Submit Successful Secondaries for Medical School [Episode 578]

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Show Summary

In this episode, Linda Abraham discusses successful secondary applications for medical school. She highlights the key differences between primary and secondary applications and provides 6 tips for submitting a successful secondary application. Additionally, Linda offers practical advice on when to submit and how to write concisely to meet word or character limits as well as how to check these crucial documents before you hit SUBMIT.

Show Notes

Welcome to the 578th episode of Admissions Straight Talk. Thanks for tuning in.

Are you ready to apply to your dream medical schools? Are you competitive at your target programs? Accepted’s Med School Admissions Quiz will give you a quick reality check. Just go to accepted.com/medquiz, complete the quiz, and you will not only get an assessment of your chances, but tips on how to improve them. And it’s all free.

Today is going to be a solo show, and we’re going to be discussing successful secondaries. Given that the show is airing on May 28th and AMCAS is just starting to process the primary applications today, I think the show is extraordinarily timely.

You can’t submit your secondaries yet if you don’t have them, but for those of you who submitted or will submit early, in other words, your primary application sometime in June, this show really couldn’t be better timed. For those of you planning to submit later in the cycle, you can take advantage of it as soon as you submit your primary applications, and there may be even a tip or two for you regarding the primary in the course of the show.

So if you are in either group, perhaps you submit it today or will submit very shortly, or perhaps you’re the parent or significant other of someone in either of these two groups, in other words, somebody submitting early or somebody submitting later in this cycle, congratulations, you or a very important person to you is progressing down the path to medical school and achievement of his or her career dreams.

Now, applicants still have a long, grueling journey in front of them, but the next leg consists of the secondary applications, and that’s the topic of today’s show, which as I mentioned, I’m going to present. It’s going to be a solo show.

Going back to the timeliness part of the show, once you have submitted your primary, give yourself a day or two off. Don’t even think about medical school applications. If you have to study, study for school. If you can take a break, take a break, go to the beach, go for a hike, do whatever you love to do, and then start pre-writing your secondaries. You had your break, get back to business.

Secondary application questions tend to change little from year to year, and one thing that is very consistent is that they come in a deluge, and if you can have drafts of essays ready for final tweaks for the programs that you are most interested in, especially if those programs automatically send out secondaries without any screening, you’ll have a much easier time when those secondary applications start raining down upon you. And your essay responses – your applications – will probably be of better quality if at least some or most of those essays are pre-written and written at a time when you don’t have the time pressure you’re inevitably going to experience when the deluge starts.

Primary vs. secondary applications [3:51]

Now, let’s start by discussing conceptually what secondary applications are and the similarities and differences between them and the primary applications that you have been working so hard on or will be shortly working so hard on. For those of you new to the process, for MD applicants, secondary applications are sent out after medical schools have received your AMCAS or your primary application.

It could be the AACOMAS, the TMDSAS… Actually, I think TDMDSAS doesn’t send secondaries. It does it simultaneously. But for MD applicants, secondary applications are sent out after medical schools have received your primary. Some screen and will only send out secondaries to those they’re interested in proceeding down the process with, and some send them out automatically. They want the complete information before they decide whether to move forward or not.

Secondary applications typically contain from one to eight, I think even one school has 11 essays. One might be long. Most of them are usually pretty short, but there’s a lot of writing involved. That’s the bottom line. The purpose of the secondaries, like the primary, secondary application that asks for more information or that asks for more than a fee from you, they will all ask for a fee, is trying to learn more about you, is trying to get to know you, and your job is to help them get to know you, to help them get to know you as a multi-dimensional, interesting, knowledgeable human being.

In this regard, the secondaries are very similar to the AMCAS, the primary application, the personal statement that you’ve already written, the most meaningful experience essays and whatever other writing, the impactful experience essay that you may have written for the primary application, and of course the experience sections.

4 key differences [5:29]

However, there are four key differences between secondary applications and primary applications. I think it’s really important for you to understand these key differences.

