For me the personal statement was painful to write. Trying to be brief but get everything in and trying not to sound cliche and trying not to sound like every other personal statement was pretty tough. I’m not sure how much it matters anyway but I kind of obsessed over it for a while. Funny thing was that at a few of my interviews it was mentioned that they didn’t get a personal statement for me from CAS although other places did so I don’t know what happened.
Traveling wasn’t too bad overall. I went on around 13 interviews...flying to most. I tried to make them regional but it was sometimes difficult because of the limited interview dates available. I came from the midwest and ended up making two trips to the east coast, two trips to the west coast, and one trip to the south to get everything in.
Early on I shared my interview schedule with some of the other applicants and we shared rental cars and such to keep costs down. It seemed to work out well.
