If someone were to ask me what part of the medical school application I feel I learned the most from, it would be secondary applications hands down. The summer I applied to medical school, I went abroad and was involved in my university’s orientation week so a lot of things did not happen the way I thought they would and taking control of my secondary schedule really helped to keep my applications on track in the midst of chaos LOL. Keep reading to hear my TOP THREE Secondary Application tips!
1) Prewriting Prompts ✍🏽
There are SO many resources online available to get an idea of what secondary prompts you may be required to write for the schools you are applying to. There are some pros and cons of things like Reddit and Student Doctor Network, but you can really leverage these resources to your advantage to see what questions past med school applicants have had to answer and start pre writing responses. There are some common prompts that you’ll be asked to answer and that you can get ahead of before applications get too hectic! I personally felt a lot more prepared when I received official secondary prompts after pre writing. I took the time to focus more on tweaking responses for each school rather than starting a new essay during my already busy summer/fall schedule!
2) Secondary Application Tracker👩🏽💻
Organization is key with secondary essays. Some of the more common advice regarding turning in secondary applications is to try to have a two-week turnaround time. The sooner you can get your secondaries in, the sooner your full application becomes complete (& the less essays you have to keep thinking about). Keeping track of costs and essays, especially as someone who worried a lot about finances through the process, was especially important to me. As soon as a secondary was received, I put it on the spreadsheet! If you’re looking for a tracker to stay organized, here is a link to a template of the one I used!
Tracker Preview! Automatically adds two-week turnaround to secondary receive date and tracks all through interview season! Also, all available to you FOR FREE!
3) Proofreading Friends👯
I cannot emphasize this enough! Have people proofread to make sure you are conveying the message you want to ADCOMS and to try to catch any silly mistakes. I ended up enlisting family members & some friends who had been through the process to help look over what I was writing. A lot of my close friends were also applying at the same time so they weren’t necessarily my go to (just because I didn’t want to overwhelm them LOL) but I loved having a mix of current med students and random family members read over stuff so I could get feedback from all ends!
Best of luck to you! You got this!