1. A secondary application should show fit with a specific school [5:40]

Number one, the purpose of the secondary is to show fit with a specific school, the school that’s sending you the secondary application. The goal of your AMCAS application is to show your fitness and motivation for being a physician. So yeah, they still want to know that you’re going to be a physician, that you’re interested in being a physician and that you’re going to make a great physician, but the question in their minds is why this school and why should we admit you to this school.

And to achieve the goal of showing that you are really a fit for that particular school, youone, have to show that you appreciate that school’s approach to medical education, that it fits you. You have to show that your goals as a physician align with the school’s strength. So if you’re interested in primary care, are you interested in research? Are you interested in urban medicine or rural medicine? Whatever interests you or attracts you should be a strength of the schools that you are applying to.

And then you should show fit with the school’s mission. Now, some of you say those missions all sound alike. There’s some truth to that, but then again, applicants all sound alike too. So in that respect, I think you have mirror image kinds of problems. But regardless, to the extent that you can show fit with the school’s mission, whether it’s research or social justice or whatever, you’re going to be ahead of the game.

For those of you still working on your AMCAS application or perhaps doing school research, attending school events, et cetera, take notes, jot down what you like about specific schools and organize those notes either by files or a spreadsheet or you can use a tool like Evernote, Keep or whatever tool you find most useful, but as you’re doing your school research, take notes, again, if you’re still doing it, and you probably should continue to do it throughout the process. Take notes that you can have those notes available to you. Again, it will save you time. That’s difference number one. The purpose of the application is to show fit with the school as opposed to the profession, which is the primary.

2. A secondary application must answer a specific question [7:43]

Number two, the second difference, you must answer the specific question posed. It’s very different from the personal comment section or even the MMEs, which are not tied to a specific school or program and really give you a lot of latitude in terms of what you want to include in your written materials for the primary.

3. A secondary application should complement a primary application [8:01]

The third key difference. You want your essays to complement and build on the stories and experiences discussed in the primary application. Ideally, you can discuss different experiences, but if you discuss an experience that you have included in the primary, you’re going to need to go into greater depth or to approach that experience from a different angle and perspective, perhaps highlight a different aspect of the experience.

Paraphrasing or repeating the material found in your AMCAS is a wasteful mistake. It bores the reader. It makes you seem a little smaller as a human being, like you don’t have more to write about, you haven’t accomplished as much as the person who has more to write about, and again, it’s a waste of time for you and for them. You can also write about something that has happened since you submitted the primary or that happened earlier and isn’t in the primary application. Again, that would be probably the ideal if you can do it.

4. A secondary application has time pressure [8:55]

And the fourth key difference, depending upon when you do your primary application, but for most of you, you’ve known the primary application is coming for months and you’ve been preparing for months. With the secondaries, you don’t have months, you have weeks. Ideally, you want to return that secondary within two weeks. So the fourth difference is that you’re going to have time pressure.

6 commandments for a successful secondary application [9:15]

And these similarities and differences mean that you have six, not 10, relax, just six commandments for your secondary application.

Number one, help them get to know you. Now, that’s already something that you’ve been trying to do with your primary. Help them get to know you more.
Number two, show that you appreciate the school’s approach to medical education. If it’s team-based learning, provide evidence that you’ve been on teams. If it’s problem-based learning, provide evidence that you like to be a problem solver. Whatever it is, provide evidence that you are going to thrive in their environment.
Three, demonstrate that your goals align with the school strengths. I mentioned that a minute ago.
Four, make sure you answer the question posed, not the one from a different secondary application that you filled out yesterday and not the one that you feel like answering, like you kind of could do with a personal statement or some of the MMEs, but answer the question posed.
Five, you want to complement and build on the stories and experience discussed in the primary application, and you actually want to make sure that if you’re dealing with a secondary application that has multiple essay questions, that those essays complement each other. You want to minimize overlap. Again, the commandment is complement and build on the stories and experiences discussed in the primary application. And if you can use new experiences, that’s where the complementing comes in. That’s with an E “complement,” not with an I “compliment.”
And the sixth commandment is return essays promptly, ideally within two weeks of receipt. Now, you might think, “If I get one application, I can return that in two weeks. That’s not so hard.” That’s true, but you are probably applying to 20 medical schools and if you get secondary applications from all of them, or even if you get from 15 of them, and they come within a two-week period and you want to return them within a two-week period, you’ve got a lot of writing to do. And it’s important writing.

