Medical School Secondary Applications: “Other” Information

Please share with us something about yourself that is not addressed elsewhere in your application and which may help the Admissions Committee as we review your file.

The “other” information question often causes great stress amongst candidates. Given that it is usually an optional essay, the big issue is whether or not to answer it. The only reason to answer the questions is if you have personal information that is not provided on the AMCAS that will affect your application. Here are a few examples of appropriate topics for this essay:

1. Extenuating circumstances led to a dip in your grades sophomore year and you want to explain
2. Your band cut its first record after the AMCAS submission
3. You have a paper accepted for publication that occurred after AMCAS submission
4. You just received an offer to travel to Africa with a public health project

Do NOT fill the space just to fill the space. Only answer the question if you really have something important to say that will positively affect your application.

Looking for help on how to answer secondary essay questions? E-mail info@MDadmit.com or call 415.939.5251 to put a Harvard/Stanford MD and medical school admissions expert to work for you!

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Medical School Secondary Applications: Long-Term Goals

Another favorite secondary question revolves around long-term goals (ie. what you want to be when you grow up).

For example:

Are there any areas of medicine that are of particular interest to you? If so, please comment.

Though you are certainly not expected to have picked out your specialty and fellowship before even entering medical school, admissions committees like know where you are leaning. Do you see yourself working as a general surgeon at a large academic center? Or perhaps you’d like to run a small, rural family medicine clinic? Or maybe you want to be a Navy flight doctor. The sky is the limit. But be sure to be honest and ready to back up your dream job.

Exhausted? Overwhelmed with secondaries? E-mail info@MDadmit.com or call 415.939.5251 to put a Harvard/Stanford MD and medical school admissions insider to work for you!

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Medical School Secondary Applications: Qualities/Characteristics

Medical schools love to ask you about what qualities you possess that will make you a great physician:

Describe the distinguishable characteristics you possess and tell us how you think these characteristics will enhance your success as a medical student and future physician.

Start by brainstorming a list of characteristics that you think great physicians possess. Here’s a short list from the top of my head in no particular order:

Psychological maturity
Character and integrity
Self-discipline
Judgment
Compassion and empathy
Communication skills
Concern for helping others
Intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm
Analytical and problem-solving ability
Motivation and persistence
Reliability and dependability
Resilience and adaptability
Accountability
Leadership skills
Teamwork skills
Experience with and knowledge of medicine

Choose the qualities that you possess and that can be backed up with examples from your own life. For example, if you that you have leadership skills, be sure that you have leadership experiences to prove it.

Looking for help on how to answer secondary essay questions? E-mail info@MDadmit.com to put a Harvard/Stanford MD and medical school admissions expert to work for you!

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Medical School Secondary Applications: Research

Some secondary questions focus specifically on research or scholarly activities:

Although research is not a pre-requisite requirement for the University Program, if you have participated in a scholarly project please tell us about it. Describe your experience, including the question you pursued and how you approached it, your results and interpretation of the results, and most importantly, any thoughts about what this experience meant to you. Remember that research is broad-based and can include such projects as a senior capstone or a thesis and can include both medical and non medically-related investigations.

Don’t panic if you have not published in Nature or performed amazing bench research. “Research” is a broad term and can include investigations in public health, health policy, and international health. You can even include non-medically oriented research.

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Medical School Secondary Applications: Most Important Activity

Many secondary applications ask you to highlight one particular experience listed on the AMCAS. They often want to hear about clinical exposure. Examples of most important activity questions include:

From among the activities and experiences listed in your AMCAS application, please select one activity or experience that has most impacted your decision to undertake a career in health care. Please describe your role in the activity/experience and how this activity helped you make the decision to apply to medical school.

Though it may feel repetitive, you will often be describing activities already listed in the application. This is a chance to explain these activities more fully and highlight those most important to you. Focus on experiences that show dedication, leadership, or unique skills.

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Medical School Secondary Applications: Personal Challenge

Medicine is a challenging profession. Admission committees want to ensure you know how to meet challenges and handle ethical dilemmas. For example:

Please describe an experience or situation that you found personally challenging and discuss how it helped to shape you as a person. You may discuss a moral or ethical dilemma, situation of personal adversity, or other life-event you believe to have been important in your personal development.

Everyone has overcome a challenge. It is not acceptable to state that your life has been peachy keen and nothing has ever gone wrong. In others words, you can’t leave this one blank. You can provide an answer from any area of your life – personal, professional, extracurricular, etc. The key is to show how you came to a decision during a challenging situation and what you learned from it.

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Medical School Secondary Applications: Diversity

Diversity is one of the most popular secondary essay topics. The point of these types of questions is to prove how you will make a unique contribution to the medical school class.

