientific curiosity and desire to help others as a physician? Do you want to advance medical technology? Do you want to advance medical research? Is there a specific field of medicine you are already interested in pursuing?
- Why this is important: By connecting your current passions with the future impact that you hope to produce, an interviewer begins to get a window into what kind of physician you hope to become and how you could greatly benefit from attending their medical school.
We want to stress that there is not one correct answer to “why do I want to be a doctor” in your medical school application. In fact, you may have multiple reasons why you want to become a physician. What is important is that you show your interests in clinical practice and highlight the unique a position a physician is in to manage somebody’s health.
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Rachel Rizal, M.D.
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Princeton
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Harvard, Emergency Medicine
Rishi Mediratta, M.D., M.Sc., M.A.
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Johns Hopkins
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Stanford, Pediatrics
How to Answer "Why Do You Want to be a Doctor?" in your Medical School Interviews
In medical school interviews, “Why Medicine” or “Why do you want to be a doctor” is one of the common intervioew questions asked. So, you should be prepared.
However, we want to stress this: The BEST med school interviewees will convey why they are pursuing a career in medicine in their “Tell me about yourself” response, which is usually the first question asked.
Therefore, our first piece of advice is to make sure you include why you want to be a doctor in your “Tell me about yourself” response.
Now, med school interviewees may receive additional questions about why they want to pursue medicine. The questions are usually asked like this:
- Why are you interested in medicine?
- Why are you pursuing a career in medicine?
- Why do you want to be a doctor?
- Why do you want to be a physician?
- Why do you want to go to medical school?
There are other ways medical school interviewers can gauge your interest and dedication to medicine:
- Why do you want to be a physician and not a nurse/PA/nutritionist/physical therapist/occupational therapist/other health professional?
- Why do you want to get an MD and not an MPH or MPP?
- Where do you see yourself 20 years from now?
Medical School Interview Tip
The best “Tell me about yourself” responses – the first question typically asked in medical school interviews – includes your reasons for pursuing medicine. Students are typically not asked BOTH tell me about yourself and why medicine.
How to answer Why Do You Want to Be a Doctor in your interviews
Discussing why you want to be a doctor during interviews is similar to the steps taken above when answering why medicine in your medical school application essays.
The one big difference between discussing medicine in your essays versus your interviews is brevity. You will not have 250 words or entire paragraphs to highlight your interests in medicine.
Take a look at our Why Medicine Answer Examples section below to see examples of what you can say.
Additionally, you can discuss clinical experiences throughout your medical school interview. Discuss various physicians you’ve shadowed or different clinical experiences you’ve been involved with. Our Cracking Med School Admissions interview team advises students to include 1-2 patient stories during each interview. The important point to remember is to discuss that you want to help patients through a clinical setting.
If you striving to stand out in your medical school interview, schedule a mock interview with our Cracking Med School Admissions team!
Get 50 More Common Med School Questions & Interview Tips
If you are prepared, the Cracking Med School Admissions interview gives you the perfect opportunity to standout and shine by sharing with people what you are passionate about.
Why Medicine Examples
Why Medicine and Why Do I Want To Be a Doctor Example Answers:
Again, we want to stress that there is not one correct answer to “why do I want to be a doctor” in your medical school interviews. In fact, you may have multiple reasons why you want to become a physician. What is important is that you show your interests in clinical medicine and highlight the unique a position a physician is in to manage somebody’s health.
Here are examples of how you can convey want you want to pursue a medical career:
Personal Experiences + Context
- Initially, I was not that interested in medicine and instead was passionate about space exploration and aerospace engineering. Because of many personal circumstances, I became more drawn to medicine. First, when my grandfather fell ill with pneumonia, I felt helpless to help him when I visited the hospital all while the medical staff remained attentive to small changes in his condition. Seeing how they listened to our and his questions, tailored their treatment to his needs, and reassured us at every step of the way, encouraged me to consider what role I wanted to play in helping others in the future. Second, after a bad ankle fracture while playing soccer, my doctors were just as attentive and they empowered me to come back stronger and more improved than ever before, solidifying my desire to pursue medicine.
Scientific Background
- In college, I was a Psychology major. I was able to learn more about cognition and human perception works and how they can be affected by the underlying biochemical processes happening in the brain and rest of the body. I was also able to explore my interest in neuroscience by working at the Department of Neurology, studying the cognition of split-brain patients and trying to understand novel therapeutic options. Studying this has encouraged me to continue neurology research as a medical student. I aspire to alleviate patients suffering from debilitating chronic conditions.
Helping Patients with their Health
- Throughout my undergraduate years, I’ve been very interested in oncology. I’ve found it to be very rewarding to comfort patients when they receive a very scary diagnosis, and I enjoy helping describe various treatment options. At the Children’s Hospital, I volunteered at the Pediatrics Oncology Department. I helped develop a program where we spoke with parents’ families describing what to expect with chemotherapy. Additionally, I want to translate my patient experiences to the lab when I can develop new targeted cancer therapies.
Ability to Change Healthcare More Broadly
- As a primary care physician, I will be able to help patients navigate through the healthcare system. This will give me insights into what barriers there are to accessing healthcare. I will use those insights to a) advocate to policymakers for better health policies in our state and b) advise start-up companies and non-profits who want to improve access to healthcare services.
Goals in Medicine
- I am specifically interested in removing healthcare misinformation and disinformation among Black and Brown communities. As a medical student at ____ school, I want to teach health topics at after school programs in nearby low-income communities. As a physician, I will continue my scientific problem solving and combine this with my humanistic work serving others, my teaching work, and my desire to advocate for those who have traditionally been underserved by medicine.
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