Essay Mistakes to Avoid in Your Medical School Applications
/Learn what should be avoided in essay writing, the most common med school essay mistakes and everything you need to know to correct them
Avoid common essay mistakes in your med school applications
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Part 1: Introduction
There’s a famous Babe Ruth saying about how, sometimes, the fear of striking out can keep us from even trying.
It may be hard to imagine Babe Ruth has anything to do with medical school applications. But really, he was getting at an important universal truth.
Let’s apply this concept to writing your application essays. If you’re afraid of getting an essay wrong, it can be even harder to start writing than you originally thought.
On top of that, it can be intimidating to think about how there are so many ways to get an essay wrong and seemingly only a few ways to get it right. You have to juggle a lot when you’re writing. You have to tell your personal story while making it sound interesting to someone who knows very little about you.
As a premed student taking a ton of science classes, it can be easy to feel like you don’t have the training to write well. You might even feel like you’re simply a bad writer. On top of that, there is an inherently awkward feeling that you might just be the least interesting person in the world or that, in your effort to talk about your accomplishments, you’ll come across as arrogant. So, how do you get started without falling into the trap of so many possible mistakes?
Take some comfort in the fact that everyone makes mistakes—as much as that sounds like a generic platitude. The point is: Don’t aim for perfection the first time you sit down to write. Instead, remember that a lot of the errors you think are symptomatic of your inability to write are really just common mistakes you can prepare yourself to avoid or fix.
Sometimes, demystifying writing mistakes by confronting them head on and naming them can be a great start. We’re here to help with that.
In this guide, we’re going to walk you through the most common mistakes med school applicants make when they sit down to start writing. We’ll discuss the difference between macro- and micro-level problems—which is really just a fancy way of saying we’re going to talk about the big errors and the small errors. We’ll also show you some examples of what it looks like to get it wrong and then what it looks like to fix it.
Ultimately, you don’t have to be a grammar guru or the world’s next great essayist in order to write a successful med school application essay. Preparing for the writing process with a solid understanding of what to avoid is a great way to boost your confidence when you sit down to write.
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Part 2: The Most Common Structural and Narrative Errors in Medical School Essays
When we talk about macro-level errors, we’re usually referring to errors that have to do with the structure of your essay or the way you’re telling your story. These flaws are the ones that are going to make it especially hard to identify what you’re trying to convey to your reader. Here are the most common errors to watch out for.
Error 1: The Overdone Metaphor
Sometimes, in an effort to come up with a great hook–a catchy opening that will immediately get our readers’ attention– students will turn to a metaphor. They’ll wax poetic comparing their journey to medicine to the process of growing a garden or climbing a mountain or building a house. Throughout the rest of the essay, they’ll aim to put their creative potential on full display by drawing every point back to the central metaphor.
Why it’s a problem
Here’s where it gets tricky, though. Often once you find that metaphor and convince yourself of the great job you’re doing with it, you might write an essay where the metaphor overtakes the message you’re actually trying to convey. The boundaries between what has actually happened to you and what is a hypothetical metaphorical scenario becomes a little blurred.
This is a problem because the metaphor could distract your reader from the true emphasis. But it’s also going to distract you while you’re writing. You’re going to worry so much about carrying the metaphor throughout the essay that you’ll forget why you’re really writing. It’s also going to get in the way of the essay’s flow, installing a barrier between the reader and the writer, making it harder to connect with you as a person.
Example of an overdone metaphor
Take a look at this example of an overworked metaphor:
I was climbing up a mountain reveling in the cool crisp air and the snowy mountain peaks around me. The sunlight glittered off the snow like a bunch of hidden diamonds, encouraging me that somewhere on this long and difficult trek, a hidden treasure was waiting for me. The birds circled overhead and called out to me to keep going. Any moment, I thought, it would get easier to breathe and I would be at my destination.
So, what is this writer getting wrong? First of all, metaphors can easily transform into cliches if we don’t have a really clear idea of where we’re going.