For example:

At the XXX Medical School, we are committed to building a superb educational community with students of diverse talents, experiences, opinions, and backgrounds. What would you as an individual bring to our medical school community?

If Applicable, describe a situation where you were not in the majority.

When the word “diversity” is used, many think of racial diversity. But this is a very limited view. Think outside the box. Do you speak a foreign language? Are you a non-traditional applicant with significant “real world” experience? Other possibilities include athletic achievements, musical/art/dance talent, and international experience. Everyone can add diversity to a class.

Looking for help on how to answer secondary essay questions? E-mail info@MDadmit.com or call 415.939.5251 to put a Harvard/Stanford MD and medical school admissions expert to work for you!

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Medical School Secondary Applications: General Strategy

Though schools change their secondary essays from year to year, most of the questions fall into eight broad categories:

Diversity
Personal Challenge
Most Important Activity
Research
Qualities/Characteristics
After College Activities
Long Term Goals
“Other” Information

Instead of writing a new answer to each question for every school, I suggest that you compose general answers to each of these eight questions and change them as needed to a particular application. This will save you an incredible amount of time and energy. It also gives you a chance to write exceptional essays that, with minor tweaking, can be used multiple times. Most of the secondary essays range from 250 to 500 words. I suggest writing each essay listed below in 500 words or less than editing as needed to fit each particular word requirement. Each essay listed has been taken from real secondary applications. Get that literary mind going, you may have hundreds of secondary essays to write in the next few months!

Overwhelmed by secondary applications? E-mail info@MDadmit.com or call 415.939.5251 to put a Harvard/Stanford MD, published author, and expert editor to work for you!

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Medical School Secondary Applications

“Secondaries,” or medical school secondary applications, are sent individually from each medical school once the AMCAS application has been received and reviewed. Many schools use the AMCAS as an initial screening then send secondaries to obtain more information from applicants in order to determine who receives an interview. Sometimes secondaries are sent to applicants who meet certain requirements (often based on GPA and MCAT scores). More and more these days, schools automatically generate a secondary upon receipt of your AMCAS application with no screening performed.

Secondaries vary greatly in substance. Some require nothing more than your name and a check (average secondary charge is $75). Others entail up to 10 essays and are very time consuming. The due date varies by school. It is best to turn in a secondary as soon as possible after receiving it in order to move the admissions process along.

Overwhelmed by secondary applications? E-mail info@MDadmit.com or call 415.939.5251 to put a Harvard/Stanford MD, published author, and expert editor to work for you!

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AMCAS Personal Statement: Copy Edit and Recommendation Check

Before submitting your AMCAS, be sure to copy edit EVERY WORD for typos. You will have looked at this application so many times, it may be impossible to do a meticulous edit yourself. Ask family, friends, colleagues, etc. to edit not for content but for grammar and typos.

Now that you are ready to submit the AMCAS application, remember to contact all of your recommenders/premed committees to ensure the recommendations have been sent out and received. Many schools will not process your AMCAS application until all recommendations are in hand.

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AMCAS Personal Statement: Get Help

After the sixth draft, it is time to send out the essay for an expert opinion – choose two or three people with experience in writing personal statements and gather their thoughts on three things: content, grammar, and flow (how easily the essay reads).

Afraid you don’t know anyone who can edit the essay for you? Don’t be – you are surrounded by them. Try your parents, spouse, friend who majored in English, cousin in medical school, career counselor, university writing service, writing instructor, family physician, coach, admissions consultant, etc. etc. Don’t be afraid to ask.

One word of caution – do not send the essay to too many people for opinions. Comments will undoubtedly disagree and it can be very frustrating trying to please everyone. The only two people you have to please are yourself and the admissions officer.

Looking for expert help with arguably the most important part of your medical school application as this stage? E-mail info@MDadmit.com or call 415.939.5251 to put a Harvard/Stanford MD, published author, and expert editor to work for you!

AMCAS Personal Statement: Grammar and Word Choice

Now that you have the hook, structure, and conclusion done, it’s time to focus on grammar.

For your fifth draft, return to the essay focusing on grammar. Are you using too much passive voice (i.e. is, as, was, were, be). Active verbs are always better. Is every word needed? Can you discuss that same idea in fewer words? Correct your grammar, ensure correct word choice, and cut any repetitive ideas/words then set aside the essay.

Now it’s time for an overall read. Create a sixth draft after reading the essay out loud. How does it sound? Are there some sentences that sound awkward? If they sound awkward, they read awkward. Do you need to take multiple breaths when reading certain sentences? That usually means the sentence is a “run-on” and should be broken down into two or more separate lines. Does each thought flow smoothly into the next? If not, perhaps you need to restructure the essay or create better transition sentences.

Get professional help with your personal statement. E-mail info@MDadmit.com or call 415.939.5251 to put a Harvard/Stanford MD and medical school admissions insider to work for you!