Dividing a secondary application into 3 categories [11:10]

Now, you can divide secondary essay questions into three broad categories, those about you, those about the school, and those about the intersection between you and the school, and maybe there’s always a little bit of intersection, but the third category is more explicit about it.

1. Questions about you [11:26]

The questions about you, for example, some schools ask for, UCSD, for example, for one long autobiographical essay or they might ask for several short questions about you. UCSD asks for an autobiographical sketch of up to 6,000 characters, which is a little longer than your personal statement in your AMCAS application. Other questions could ask about challenges or difficulties that you face. For example, Pitt asked or used to ask, all the questions are from last year, by the way, because they haven’t come out with the secondaries this year, “Tell us about a challenging problem you faced and how you resolved it. Include how the experience contributed to the person you are today, 250 words or less.” Obviously, you have to be succinct. We’ll get to that in a little bit.

Others will ask about hobbies, and they’re looking to see how you can be a contributing member to their community outside the classroom and those kinds of questions. In responding to these questions about you, you want to include information not provided in the AMCAS or other parts of this secondary. I know I’m repeating myself, but it bears repeating.

If the perfect experience to respond to a question is in the AMCAS application, approach it from a slightly different angle or provide greater depth or provide some more details that you couldn’t include in the AMCAS, but don’t just repeat what’s in the AMCAS application. I repeat, I’m going to repeat now, don’t repeat what’s in the primary. Provide complementary information.

You can cover the formative and revealing events from your childhood, adolescence and adulthood. However, don’t write exclusively or primarily about childhood and adolescent experiences. Your risk coming off as immature and raising the question, what have you been doing lately? What have you been doing in college? What have you done since college if you’re out of it already?

So yeah, you can definitely include a formative experience or two from childhood and adolescence, but most experiences should be from college and later and the older you are, the farther out from college, the more it should focus on post-college. As I’ve said, again, they want to get to know you as a human being, as a person, as an individual, not just as a student and not just as a volunteer. They’re looking to understand what makes you tick and how you would be as a member of their community.

So what kind of information would you want to include about yourself? Well, one possible approach to these types of questions and this exercise may be useful even before you start your primary applications … remember, I did promise a couple of tips for primary applications … is to create a timeline of your life and influential events, both personal and clinically or medically related.

You can use this timeline or an updated copy of your resume or you can simply make, especially if you’ve been journaling as we recommend, a list. Make a spreadsheet of events and experiences that have been influential, that have been formative, that also reveal perhaps accomplishments that you’ve had, where you’ve contributed, where you’ve learned things you’re proud of that you’d like the admissions committee to know about.

Make a long list. And you can do it on a spreadsheet. You can also put next to it some of the either lessons learned or attributes you revealed with those experiences. And then as you go along, check off the items that you’ve already covered in your primary application. Looking at the list from the remaining items that you’ve not covered, which are related to clinical research work or leadership and community service, which experience will best answer each individual question?

In other words, don’t just start writing. Take a minute and strategize. How am I going to present the most in-depth image of myself via the secondary given the questions I’m responding to, the experiences I’ve had and what I already wrote in the primary? Strategically selecting the activities and events that will reveal more about you as a person, and then for each response, creating an outline using from the short list.

