“Diversity” essay examples and additional tips:
Medical school secondary applications vary greatly. On one extreme, there are still a handful of schools that have 0 additional required essays. On the other extreme, there are medical schools that have 10-12 secondary essays, including optional essays.
Our Cracking Med School Admissions team tell our student advisees that medical school secondary essays are extremely important. We highly recommend submitting only “A” quality secondary applications. This is the standard we hold ourselves to and the standard we hold our students to. If you would like help with your medical school secondary essays, look at our secondary essay editing services here. We recommend using the full character or word limit on most of your secondaries. Why not take full advantage to increase your chances of success? If you have essays pre-written, you can even reduce this time to a couple of days! Remember, medical school admissions is a rolling process, so the earlier your application is marked complete the higher your chances of interview invitation and acceptance. But remember, you have to have “A” quality secondary essays so that you stand out! Even if you re-purpose your secondary essays or use a template for a common essay, make sure you do not write generic responses for different schools! Even essays like your diversity/activity essays, which may be largely similar because your background/extracurriculars have not changed, can be specified for each school by relating elements of your response to opportunities/characteristics of that school. For example, if a school has a primary-care focus, you can tie in your background coming from a medically underserved region with your future career goal to serve your community. FAU Secondary Application Tip #1: Include as many anecdotes as possible. 1200-1600 characters may not seem like a lot, but our students are successful in incorporating anecdotes for many of their Florida Atlantic University Medical School secondary application essays. In our opinion, you can definitely add anecdotes and stories in the following FAU secondaries prompts: FAU Secondary Application Tip #3: To answer FAU Medical School’s diversity question, you don’t have to necessarily talk about your ethnic background. You can discuss working with immigrant populations or other talents / activities that have shaped who you are today. The number of secondary essay prompts from any given medical school can vary wildly. Some schools may have 1-2 prompts, while others may have a whole slew. Carefully read and follow the prompts provided. Tailor your responses to meet their specific needs and requirements.
Here are examples of commonly seen topics in secondary essays:
There are specific questions you may be commonly asked in secondary applications. Each medical school has a different process, but there are some patterns.
Challenge/Adversity Secondary Prompt Examples
It is advisable to reuse medical school secondary essays from a previous application. To improve your odds the second time around, you have to show schools that you’ve grown as an applicant. This means incorporating information about any new experiences and qualifications you’ve earned since your previous application attempt.
medical school secondary essay prompts
Then, our advice is to think creatively about each prompt and outside of the box. For example, one of our students wrote about instructor evaluations they received as a teaching assistant in response to a prompt asking about a significant honor or award. Other premeds we advise have written short stories or poems as part of their secondary essay responses. Your essay will make a positive impression if you can still answer the prompt while being more creative with your topic choice.
medical school secondary essay prompts
Most advice to applicants focuses on the personal statement and description of work or activities required to complete the initial centralized application service (CAS) application. In contrast, I urge you to write your school-specific “secondary” essays first. These secondary essays play a crucial role in admissions. Most applicants underestimate the stress of completing dozens of strong essays under intense time pressure.
medical school secondary essay prompts
There is no clear cut rule for preparing for secondary essays, but I remember finding it helpful to have pre-written some of these common topics before I received a rush of applications. Even if you don’t want to sit down and start writing right away, taking some time to brainstorm about these topics will make the secondary process go much more smoothly. Good luck!
Medical school secondary essay prompts
These are the secondary application essay prompts for University of Virginia School of Medicine. To put your best foot forward and maximize your chance of an interview invitation, visit our .