Imagine the essay keeps going and the writer starts talking about all of the challenges they’ve faced on the way to medical school. Suddenly, we’ll recognize they’re trying to make something of a comparison to this difficult mountain trek and the harsh demands aspiring physicians can face in pursuit of their degree. The problem is, that metaphor is cliched and confusing. For example, did this writer climb an actual mountain? You can be an aspiring doctor and an avid mountain climber, after all. But then, if the writer did climb an actual mountain, which parts of the mountain-climbing story are embellished for the sake of the metaphor, and which are pure fact? Is there a real treasure, or just a figurative one?
Suddenly, your reader is going to be distracted by all of their questions. And this distraction is going to keep them from fully engaging with the purpose of your essay: to convince them you deserve a spot in medical school.
How to write instead
This doesn’t mean you can’t get creative with your opening. Take a look at how you might rework a metaphor like this to clarify the focus:
Sometimes I think of what it would be like to climb Mt. Everest. I imagine myself taking in the snowy mountain peaks, bundled up in so many warm layers I can hardly move. But I keep climbing upward toward the glittery slopes, the birds circling high overhead, and the reward that lay at the pinnacle of my journey. A stumble here and there is inevitable. And when weather, lack of supplies, or my own weaknesses upset my best-laid plans, I have to be flexible, consider all my options, and re-chart my course, always keeping my eye on the peaks ahead.
I ask myself how different it would be from the time I climbed Mt. Shasta as a freshman in college, or Snowdon in Wales last summer. I can’t say if I’ll ever actually scale Mt. Everest. But lately I’ve been thinking about my background climbing mountains and what this might also say about my passion for medicine. There is the need, in both, for resilience and perseverance. There is the commitment to lifelong learning. More than anything, however, there is my passion for problem-solving–whether in a clinic or on a mountain– with creativity and determination.
While it can sometimes still be a risky decision to open with something seemingly non-medical, this is a great example of confronting that risk head on. We understand that the writer is headed somewhere here. There is already much more specificity, providing us some insight into the writer’s personality rather than just an abstract scenario. And they really address the “So what?” question — in other words, why are we reading about mountain climbing? Well, because it tells us something about the writer and, more importantly, it tells us something about how they view their own journey toward a career in medicine.
Error 2: The Glorified Cover Letter
No one can fault you for being eager to share all that you’ve accomplished. This can be symptomatic of both anxiety and pride . Where this gets tricky is when you get lost in summary and don’t provide any insight into why this work was meaningful to you.
Example of a glorified cover letter
Take a look at this example:
As a junior in college, I decided to start my own community service group, organizing my classmates and traveling with them every week to read bedtime stories to children in the local hospital. As the founder of this group, I drafted a mission statement, coordinated with the hospital where we volunteered, and recruited volunteers. Together, we read a total of 115 books to 50 children over the course of one year, an accomplishment that I’m really proud of. I really enjoyed connecting with the patients and getting to know them, and I know my fellow classmates got a lot out of the experience, too.
Why it’s a problem
You can imagine how a summary-based essay like this would continue. It’s true that this experience should probably be in the essay. The problem is, with a straight summary, we’re mostly repeating what will come elsewhere in the application–particularly your work and activities section. It’s also not especially engaging to read and it doesn’t offer any insight into why these experiences were meaningful for the writer.
How to write it instead
Now picture if we were to change it to something like this:
I’ll never forget the experience of reading one of my favorite books, A Wrinkle in Time, to a seven-year-old cancer patient named “Isaac.” He listened intently to every word, grinning when Mrs. Whatsit made a joke about being several centuries old, gasping when Meg and Charles Wallace finally found their missing father on a faraway planet, and always begging me to read “just one more chapter” when I came to the end of my hour-long visits.
On the day that we finally finished the book, his mother grabbed my hand and thanked me with tears in her eyes. “I feel like he can be a real kid when he’s listening to these stories,” she said.
When I founded my college community service club, traveling with a group of students to read bedtime stories to children in the local hospital, I knew I would learn about how to interact with a wide variety of patients. What I learned that day with Isaac and his mother, however, was how connected I want to be with patients and their families as a physician. Even more, I realized how much I will be responsible for addressing a patient’s emotional health, not just their physical health.
