It’s early June; you’ve taken the MCAT, had your letters of recommendation submitted, written your personal statement, filled out and sent in your primary applications… Now what? In the next few weeks, usually starting in early July, applicants begin receiving secondary application requests. These applications come directly from the medical schools that an applicant applies to, and are sent with the intention of helping schools gain an even further understanding of who an applicant is. They generally consist of anywhere from three to seven prompts to answer, and the rule-of-thumb is to try to send back answers around two weeks after the secondaries were initially received. This is a big task, thankfully prewriting secondary applications will help you to accomplish the 2-week turnaround goal.
Speaking from personal experience, medical school Secondary Application Season is a hectic time! If an applicant has applied to 15+ schools, by late-July they’ll have 15+ secondary applications to submit (all of which have multiple prompts). This can begin to feel pretty overwhelming and can be challenging to balance with other life responsibilities. Not to mention that writer’s block can hit hard when you’re writing essay after essay! Applicants want to put their best foot forward, so it can take some time to work through all of the prompts in a way that feels like you’ve meaningfully answered everything.
In an effort to make the process a bit more manageable, some applicants choose to pre-write secondary application answers. This can absolutely prove an effective strategy, as it is true that many schools recycle secondary questions from previous years. However, it should be noted that many schools do change their questions cycle to cycle, and therefore writing out all the answers to all the prompts prior to actually receiving the secondary application, isn’t a great idea. Pre-writing secondary applications isn’t necessary if you know you’ll have significant time to devote while writing secondary essays, but sometimes getting started sooner rather than later can really pay off.
If you’ve submitted your primary application and have the itch to get going on your secondary applications before you formally receive them, you can get a head start by tackling some of the more commonly asked secondary prompts. I wouldn’t suggest writing out the specific answers to these quite yet, but brainstorming potential answers could really get you ahead. Here are a few of the common prompts, and some things to consider with them:
These prompts are all good starting points. It’s important to remember that if you’ve applied to many different schools, you may begin to get questions that overlap with answers you’ve already written. If this is the case, you can generally use components of your previous answers and then edit them to better fit a question from another school that is slightly different.
Consider researching all of the medical schools’ secondary prompts that you have applied to. Look for common themes between them, and formulate general answers that you can then adapt to specifically fit each individual school. Additionally, keep track of why you’ve chosen to apply to specific schools, and be ready to articulate specific reasons in your secondary applications.
As always, Good Luck with your applications!
