TOP 5 FAQ: #5 What are the Components of the Medical School Application? 🤔 Part 2 of 2

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Did you miss part one? Check it out here: What are the Components of the Medical School Application Part 1?

After submitting your primary application, the next stage of the application process involves completing secondary applications for the individual medical schools to which you’ve applied. Most medical schools will automatically forward you their secondary application upon receipt of your primary, but some will screen your data first and only send secondaries if you’ve met cutoff criteria (e.g., for MCAT and/or GPA).

The secondary applications typically consist of three to five short essays specific to each school. They’ll often ask why you’re interested in that particular school, what you’d uniquely contribute to their community, what leadership or teamwork experiences you’ve had, and what your future goals will be as a physician. This is another chance for schools to get to know you and determine how well you fit their school’s mission and culture.

After reviewing primary and secondary applications, admissions committees will send interview invitations to applicants they find most promising and best suited to their program—the third stage of the application process.  Some schools will conduct traditional one-on-one interviews with faculty members while others will host Multiple Mini Interviews (MMI). A few schools hold group interviews, evaluating multiple candidates at once. Here, the schools assess your personality, reasoning, interpersonal/communication skills, and fit for the type of doctor they hope to train.  Beyond interviews, to further assess how you think and interact with others, some schools require completion of a situational judgment test (SJT), such as the AAMC PreView or Casper, which ask you to analyze and react to challenging scenarios.

Once your interview is complete, admissions committees will deliberate on your application, reviewing all of the information garnered from your primary application, secondary application, interview, and SJT (if applicable) to make an admissions decision—accept, hold, wait-list, or reject. 

Some schools accept update letters during the application process, where you can share new accomplishments with the admissions committee. These letters may be particularly valuable if you have been placed on hold or wait-listed and the new accomplishment strengthens a particular aspect of your application that wasn’t as competitive originally.

Although the medical school application process entails multiple steps and requires significant time and care, it also provides an opportunity for profound introspection, clarification of goals, and continued self-improvement, helping to transform your wish for becoming a doctor into a more thoughtful and insightful action plan.

What have you done or are preparing to do for your medical school applications? Share below.