Here, the writer is talking about the same experience and including all of the crucial information we get in the first example. However, by zooming in on a particular moment within that experience, we get more insight into why it was meaningful and what the writer’s key takeaway was. Even better, they connect this experience to their goals in medicine. This approach allows the writer to display more of their own personality and values, making the essay more memorable.
Error 3: Falling into a Language Desert
Word choice might seem simple and easy enough to manage. But it’s actually something that’s easy to overlook, especially when it comes to repeating the same key words over and over again. Sometimes this is deliberate and we think it will just emphasize a set of central/critical ideas. Sometimes we do it because we’re just not paying attention. But the problem is that with too much repetition, the flow of your essay will start to suffer. It will also leave your reader wondering if you really know what you want to say.
Now, this doesn’t mean you need to write with a thesaurus at the ready or swap out every simple word with a complex one. You still want the essay to read naturally. But do keep an eye out for where you’re saying the same thing too often, and where this is starting to interfere with both clarity and specificity.
Example of a language desert
Take a look at this example:
I want to work in healthcare because I’m drawn to how much healthcare requires you to understand health at an individual and community level. I want to be a doctor because medicine truly matters to me and bettering the health of my patients on an individual and community level will be meaningful to me.
Why it’s a problem
There are a couple of different types of repetition here. First, the word, ‘healthcare’ is used over and over. If you read back through your paper (pro tip: read every draft out loud) and you notice you’re often repeating the same word, use this as a sign to play with your sentence structure so that you’re cutting out some of that repetition. There is also a repeated idea in the last sentence. The writer is talking about medicine mattering to them and they close the sentence the same way, albeit using different words. This finishes the idea right where we started and the reader is left wondering what the writer is actually trying to say.
How to write it instead
Here’s an alternative to consider:
I’m passionate about becoming a doctor so that I can impact healthcare on both a community and individual level.
We’re saying the same thing as above with half the language. Not only will this help you navigate the pesky character count, but it will also help you provide some emphasis for your reader. Simplifying things allows the writer’s voice to come across as more authoritative and confident. Repetition isn’t always a bad thing. But rather than repeating the same keywords, look for narrative throughlines and point out repeated themes for your reader.
Error 4: The Vague Theme
Sometimes, we start writing before we actually know what to say. It’s a very common mistake to make. As a result, you can end up developing a vague theme that doesn’t convey anything memorable about your passion for medicine and why you want to become a doctor. Vague themes aren’t memorable, and they aren’t likely to convince your reader of your points, making it difficult to track the connection between an overarching goal and why you want to achieve it. Furthermore, it can be quite hard to write. Without a specific theme, you don’t really know what to emphasize within each body paragraph.
Example of a vague theme
Take a look at this example:
I want to become a doctor so that I can enrich lives.
Why it’s a problem
This is a valid goal. However, it’s a goal readers are going to see over and over again in application essays; it's too broad. For example, you could enrich lives by being a fantastic baker. A teacher. A painter. Why is medicine the right way for you to enrich lives? And what does it actually mean to enrich a life?
How to write it instead
Take a look at this difference:
I want to become a doctor so that I can use my passion for problem-solving and creativity to empower patients to feel heard and encourage them to take an active role in their own well-being.
Take a look at all the keywords this writer has given themselves: creativity, problem-solver, empower, heard, encourage. Not only does this give readers a rich idea of the unique qualities this writer possesses, it also provides the writer with a blueprint they can use for the rest of their essay. They can now specifically write about moments that display their creativity, their problem-solving, and their effort to give patients a voice.
Error 5: Summarizing Your Whole Essay in Your Closing
Sometimes, upon reaching the closing paragraph, a couple of things happen. First, we realize we don’t know what else we actually want to say. Second, we start to convince ourselves that we need to remind our reader what we’ve already told them in order to really drive the point home.
This approach of summarizing your entire essay lacks nuance and disengages the reader. It makes the essay less memorable and will leave a reader questioning your ability to effectively reflect on your experiences.
