Mistake on Personal Statement

[coglin5]

Hello to all I had someone edit my personal statement for me and they edited physician assistant to physician's assistant and I already submitted to like 5 school already should I be concerned about this for admissions purposes? 

 

[fflores98]

And you didn't bother proofreading before submitting? Yes, I would be worried. The profession has been battling about name change for a long time to free us from the "assistant" name. Incorrect spelling to an already contested name will be sure to ruffle some feathers. 

[dchampigny]

This would be an automatic rejection if I were on an admissions committee. It shows a lack of attention to detail. As a future physician assistant, how can I be confident you'll be good at the little things PAs are so good at, i.e. checking the platelets before a central line, verifying an allergy, etc.

 

Little mistakes in most professions don't amount to much. Little mistakes and ignoring details in medicine can be deadly. 

[fishbum]

That's pretty rough...probably the one professional misnomer that everyone agrees on.

 

That said, if your application is really, really competitive otherwise (it's a good PS, super-strong GPA, great LORs, lots of good HCE), I don't know that it will be an automatic DQ everywhere. Everybody makes mistakes from time to time....sometimes in extraordinarily inconvenient places. 

 

I could be totally off base though...I guess it mostly depends on the attitudes of the readers. 

[anewconvert]

It's embarrassing, but I doubt it is an automatic disqualification, nor should it be.  People make mistakes.  My office got a CV from a recent grad applying for a job and the grad didn't put her name ANYWHERE on the cv and used a cutesy email address to send it.  We only knew that it was her by elimination of the people we were expecting compared to the cv's we had.  So with that considered, your mistake doesn't look that grievous does it?

[Petunia]

Some schools will probably have a cow....  but I have a best friend who is in admissions for medical school and my sister does residency match (admissions for doctors applying to residency) and BOTH told me that 90% of the time, they only really look closely at personal statements if there is a red flag in the application...

Statistically I think it might hurt your chances for a couple programs, but a couple of programs probably won't really review your personal statement in great detail

 

I know PA is very different than MD/DO but,.... it is the same concept of something being wickedly competitive and them needing to sort through thousands of applications

 

If CASPA won't let you edit it, (which the faqs say they wont) I would do NOTHING... I think if you brought it up to Adcoms it would just be shining a spotlight on your error

[HMtoPA]

This would be an automatic rejection if I were on an admissions committee. It shows a lack of attention to detail. As a future physician assistant, how can I be confident you'll be good at the little things PAs are so good at, i.e. checking the platelets before a central line, verifying an allergy, etc.

 

Little mistakes in most professions don't amount to much. Little mistakes and ignoring details in medicine can be deadly. 

 

 

That's overly harsh, IMO. Yes, attention to detail is important, but people (even PA's!) make mistakes (even typos!). I know the dreaded "apostrophe ess" is an unforgivable sin around here, but is it really any surprise that it sometimes slips through? "Physician's Assistant" at least makes grammatical sense.

 

"Assistant Physician" also makes grammatical sense, but would mean something else entirely. "Physician Assistant" doesn't really mean anything...

[dchampigny]

That's overly harsh, IMO. Yes, attention to detail is important, but people (even PA's!) make mistakes (even typos!). I know the dreaded "apostrophe ess" is an unforgivable sin around here, but is it really any surprise that it sometimes slips through? "Physician's Assistant" at least makes grammatical sense.

 

A typo is leving a letter out of a sentence (see previous sentence). Including an incorrect spelling of a profession you'd like to join is not a typo in my opinion.

 

Same reason why I don't apply for jobs that are looking for a physician's assistant. It's a small error, I agree with you there. But at the end of the day, it shows a lack of attention to detail. 

[MT2PA]

This would be an automatic rejection if I were on an admissions committee. It shows a lack of attention to detail. As a future physician assistant, how can I be confident you'll be good at the little things PAs are so good at, i.e. checking the platelets before a central line, verifying an allergy, etc.

 

Little mistakes in most professions don't amount to much. Little mistakes and ignoring details in medicine can be deadly. 

 

I absolutely bet there are adcoms that would do the same.  It's hard to know if it's an oversight or someone who doesn't understand the profession.  I think my school has adcoms that will automatically say no to an app that uses physician's assistant (can't be sure, feel like I've heard that, though).  I don't think it's harsh.  When a school looks at 2000 applications, someone who either A: didn't check over their proofread app or B: doesn't understand WHY that's not an appropriate spelling/title...well....there are hundreds more apps of students who did both of those things correctly.

 

EDIT:  If this mistake happened once in a personal statement, I'd assume simply missed during proofreading = less of a big deal.  If it was every single time PA was mentioned, I'd consider it a bigger problem.  Personally.  Adcoms might be sick of it, though.