How To Write Secondary Essays for Medical School Applications
Don’t know how or where to even start when writing your secondary essays for medical school? Keep reading or click here to be forwarded to my youtube live where I show you exactly what I’m about to explain in this blog post.
Currently, we are under quarantine due to COVID19. This is the perfect time for you to get ahead and start writing those secondary essays before you even apply to the medical schools on your list. To be clear, this blog post is best for you if you’re applying for medical school this year.
Here’s what you need to do:
Make an excel spreadsheet of all the medical schools you want to apply to. Save one column for the school’s mission statement. Next to it, save a column for putting that mission statement into your own words. The third column should be for the secondary essay prompts that the school usually asks. You will find these prompts on student doctor network forums. In the next column, you can start drafting your answers in bullet points.
Here’s what it should look like:
2. If you are applying to MD schools, here’s a quick link that will get you to every single student doctor network forum in the U.S. This will speed up the process for creating your spreadsheet.
3. Read everything on the medical school’s website to answer their secondary essay prompts. Read their mission statement, about page, research page, clinical experiences page, extracurricular page, etc. READ EVERYTHING. All of your answers need to sound like you would be a great fit into the school’s specific environment and culture.
4. If the school values research, talk more about research. If the school values community service more, talk about that.
5. Always give specific experiences to answer their prompt questions. Don’t be generic and say “So I’d be a great fit because I have great people skills and diverse perspectives.” This sentence is WEAK. Instead, give a specific experience you might have had in the hospital when you were volunteering one day with a patient. Maybe that patient did not speak your language, and you had to adapt to that. This would show the reader immediately what skills you have and how you incorporated them.
6. Tackle one school at a time. Do not try to do all of them simultaneously. These tips will help you get ahead of the game so you can submit your secondary essays in a timely fashion.
Now, buckle down and get ready to read & type a lot. Good luck!
If you would like me to edit & give feedback on your essays, email them to me at kinza.hus@gmail.com and I will work with you long-term. Please refer to my services tab to see which editing package you would like.