Example of a summary-based closing
Take a look at what this writer came up with:
As mentioned above, all of my experiences thus far have taught me to value individualized care, teamwork, and determination in the face of challenges. My time as a scribe allowed me to view patient-doctor relationships unfolding firsthand, my time volunteering at the children’s hospital allowed me to utilize creativity to connect with patients, and my work leading a Medical Journal Book Club taught me to persevere when confronted with challenging concepts, collaborating with others to distill meaning. I know this will prepare me to succeed as a future physician.
Why it’s a problem
Not only is this writer merely summarizing their essay, but they’re calling extra attention to it with the opening sentence. This immediately clues us in that they’ve already discussed these values and these experiences.
While reinforcing your points isn’t always a bad thing, there’s no need to simply remind your reader what you’ve already told them. Instead, think about leaving them with something new. Consider focusing on a specific image or moment that speaks to your central themes but you didn’t have a chance to use elsewhere in your essay. Alternatively, consider sharing a brand new perspective or insight on some of the experiences you’ve already shared earlier on.
How to write it instead
Here’s how this writer is deploying that same strategy:
As I approach medical school, I’m grateful to have learned so much about what I hope to embody as a physician: creativity, determination, and an ability to collaborate in pursuit of individualized care. I know these goals will continue to evolve as I transition into a role as a medical student. For now, however, I’m reminded of something a patient at the community clinic told me at the end of a busy day volunteering. As I rushed from room to room trying to help the nurses restock supplies and provide patients with their printed out visit summaries, this particular patient asked me to slow down, saying: “I’m not just a number in your file. I’m a person.” I realized then how much it matters to make a patient feel heard, unique, and understood. My desire to provide every patient with this feeling will guide me as a future physician.
The writer is still managing to point out those key values present in the rest of their essay and use them as a jumping-off point rather than as their entire conclusion paragraph. They tell a new story that’s brief but that speaks to the values the writer has already expressed and the new values and goals they seem to be considering as a future medical student.
This is a far more engaging to read, and the description of a specific interaction with a patient provides readers with one final insight that will linger in their mind far longer than a dull summary.
Error 6: Absent Transition Statements
As you write, be careful that you’re not focusing so much on your paragraphs that you start to neglect how to arrive at those paragraphs. In other words, think about transition statements and how you are going to help your reader move from one idea to the next. Each paragraph should bring up a new idea that’s connected to the overarching message you’re trying to convey. If you don’t pay attention to this, the flow and readability of your essay will suffer, as it obstructs your reader’s ability to dwell on the experiences you’re writing about. Additionally, make sure you’re not using the same word or phrase at the start of several paragraphs (“When I…” and “I am…” are two very commonly-used paragraph starters; try to change things up a little if you catch yourself using them more than just once or twice).
Example of an absent transition statement
Take a look at what two paragraphs with a missing transition statement look like:
Volunteering in India, I was struck by my new understanding of global healthcare. I realized that the accessibility of care I’d sometimes taken for granted in my native Canada had left me with a completely different understanding of healthcare than my grandparents.
As a scribe, I knew I could have the chance to engage in work treating a wide range of patients from the local community.
Why it’s a problem
The writer is talking about two totally different experiences. This demonstrates variety within the essay, but the writer jumps from a reflection on their time in India to their time as a scribe. This sudden shift is disorienting for the reader, and it likely leaves them wondering what the experience of volunteering in India and being a scribe have to do with each other.
Did the writer volunteer as a scribe in India? Or did their experience in India lead them to pursue work as a scribe? What specific experience(s) and interaction(s) during their time in India brought them to the realization that they wanted pursue working as a scribe in order to engage with “a wide range of patients from the local community”?
How to write it instead
We could change it to something like this:
Volunteering in India in the summer of 2022, I was struck by my new understanding of global healthcare. I realized that the accessibility of care I’d taken for granted in my native Canada had left me with a completely different understanding of healthcare than my grandparents.
Inspired by this revelation, the following summer I decided to pursue more work that would expand my understanding of how people from different communities engage with healthcare in unique ways. In pursuit of this goal, I started work as a scribe at XYZ, determined to work with a wide range of diverse patients.
