Why do I need an autobiography?
Your autobiography provides the HPRC members an opportunity to read about you in your own words. It gives us a sense of who you are and what you think is important. It also gives you an opportunity to explore how you plan to make your health professions application cohesive.
Technical details
Your autobiography should:
- be no longer than 1500 words or ~6 pages double-spaced
- use Times New Roman 12-point Font
- be double-spaced
- have numbered pages
- have a cover page that contains your name, your major, the date, the health profession(s) to which you wish to enter, and a word count.
- use APA style for formatting and logical section headers
Content Suggestions
The autobiography is a document that is specific to the HPRC but it may be helpful as you craft a personal statement that is much shorter for your application. Each health profession has a different set of requirements for the personal statement that you should follow but many elements that we would like to read about as an HPRC in your autobiography will be valuable for your personal statement.
Topics to consider for your autobiography are listed below. None of these topics is specifically required but many of them may be helpful as we consider the nine elements on which we attempt to evaluate you. The elements are communication skills, empathy, emotional stability, interpersonal relations, judgement, maturity, motivation, reliability, and self-confidence.
- Family history
- Big family, small family, unique family, immigrant family, first generation college student, etc.
- Life history
- Where you grew up
- Important early events
- Your academic history (particularly if you have some lower grades or had a tough semester).
- How you overcame academic challenges
- Important coursework for you
- Research experience
- Why Siena?
- Volunteering/Shadowing
- Clinical experience
- Important events and turning points
- Work experience
- Working as a cashier in a supermarket, as a camp counselor, or research assistant can get at a number of different elements
- Leadership experience
- Teamwork experience
- Why do you want to be a ...
- How do you know? Why not some other helping field?
- Trajectory toward your future profession
- What is important to you and how do you show it
- Influential people, patients, clients, professionals, professors, colleagues, and foes
Writing Center and Proofreading
We have a wonderful resource at Siena College - The Writing Center.
We recommend that you make an appointment at the writing center before you turn in your autobiography. We expect that your autobiography is a polished piece of writing that demonstrates your best writing efforts. In order to make it so, you need to have others read and critique it. It will likely go through multiple drafts. It will take you some time to complete. Therefore, you should set aside some dedicated time over a few weeks to make a first draft. It is important that you start getting words on paper (or screens) as early as possible.
We expect that your autobiography will be organized, readable, purposeful, and free of typographical and grammatical errors. We will use this to judge, among other elements, your communication skills.
How do I submit my autobiography
You should export your completed and proofread autobiography to a .pdf file and name it with the following convention - FirstLastname_Autobiography.pdf and send it to Valerie Rivera at vrivera@siena.edu by the deadline.