Also, keep in mind this advice from Dr. Mike Woodson, director of Admissions at Tulane who said at a very recent podcast, and we’re going to link to it, “Just be yourself,” I’m quoting now, “Just be yourself. The schools and not just our medical school, they just want to know about the person as an individual. Are they genuine? Are they honest? What are their insights? Why do they do things? But what led you down this path of picking a particular activity and what did you get out of it?”

So again, Dr. Woodson made the statement on a recent Admissions Straight Talk podcast, but many other AST guests, particularly in medical school, but outside of it also, have said that, made very similar points. And the why and the results, both for you and others, are critical in your essays. Again, this is true for both the primary and the secondaries. And for your information, you can find the full interview with Dr. Woodson at accepted.com/569, but I’m going to link to it from our show notes at accepted.com/578.

There are still some schools asking COVID questions. If you get them, keep in mind the following. What they’re looking to see is how did COVID affect you and how did you respond to COVID? I think the second part is actually more important. Tragically, people lost family during COVID. Some were essentially locked up in their homes for a while. There were all kinds of social restrictions, so that’s something that everybody to a certain extent shared that part of the experience. Hopefully not everybody lost a relative.

I think what the schools are looking for more though is how did you respond? How did you respond to the lack of volunteering opportunities? Did you create some for yourself? Did you volunteer at vaccination clinics? What did you do? How did you respond? So that would be my tip for COVID kinds of questions.

2. Questions about the school [17:12]

The second type of questions that I mentioned are questions about the school and the very basic one is, why do you want to attend school X? For example, or Vanderbilt’s question is, “How did you first become interested in Vanderbilt University School of Medicine? 200 words,” and that’s just a variation of this very common question, “Why this school?” They want to know how much you know about their school and what is important to you at their school.

It’s important to do your research on the programs before responding to these kinds of questions, and hopefully you did your research before deciding where to apply. And I don’t mean just looking up the average MCAT and GPA for specific schools. I mean learning the school’s programs, strengths, weaknesses … well, you wouldn’t learn about the weaknesses on the website, but going to the website, perhaps going to some events, and you took notes on those things, so it’ll be very easy for you to look back at your notes and perhaps link to the pages that are relevant to refresh your memory.

But what are some ways that you can find out more about a school? Well, there’s the mission statement. Don’t miss the obvious. There’s the website and the school social media. Again, that’s pretty obvious. There are pre-med fairs and campus events, and there’s also visiting the schools if it’s geographically feasible, and networking with current and recent students. These are all really valuable ways to get tremendous insight into the different schools. Hopefully you did this before this time of year and before choosing where to apply, and then you kept good notes.

Since space is always limited in these secondary application essays, keep this kind of essay focused. Select only the most relevant and important reasons why you want to attend their medical schools. Most important reasons should include some distinctive aspect of their culture and program. A secondary reason can include proximity to family or something more personal. I would just make sure that before mentioning those elements which are legitimate, mention the professional and educational ones first.

3. Questions about you and the school [19:03]

And then the essay questions about you and the school, “Such as how will your background enable you to contribute in medical school as a physician?”, that’s asking about both, right? You have to know the school, you have to know your goals, you have to know yourself. And here’s an example of that. “Columbia Vagelos College of Physician and Surgeons values diversity in all its forms. How will your background and experiences contribute to this important focus of our institution and form your future role as a physician?”

The challenge in these questions is that they require that you balance enough details about you and demonstrate what you know about their campus as well as how you would fit in that question. By the way, Columbia’s question is a 300 word max. So again, you’re going to have to be really tight in terms of your writing and very focused in your response. It’s not just wordsmithing. It’s real focus.

So again, in approaching this question and approaching the application as a whole, look at your timeline. Look at the spreadsheet you prepared or your resume, whatever list or tool you have. Focus on what hasn’t been checked off. What distinctive element in your background, identity, experience, or perspective can you contribute? And obviously if you’re checking things off, you’re going to have to have a different list for different schools, right, because you’re going to be checking things off different schools. And yes, you can send the same experience, experience A to school X and to school Y and to school Z, but make sure if you’re using experiences, that you’re using that experience in such a way where you answer the question posed, not the question from the last school.