Here, our reader is spending time reflecting a bit more on how two very different experiences might actually be linked. They also do a nice job of providing clarity on the chronology of these two events. As a result, the narrative flow is stronger and the essay is more effective.
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Part 3: The Most Common Grammar Mistakes in Medical School Essays
By now, you can probably see that even micro-level errors make a huge difference. Imagine a car whose engine works perfectly but the blinkers don’t flash or the wipers only clear half of the windshield. It’s going to be really tricky to successfully drive.
This is a good metaphor for the mechanics—or the grammar—in your writing. Though something like grammar might not feel as integral to the success of your writing as the anecdotes you’ve decided to include, it can still deeply impact the clarity of your essay. Incorrect grammar corrodes your essay, even if you’re telling the right stories.
Here are the biggest grammar questions and mistakes we see writers making.
Passive Vs. Active Voice
You’ve probably heard these terms a thousand times, but do you truly understand what they mean? Even more, why are they important?
When you’re using passive voice, the subject of the sentence is receiving the action. Here’s what that looks like:
Diabetes was shown by research to cause high stress in families and patients.
The little girl was kicked by a horse at a birthday party.
It was decided by my mother that I would go to boarding school.
Some of these may seem more awkward than others but they’re all problematic in the context of an application essay, since the meaning is unnecessarily obscured.
If we were to convert these sentences to active voice, however, they would look like this:
Research showed that diabetes was a cause of high stress in families and patients.
The horse kicked the little girl at a birthday party.
My mother decided I would go to boarding school.
The changes here are pretty simple. But the impact they have on sentence clarity is huge.
Acronyms
When we want to cut to the point really quickly, sometimes we search for an acronym. In other words:
CDC instead of Centers for Disease Control
WHO instead of World Health Organization
CPVMT instead of Central Pennsylvania Volunteer Medical Transportation
Acronyms are fine to use, but there’s a convention you should follow. The first time you bring up a term, spell it out completely, then put the acronym in parentheses after. For the remainder of the essay, any time you want to reference the organization, you can simply use the acronym without parentheses. This will give your reader time to understand the reference without you having to waste precious characters spelling the organization out every time you mention it.
So instead of saying:
While volunteering with VPSS, I learned how to collaborate in the pursuit of empathetic care. As a crucial resource for underserved patients, VPSS also taught me how support should be extended beyond the walls of a clinical environment.
Take a look at this example:
While volunteering with the Volunteer Patient Social Support (VPSS), I learned how to collaborate in the pursuit of empathetic care. As a crucial resource for underserved patients, VPSS also taught me how support should be extended beyond the walls of a clinical environment.
The change may seem small, but it ensures you’re not going to confuse your reader or overly depersonalize your tone by jumping right into a series of letters with no inherent meaning to your reader.
Tense Agreement
When it comes to grammar, tense relates to the past, present, and future. It feels easy to distinguish these in life, but you’d be surprised how often tenses are swapped when writing. Often, this will happen when writers are trying to paint the scene of a particular experience. When a writer is unsure of how to navigate the details of what happened to them and provide a reflection on how it impacted them, they sometimes mix tenses. The overall clarity of an essay can suffer as a result, displaying a lack of precision and creating confusion for readers.
Here’s an example:
I am walking through the walls of the hospital, humming my favorite song, when I see a group of nurses rushing to a room to help with a code blue. I ran over and tried my best to help, but I was unsure what actual impact I could have in such a high stakes scenario.
This is a pretty subtle example so it’s easy to miss it. We start with the present tense, “I am walking,” and shift to the past halfway through the paragraph, “I ran.” A slip like this is distracting and, as such, takes the reader’s mind off of what the writer is trying to accomplish. Switching between tenses can be a stylistic decision, but it’s tricky to pull off in the space of one paragraph. And here, since we’re switching tenses within the same moment, it will be read as an error.
Instead, you would simplify this by making the tense uniform like so:
I was walking through the halls of the hospital, humming my favorite song, when I saw a group of nurses rushing to a room to help with a code blue. I ran over and tried my best to help, but I was unsure what actual impact I could have in such a high stakes scenario.
