In this blog series we will be covering all aspects of Secondary Essays. Stay tuned over the coming weeks for guidance on writing compelling essays that will earn you a coveted interview spot.
Medical schools use school-specific questions to assess an applicant’s fit with the program. Use these common prompts to get a head start on brainstorming and drafting your responses.
Why our school? This is a place to mention courses you're excited to take, potential mentors you'd seek out, clubs you'd join, what the school's hospital affiliations and research opportunities mean to you, etc. And you want to share how those offerings are relevant to your past experiences and/or passions. If you've spent the last two years volunteering at a free clinic and doing community health outreach and the school has a brand-new mobile clinic serving the unhoused, you want to be working on it. If you aim to become an OB/GYN and Professor So-And-So just published a 10-year study on geriatric pregnancy, you want her as a mentor and to become involved in her current research.
You also might share how the school's location will set you up for the kind of career you want. Say, for example, the school is in a city, and you ultimately want to practice in an urban area. If true, you could take your reasoning one step further, saying that you want to work in the school's city or state when you're a physician. State schools love applicants who are committed to practicing in their state post-residency.
Mentioning that you find other aspects of the town or city appealing or that it is located near friends and relatives is also relevant here. Schools want to know if you have a local support system.
Similar Q: Tell us about your special interest in the campus you selected. If a school has multiple campuses, à la The Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, they will likely ask you to choose a favorite.
Again, you should share your interest in the local clinical opportunities and how the campus location relates to your career aspirations. A personal affinity for a larger or smaller city or rural campus is noteworthy too.
What about our mission statement resonates with you? How do or will you embody it? A version of this question might be phrased in several long-winded ways (you'll see what we mean), but this is what they are all asking. Mission alignment matters to schools. They want to know that you share their values and will be a proactive member of their community.
Schools often hit similar themes: innovation, collaboration, and servant leadership. Health equity and social justice also frequently appear in mission statements. (Some schools have a separate question related to those topics.) Even if you're not drafting this answer yet, think about experiences you've had that involve those themes and jot down some notes. Hit up your brainstorm and find the times where you utilized critical thinking. When were you a leader? How have you been involved in social justice or what's a critical topic that you are making an effort to learn more about?
If a question like this isn't in a school's Secondaries mix, you should be looking to reflect the mission statement back to the school in your other essay responses. For example, if a school especially values collegiality, you might include a story about how you collaborated on a class project in one of your answers. (This is another example of show don't tell.)
While you should be researching schools individually to learn other specifics, AAMC has a tremendously convenient document that rounds up all allopathic schools' mission statements in one place.