Checklist for Submitting Your Secondary Essays | Med School Applications
One of the most stressful times as a premed is when the mouse is hovering over the “submit button” for your secondary applications.
There’s a little tremor in your finger as you’re hovering over the mouse button and you’re trying to figure out if everything is perfect. You could spend hours and days looking over combing over everything in your secondary essays. And you’ll never really feel ready to submit them.
You need to go to an outside source to give you that motivation and encouragement that your essays are ready.
In this video, we’re going to cover what you should be checking before you submit to make sure that you are covering everything necessary to make the best impressions and hopefully land that medical school interview.
If you haven’t checked out our secondary essay database, do that at secondaryapps.com!
Here are the 5 things to check before submitting your secondary essays:
[01:13] 1. Get feedback on your answers.
Show your secondary essays to mentors, advisors, or just family and friends. Ask them to make sure that you’re actually answering the question in the prompt.
“You don't just want to be telling a good story or responding with fluff – you want to ANSWER the question.”Click To TweetThe secondary essays are easier to have other people who really aren’t familiar with the process give you feedback on the essays. Unlike a personal statement which is your journey to medicine and why you want to be a doctor, secondary essays are really about answering a specific question. So somebody can read what that question is, and look at what you are writing for your answer. They could see whether you’re truly answering the question or not.
A lot of students writing their secondary essays don’t really ever get to what the question is because they’re trying to force in their own narrative. They’re trying to show or sell. Whether it’s on purpose, or by accident, the person reading your secondary essay will know that you didn’t answer the question, and they’ll move on to the next application.
[02:32] 2. Fix any grammar errors, typos, and other mistakes.
Use Grammarly for a quick check (my affiliate link: https://medicalschoolhq.net/grammarly), but also go over your essays yourself. If you have the time and resources, go to a writing center or someone who can be your editor/proofreader.
“Look through with a fine-tooth comb to double-check and make sure there are no big red flags that Grammarly might miss.”Click To Tweet[02:55] 3. Ask yourself if you are SHOWING your journey, rather than just telling.
Use descriptive language and include narrative storytelling to really engage the reader more than plain statements can.
Show the reader the journey you’ve been on that’s also answering the question. For example, a secondary essay for an osteopathic medical school is asking you about what has your experience been that has got you interested in osteopathic medicine.
Then you showed this great story of shadowing a physician but you didn’t really mention anything about Osteopathic Medicine until the very end when you said, “this is why I’m interested in osteopathic medicine.”
Now, that doesn’t obviously answer the question. You did a great job of showing your story and your shadowing experience and painted a picture of that interaction with the physician and the patient. At the end of the day, it didn’t answer the question.
'Make sure that however you answer it, you're answering the question. You're not just filling it with fluff to try to move on to the next question.'Click To Tweet[04:25] 4. Look at the school’s mission again.
See if you can add anything to your answers that connect with the school’s mission. Are there parts of your story that do connect to the school’s mission but you forgot to include? Add those in. Then try to work your answers in that specific way.
“Highlight an activity or something in your story that answers the question first and foremost, but also fits the narrative of the school's mission.” Click To TweetRemember, the secondary essays have a finite amount of time to turn them around. And so this process can’t go on and on and on. So you need to do this pretty quickly. But if you can add in something about the school’s mission then that’s a great job.
[05:53] 5. Make sure you have the funds available to cover the secondary fees!
Make sure you have the funds available to click Submit. These are additional fees on top of the original AMCAS or AACOMAS application fees, so they can really add up quite fast. Make sure you’re ready to pay those fees when you submit.
After you click Submit, then the waiting game starts for that invitation for an interview. Be excited that you’re finally at that point where your application is basically done. Congratulations! You’ve made it this far, and hopefully, you’re on to the next step of your interview.
Links:
Medical School Applications Cost Estimator
The Premed Playbook: Guide to the Medical School Personal Statement
For the other videos in our Secondary Application series, you can find those here:
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