OR:
I am walking through the walls of the hospital, humming my favorite song, when I see a group of nurses rushing to a room to help with a code blue. I run over and try my best to help, but I am unsure what actual impact I can have in such a high stakes scenario.
Making sure the paragraph reads uniformly leads to consistency in your voice, which is the best way to ensure your reader stays engaged and is clear on what is happening.
When to use Me vs. Myself
Sometimes the desire to achieve sentence variety can result in the impulse to use “me” and “myself” (and even “I”) interchangeably. But they each have a distinct purpose.
Myself is what is known as a reflexive or stressed pronoun, meaning it should really only be used along with the subject pronoun “I.” In other words, the below examples are all correct:
I went to the grocery store by myself.
I did the job myself.
I bought myself a new house.
Whereas, this would not be correct:
The lab PI met with Henry and myself.
In contrast, me is an object pronoun. This means that it refers to the action of a verb. So the correct usage would be:
My mother wants me to eat more vegetables.
The professor wanted to speak with me and Alice.
Semicolons
A semicolon is meant to indicate a pause between two independent sentence clauses. Using it instead of a comma is a way to provide more emphasis or link two closely related ideas while maintaining the flow of a single sentence. Think of it as the halfway point between a comma and a period. Be careful not to use a semicolon and a comma interchangeably, as you don’t want a semicolon to interrupt a sentence.
For example, these semicolons are being deployed incorrectly:
My dog is sick so I know I need to take her to the vet; but I am afraid to take her to the vet because I worry about how I will feel if I get bad news.
OR:
In the lab I learned the importance of a number of key values; teamwork; perseverance; an open mind; and my passion for headache research.
Here, the semicolon is interrupting the flow of the sentence, making the structure unclear. It muddies the waters of where the emphasis falls. We would correct this as follows:
I know I need to take my dog to the vet because she’s been sick for two weeks; still, I’m afraid because I’m worried about getting bad news.
OR:
In the lab, I learned the importance of a number of key values; it was empowering to grow in my understanding of teamwork, perseverance, keeping an open mind, and how important headache research is to me.
Making these changes ensures flow, uniformity, and an authoritative voice.
One common mistake with semicolons comes when it’s time to make a list. Often, writers feel the impulse to use a semicolon to bring some pause into the list or to break up the length. For example, you might want to write:
At the store, I need to get bread; cheese; sugar; eggs; tofu.
However, when it comes to semicolons inside of lists, you really only want to use them if the listed items already include a comma. So, for example:
I need to buy bread, cheese, sugar, eggs, and tofu from the market next door; fish and oranges from the farmstand; and cereal, peanut butter, and lima beans from the grocery store.
Because each item within this list contains commas, semicolons help break up the items and make the sentence more readable.
Quotations
When used correctly, quotations are a great way to introduce some narrative texture in your essay. Whether you’re quoting a line from a book, quoting a bit of dialogue, or quoting a thought, using a quotation can open up the space of the essay and show genuine effort to make a narrative for your reader.
Some of the easiest ways to get quotations wrong, however, are:
Overuse in an effort to create emphasis
I was eating the homemade “cookies” my mother baked so “wonderfully.”
We can see the writer is likely alluding to the sub-par quality of their mother’s cookies. However, the quotation marks bring in uncertainty as to what the writer is trying to say. Are there no cookies here? What else does the writer mean by wonderfully? We will automatically read an ironic tone into these quotations but is that what the author intends?
Using a ‘ instead of “
Writers will also sometimes use a ‘ instead of “. It’s best to only use a single quotation mark when quoting a line of dialogue within a line of dialogue. For example:
My cousin was telling me about his interaction with his coach. “I was walking to practice,” my cousin said, “and my coach pulled me aside. ‘Aaron, if you keep showing up late, you may get kicked off the team.’ What do you think I should do?”
Here, the single quotation mark is used to distinguish Aaron’s voice from the coach’s.
On a formal level, remember that quotation marks should not be used for the title of a book or journal. Instead, italicize these. Use quotation marks when you’re discussing an individual text, such as a single poem, a single song, or a single essay.