So you’re looking at your timeline or your spreadsheet and you’re crossing off things that you’ve used. And in terms of the Columbia question, “What distinctive element of your background, identity, experience, or perspective can you contribute? How will you choose to express it, both at Columbia and beyond?” And you may want to adjust some of the experiences in other essays or to adapt some of them.

In other words, if leadership experience also shows diversity, you may decide to choose a different leadership experience for a leadership question because the Columbia medical school application did ask about leadership. That’s why when I suggested my spreadsheet, I said think about the different qualities that the experience reveals, and then you can use them differently as well.

When to submit your secondary application [21:26]

All right, now for the sixth commandment, return applications promptly. I already said that ideally you want to return them within two weeks, and if the primary and secondary applications do their jobs, you’ll get an interview invitation. But interview invitations are issued on a rolling basis. In other words, applications are evaluated as they come in, so if you procrastinate on returning secondaries, you might find that there are very few interview spots left. You might find that the reality might be that if you had submitted a couple weeks earlier or within the two-week framework, you would have an interview invitation that you no longer have available because they’ve already given it out.

So it’s really critical that you turn around your secondary applications promptly and without sacrificing quality. You don’t want to turn in a sloppy job. You want to make sure you answer the questions and that you show fit. You want to do all the things that we discussed before, and that’s why I strongly recommend pre-writing secondaries while you’re waiting for your secondary applications to come and after you’ve turned in your primary while AMCAS is verifying your primary.

All right, so we’ve mentioned, and this is true also for the primary application, we’ve mentioned that you’re going to have some very tight either character or word limits. There are techniques that you can use just to tighten your writing. Your content can essentially say the same thing, but it’s going to take up fewer characters and fewer words.

So secondary applications, the primary and secondary are opportunities for you to show that you can write and communicate clearly and concisely whether your essay is longer or shorter. What is the point you are trying to communicate? Make sure your response to a specific prompt, sticks to what has to be said, that you don’t include extraneous detail. Make sure that point, that central point, the central answer is clear and exclude anything that isn’t necessary to make that point.

Writing techniques for a secondary application [23:31]

Most secondaries are short, 200, 300, 500 words, so you’re going to have to write concretely. Use sensory language if it’s appropriate and when possible. So example, one night I happened to be … We had some candles. I watched the candle and did it burn? Well, all candles burn. The flame burned, or did it dance? Because it kind of was jumping around. Dance says more.

Quantify whenever possible, especially impact and contribution. You can use metaphors to succinctly make concepts more real and relate them to the familiar. So if somebody tattoos something in their memory, well, that means it’s indelible without plastic surgery. It’s indelible, it’s permanent, or you could say they recorded it permanently in their memory. Well, which is better? Tattooed it in memory is really much more vivid and conveys a lot more succinctly. Essentially what I’m trying to say is you need to put your writing on Ozempic. You need to put it on a diet.

Here’s another few techniques. Use the active voice to save words and characters when you have limits on both. So one could write, “The patient was cured by the doctor.” That’s seven words, or, “The doctor cured the patient.” That’s five words. Says the same thing, just much more concisely. And if you do this throughout an essay, it makes a big difference on the amount of information you can convey.

Another technique is to use verb forms of words instead of nouns or adverbial forms. You could say, “I came to the conclusion…” It’s a perfectly good sentence,” or you could write, “I concluded,” and guess which is a whole lot shorter? “She went hurriedly.” You could just say, “She hurried.” Again, this is just simply these kinds of techniques, this kind of eye to your writing makes it more active, more succinct, more concise, more readable, and will allow you to convey more information when you’re dealing with word limits. So again, get that Ozempic for your writing. Put it on a diet by eliminating unnecessary phrases and words. Here’s another example. “I had the opportunity to serve as an EMT.” You could just say, “I served as an EMT,” or, “I was an EMT.” They all work.

