Case Western Reserve University Secondary Essay Prompts
(If you have updated prompts, please submit them at updatesecondaries.com)
These prompts are from the 2021 Application Cycle. (Older essays, if available are below)
Prompts:
- Essay: Additional Information (Optional)
Is there any further information that you wish to share with the Admissions Committee? This optional response will only be considered by the University Program. - Required Essay: Greatest Challenge
The admissions committee is interested in gaining more insight into you as a person. Please describe a significant personal challenge you have faced, one which you feel has helped to shape you as a person. Examples may include a moral or ethical dilemma, a situation of personal adversity, or a hurdle in your life that you worked hard to overcome. Please include how you got through the experience and what you learned about yourself as a result. Please limit your response to 1 page (about 3,500 characters), and leave a blank line between paragraphs. | How to Write About Red Flags in Your Secondary Essays | How to Write About Your Obstacles, Challenges, and Problems in your Secondary Essays - Required Essay: Research
Please describe the hypothesis of your research, why the methods were selected to answer that hypothesis, your results and interpretation of your results with respect to future findings. In addition, please briefly share your motivation for pursuing this research project and reflect on how this experience affected you. If you have not participated in research or scholarly work, please indicate so in the text area below. - Required Essay: Small Group Essay
If you were working on a small group project and you thought that another student wasn’t carrying his/her load, how would you handle it?
Please limit your response to 300-1000 characters, and leave a blank line between paragraphs. - Required for College Program: Areas of Improvement Essay
Each year our students target for themselves areas of improvement. Other than the acquisition of new knowledge, what personal area do you think you have that could use strengthening? Design a plan as to how you could improve it.
Please limit your response to 500-1000 characters, and leave a blank line between paragraphs. - Required for College Program: Criticism and Feedback Essay
Tell us about a time when you received unexpected criticism or negative feedback. How did you react? What did you do?
Please limit your response to 500-1000 characters, and leave a blank line between paragraphs. - Required for College Program: Career Essay
How do you see your career ten years from now? | How To Answer Secondary Prompts About The Future
Please limit your response to 500-1000 characters, and leave a blank line between paragraphs. - Required for College Program: Teaching Essay
When were you challenged to teach, coach, or mentor others to learn a new skill or improve an old one? Please describe how it went and what you learned from the experience.
Please limit your response to 500-1000 characters, and leave a blank line between paragraphs. - Essay: Gap Year
Did you take a gap year? | How to Write About Your Gap Years in Secondary Essays
If you are taking time off between college graduation and medical school matriculation, please tell us in no more than four sentences what you are doing during this gap, and why.
Please upload a picture of yourself. The picture is NOT required, but will help us to remember you. Please note that if your uploaded picture looks sideways to you, it will to us too! We can’t make changes to your photo on our end after you have uploaded and submitted your application. If you choose to not upload a photo click the ‘Skip’ button below to complete the page.
Primary Deadline: November 1, 2021
Secondary Deadline: Unknown (Try to turn your secondaries around within two weeks after receiving)
Secondary Fee: $90
FAP Waiver: Full Fee Waived
CASPer Required: Yes
VITA Required: Yes
Screens Applications: No
Accepts Application Updates:
Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine Mission:
The School’s mission is three-fold: providing excellence in medical education through our unique curriculum, advancing discoveries from our laboratories to patients, and improving the health of our community.
Older Essays:
- Required: The admissions committee is interested in gaining more insight into you as a person. Please describe a significant personal challenge you have faced, one which you feel has helped to shape you as a person. Examples may include a moral or ethical dilemma, a situation of personal adversity, or a hurdle in your life that you worked hard to overcome. Please include how you got through the experience and what you learned about yourself as a result. Please limit your response to 1 page (about 3,500 characters), and leave a blank line between paragraphs.
How to Write About Your Obstacles, Challenges, and Problems in your Secondary Essays - Required: If you were working on a small group project and you thought that another student wasn’t carrying his/her load, how would you handle it? (300-1000 characters)
- Optional: If you are taking time off between college graduation and medical school matriculation, please tell us in no more than four sentences what you are doing during this gap, and why.
How to Write About Your Gap Years in Secondary Essays - Optional: one of the four pillars of the Western Reserve2 Curriculum is Research and Scholarship. Although research is not a prerequisite requirement for the University Program, if you have participated in research or or another scholarly project, please tell us about it. Describe your experience, including the questions you pursued and how you approached it, your results and interpretation of the results, and most importantly, any thoughts about what this experience meant to you. Remember that research is broad-based and and can include such projects as senior capstone or a thesis and can include and can include medical and non-medically-related investigations. If you have not completed research, please indicate that in the text box below or click the Save button to complete the page. We recommend the length of your response be around 3,500 characters.
- Optional: is there any further information that you wish to share with the admissions committee? This optional response will only be considered by the university Program. While there isn’t a word/character limit, we recommend that the length of your response be around 3,500 characters.