Dangling Modifiers
A dangling modifier refers to a word or phrase that modifies a word that’s not clearly defined in the sentence. Using these is a surefire way to confuse the reader and disrupt clarity and flow. For example:
Without remembering what the student’s name was, it was difficult to compliment the correct essay.
The reader will be confused by the ‘it.’ Who does ‘it’ refer to? Who is actually the subject of the sentence? The logical order of the sentence is also a little confusing. Instead, revise the sentence to look like this:
The professor forgot the student’s name, so it was difficult to compliment the correct essay.
Not only will this help with clarity, but it will also help with emphasis and intention.
Affect vs. Effect and Than vs. Then
We have probably all gotten this wrong at some point. They may seem like minor errors, but mistaking their use challenges our authority and our eye for detail.
Keep this rule of thumb in mind:
Affect should be considered a verb. It acts on something or produces a change. In other words:
The cold weather affected my father’s health.
The taste of his grandmother’s food deeply affected him.
In each of these cases, knowing that we can swap out “affect” with another verb (for example, The cold weather impacted my father’s health, or The taste of his grandmother’s food resonated with him deeply) is a good sign we’re correctly using the term.
Effect meanwhile, usually refers to the result or the noun.
His rash was the effect of his allergic reaction.
In the case of than vs. then, remember that than indicates a comparison whereas then indicates something related to time.
For example, you would not say:
I lived in Colorado and than I moved to Florida.
And you would not say:
My brother is younger then me.
But you would say:
I lived in Colorado and then I moved to Florida.
And you would also say:
My brother is younger than me.
Details like these really matter in an essay, especially if we’ve put so much thought into the larger structure and narrative. So why not be extra sure we get them right?
Hyphens
Hyphens are a multi-use form of punctuation, and they can be extremely handy in lending some variation to your essay’s structure.
However, it’s important to know when they should be used, and when other forms of punctuation are more suitable.
Hyphens should be used in the following circumstances:
When writing out complex numbers such as twenty-five, ninety-nine, or one hundred and sixty-three. (Note: only use a hyphen for numbers between twenty-one and ninety-nine). For example, you would write one hundred and twenty-one or one hundred and ninety-nine, but not one-hundred-twenty).
When joining two or more words to create a single adjective that describes a noun, such as the well-worn blue jeans. (Note: drop the hyphen if the noun comes first, as in the blue jeans are well worn).
When using prefixes and suffixes such as mid-, pre-, post-, pro-, anti-, etc.
When joining three or more words to make a complex compound word, such as son-in-law.
Em dashes
It’s worth also noting that hyphens (-) are different from em dashes (—). Em dashes are a versatile form of punctuation that can be used to emphasize a point or provide more detail and context to a sentence. As such, if you’re looking to vary your punctuation, you can replace a colon, semicolon, or parenthetical phrase with em dashes. For example:
If you want to use an em dash in place of a semicolon, it would look like this: I couldn’t believe what I was seeing — there were patients lining up in the streets just to access basic healthcare.
If you want to use an em dash in place of a colon, it would look like this: During my time as a hospital volunteer, I interacted with patients of all ages — babies, middle schoolers, parents, and grandparents.
If you want to use a pair of em dashes in place of a parenthetical phrase, it would look like this: As I prepared for my first day of shadowing — ironing my scrubs, gathering my notebook and pens, and triple-checking the route to the clinic — I wondered whether a young Dr. Feldman had once felt this way, too.
Final thoughts
It’s important to remember that you can’t edit nothing. In other words, don’t be so afraid of getting something wrong that you don’t even start. Writing well is a process and even the best writers make mistakes. However, for each error, there’s usually an easy fix.
Don’t think of this guide as something you must memorize before you write. Think of it as a tool you can use for revision to help you find your mistakes before they end up in your essays.
About the Author
Dr. Shirag Shemmassian is the Founder of Shemmassian Academic Consulting and one of the world's foremost experts on medical school admissions. For nearly 20 years, he and his team have helped thousands of students get into medical school using his exclusive approach.
