Medical school secondary essay prompts are designed to help medical schools in the US find out more about you, from your past academic, professional and personal experiences to what your goals are for the future. The following is a comprehensive list of medical schools and their medical school secondary prompts for the most recent application cycle.  secondary essays You’ll find a list of medical schools (MD and DO) organized by state along with the medical school secondary essay prompts they are using for this cycle. Click on each school name to review the secondary essay prompts for each school. Check out our medical school secondary essay examples devoted to answering the most common secondary essay prompts on this list. With this list you can start preparing your medical school secondary essays and increase your chances of getting in!


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Medical School Secondary Essay Prompts: What Med Students Say Medical School Secondary Essays Prompts: All US Allopathic and Osteopathic Schools FAQs

Medical School Secondary Essay Prompts: What Med Students Say

“When the secondaries started rolling in and I realized that schools could have anywhere from two to six extra essays that I was going to have to write for every single one … I started to get a little nervous” - Allison Edwards, Texas, MS-1


It’s true that writing medical school secondary essays adds more pressure to an already pressure-laden process of applying to medical schools. While two or six essays may seem manageable, you have to remember that you might be applying to anywhere between ten or twenty different medical schools, so they can add up. What’s more, you typically have only between two weeks, more or less, to complete all these essays, so, as Allison discovered, “it was a lot of late nights and days off spent writing these vast amounts of essays.”

However, another strategy to ease the pressure of having to write a sizable number of medical school secondary essays is to pre-write them, which you can do with the help of this article, as we’ve listed the most recent prompts used by allopathic and osteopathic schools in the US. But starting early, even before you apply, doesn’t only give you a head start. As Dr. Neel Mistry, a uOttawa Faculty of Medicine graduate, suggests, “It is advisable to start preparing for secondaries as early as possible so that you have enough time to revise.”

Writing multiple drafts is a valuable strategy for writing your primary application essays, but you may not have enough time if you don’t pre-write. However, if you do pre-write, you can perfect your essays and submit them well-ahead of any deadline. Dr. Monica Taneja, a graduate of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, also recommends this: “I tried to pre-write secondaries starting in mid-June as there aren’t many changes year to year in prompts which are easily found online.” Dr. Taneja also found that “pre-writing allowed me to have <1 week turn around on all of my secondary application returns.”

As for what to write about it, well, that’s easy. For Canadian applicants, Dr. Mistry suggests reviewing the seven CanMEDS roles that all potential doctors must fulfill (Communicator; Leader; Health Advocate; Scholar) and preparing an example for each. This way, Dr. Mistry says, “you have a concrete example for each role, drafting a response for the secondaries becomes much easier.” For American applicants, Dr. Taneja recommends reviewing a school’s mission statement and “tailoring your answers to their priorities”. Applicants to US medical schools should use also the AAMC Core Competencies for reference, the equivalent of the CanMEDS roles.

But if you’re pressed for time, and aren’t able to pre-write, Dr. Taneja suggests re-using basic elements about your story, and infusing them in various essays. Many medical school secondary prompts tend to focus on the same subjects, so you can re-use essays, as long as you remember to add unique things about the school. As Dr. Taneja found, she “was able to morph different essays based on length to reduce overall writing.” 

Medical School Secondary Essays Prompts: All US Allopathic and Osteopathic Schools 

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