After your primary application (AMCAS® or AACOMAS®) is verified, individual medical schools send you secondary applications with additional essays, and sometimes additional fees. Secondary applications are a critical step in the admissions process because they allow schools to evaluate your fit with their specific mission, values, and culture. They are also a test of your time management and commitment: schools track how quickly you return your secondary, and faster turnaround generally correlates with higher acceptance rates. This page covers how secondaries work, the most common essay prompts, strategies for writing efficiently, and the timeline you should follow.
How Secondary Applications Work
Most medical schools send secondary applications to all verified applicants (or to all applicants who meet minimum screening criteria). Secondaries typically arrive 2 to 6 weeks after your primary application is verified, meaning they can start arriving as early as late June for early submitters. Each school’s secondary includes 1 to 5 short essays (typically 100 to 500 words each) and a fee (usually $50 to $150 per school). The combined cost of secondary fees across 15 to 25 schools can reach $1,500 to $3,000, a significant expense that many applicants underestimate. Budget for these fees in advance, and apply for fee waivers where available (many schools waive secondary fees for FAP-eligible applicants).
The goal is to return each secondary within 2 weeks of receiving it. Schools that use rolling admissions review completed applications (primary plus secondary plus letters) as they arrive, and earlier submissions are reviewed when more interview slots are available. Returning a secondary 3 months after receiving it sends a signal that the school is not a priority for you.
Common Secondary Essay Prompts
Why our school: Almost every school asks some version of “Why do you want to attend our medical school?” This is not a question about their ranking or reputation. It is an opportunity to demonstrate that you have researched their specific programs, curriculum, clinical training sites, research opportunities, community partnerships, and culture, and that these specific features align with your goals and values. Generic answers that could apply to any school (e.g., “your school has excellent clinical training and dedicated faculty”) are transparent and ineffective. Specific answers (e.g., “your longitudinal integrated clerkship in rural western Connecticut aligns with my goal to practice family medicine in an underserved rural community, and your partnership with the community health center where I volunteered provides the exact training model I am seeking”) demonstrate genuine interest and informed decision-making.
Diversity: Many schools ask how you will contribute to the diversity of their student body. Diversity is broadly defined: race, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, geographic origin, life experiences, perspectives, talents, and overcoming adversity all qualify. This essay is not about checking a demographic box. It is about describing how your unique background and experiences will enrich the learning environment for your classmates and ultimately improve your ability to care for diverse patient populations. Be specific about the perspectives you bring and how they connect to your understanding of healthcare.
Challenge or adversity: “Describe a challenge you have faced and how you overcame it.” This prompt tests your self-awareness, resilience, and ability to reflect on difficult experiences. Choose a genuine challenge (academic, personal, family, health, financial) and focus on your response to it: what you did, what you learned, and how you grew. Avoid challenges that are trivial (a bad grade on one exam) or that you present without genuine reflection. The strongest responses demonstrate mature self-awareness and connect the challenge to qualities that will serve you in medicine.
Gaps or weaknesses: Some schools ask you to explain any gaps in your education, low grades, institutional actions, or MCAT® retakes. Be honest, take responsibility where appropriate, explain the circumstances factually, and focus on what you did to address the weakness and what you learned from the experience. Do not make excuses or blame others. Admissions committees are looking for self-awareness and growth, not perfection.
Pre-Writing Strategy
The most effective strategy for managing the secondary application volume is to pre-write essays before secondaries arrive. Most secondary prompts are recycled from year to year with minor variations. Resources like our secondary essay database compile previous years’ prompts for each school. During the weeks between submitting your primary application and receiving secondaries, draft responses to the most common prompts (why our school, diversity, challenge, and any school-specific questions from previous years). When the actual secondary arrives, you can adapt your pre-written drafts to the specific wording of the current year’s prompts and submit within days rather than weeks.
Write each “why our school” essay from scratch for each school, even though it is tempting to use a template. Admissions committees can tell when an essay is recycled, and school-specific details (faculty names, programs, clinical sites, curriculum features) cannot be templated. Spend 30 to 60 minutes researching each school before writing the “why our school” essay, using the school’s website, student reviews, and any information from campus visits or information sessions.
Managing the Volume
If you applied to 20 to 25 schools, you may receive 15 to 20 secondaries within a 3 to 4 week period, each requiring 1 to 4 essays. This volume is manageable if you pre-write, but it is overwhelming if you start from scratch after receiving each one. Create a tracking spreadsheet with each school, the date the secondary was received, the essay prompts, your completion status, and the submission deadline. Prioritize schools where you are most competitive and most interested. Ask a trusted reader (friend, advisor, family member) to proofread your essays before submitting, but do not delay submission for extensive feedback on every essay. A well-written essay submitted promptly is better than a perfectly polished essay submitted late.
For primary application guidance, see our AMCAS® guide and AACOMAS® guide. For interview preparation after secondaries, see our interview page.
The “Anything Else” Question: Some secondaries include an open-ended question like “Is there anything else you would like the admissions committee to know?” This is an opportunity to address gaps, weaknesses, or context that does not fit elsewhere in your application. If you have nothing additional to add, a brief statement (“I believe my application materials comprehensively represent my qualifications, and I look forward to the opportunity to discuss them further in an interview”) is acceptable. If you have an institutional action, a significant grade trend to explain, an update on activities since your primary submission, or a personal circumstance that provides important context, this is the place to address it concisely and professionally.
Maintaining Quality Under Time Pressure: The pressure to submit secondaries quickly can lead to careless writing. Resist the urge to sacrifice quality for speed. A secondary essay returned in 10 days with thoughtful, school-specific content is stronger than one returned in 3 days with generic, hastily written responses. That said, 10 days is better than 30 days, and 30 days is the absolute maximum you should take for any secondary. Establish a daily writing routine during secondary season (July through September): set aside 2 to 3 hours each day dedicated to secondary essay writing and editing. With this routine, you can complete 2 to 3 schools per week while maintaining quality. Proofread each submission for the correct school name (accidentally mentioning one school’s name in another school’s essay is more common than you would think and is always damaging).
Secondary Fees and Financial Planning: At $50 to $150 per school across 15 to 25 schools, secondary application fees total $750 to $3,750. Add this to primary application fees ($170 base plus $43 per additional school for AMCAS®), MCAT® registration ($340), score reporting fees, and transcript fees, and the total cost of applying to medical school can reach $5,000 to $10,000+. Budget for these costs beginning junior year. The AAMC® Fee Assistance Program (FAP) provides waivers for primary application fees and some secondary fees. Many individual schools also waive secondary fees for FAP-eligible applicants. Apply for FAP well before you plan to submit your primary application. See our financial aid basics page.
References
Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). “Applying to Medical School.” AAMC, 2025. https://www.aamc.org/. Accessed March 2026.