How to check your secondary application [25:48]

Once you write your secondaries, especially given the time pressure, you may be tempted to just send them in. That’s a big mistake. You need to check them. And here are my last three tips. I think it’s my last one for checking your secondaries.

Number one, did you address the question and reveal fit with a specific school that’s on a high level? Read your essays. I’d say move away from your desk, print your essays out, move away from your desk and go over them. Read them aloud.

Have you demonstrated alignment between the school strengths and your goals? This doesn’t have to be in every essay, depending upon the question, obviously, but is it there? Have you demonstrated alignment with their approach to medical education? Have you shown that that approach appeals to you and that you’ve thrived in similar settings or with somewhat related challenges?

It’s particularly important if you’re adapting your secondaries from another school’s application, which you’re going to start doing. Make sure that this essay answers this school’s question to test whether your essay answers the question. Either have an accepted consultant review or ask yourself if you could answer the question based solely on information found in your essay.

So that’s one aspect of checking your application.

Step number two, check your essays for grammar, spelling, and style. You want your application to reflect attention to detail and communication ability, not the opposite. In a Q&A that I had years ago, and I’ve heard this from many others since, Jennifer Welch, former admissions dean at SUNY Upstate said, quote, “You are not going to be able to make those mistakes on patient charts, so why are you doing it in an application?” So really just thinking about those things, grammar, spelling, style, punctuation, et cetera. When you are putting it together, it is really imperative. So check for those.

And again, here I think it’s even more important to print out whatever you’ve written, double space it, take a pen, move away from your desk and read it out loud, slowly paying attention to the punctuation so that your reading reflects the punctuation. And if it doesn’t work- –, does something that sounds off – stop, fix it in pen, and then continue, and then go back to your computer, fix it on a computer. If there were a lot of corrections, rinse and repeat. Print it out again, double space, the whole thing and then correct it until you say, “Hey, I think I got this down.”

And the third thing, I know that, again, I’m repeating myself, return your secondaries promptly without compromising quality. Ideally, aim for not more than two weeks after receipt.

So what are successful secondaries? They are well-written, concise, persuasive, promptly returned applications that answer the questions posed, reveal fit or alignment with the school in question, and add to the school’s understanding of you. Can you do it on your own? Can you write those secondaries on your own? Maybe, maybe even probably. But having an experienced, knowledgeable, supportive coach by your side can be extraordinarily helpful.

Results from applicants who worked with Accepted consultants [29:03]

Here are the results of an Accepted client who wrote us after working with Accepted consultant Cydney Foote. “I don’t think I would be at the same place today without your help. So out of 20 secondaries, I received 18 interviews. I went to 11. I was accepted to five and wait-listed to four.”

This client is an Asian American who had good stats and a strong but fairly typical profile. Her consultant coached her through the process, including coaching her to overcome shyness in the interviews. Now, while obviously her results were great and the most obvious benefit of working with Accepted, there was another one less tangible but no less important. This client was more confident throughout the process. She was less anxious even during her interviews. She considered herself an introvert and admitted to being very nervous about the interviews before she worked with Cydney Foote.

So you might want to just consider that. There’s a lot of pressure on these things, and this could be money very well spent, especially if you consider the value of an additional year of physician earnings as opposed to waiting additional year if you get rejected.

Final thought or almost final thought. We’ve discussed crucial differences between the primary and the secondary, as well as approaches for the most common kinds of secondary essay questions. We’ve discussed how to craft your writing so you can make the most of every word and every character, every inch of essay real estate, if you will. The client you heard from benefited from having this advice applied to her essays.

If you are interested in getting similar assistance and following her footsteps, please explore our services at accepted.com/medical/services and feel free to schedule a free consultation with any of our consultants.