How to Prewrite Secondaries: The 6 Most Common Essay Topics

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It’s Officially Secondaries Season…

A lot of people have asked me to write an article about medical school secondaries, and now is the perfect time.

At this point, most applicants have already finished the MCAT, CASPer test, submitted TMDSAS and/or AMCAS, and are now anxiously waiting for secondaries to start rolling in. If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering:

Should I start prewriting my secondaries, or should I wait until I actually receive them from schools?

That’s exactly what I’ll be covering in this article. I’ll talk about whether I think prewriting is worth your time, my personal experience with secondaries, and the biggest essay topics that consistently appeared throughout my application cycle. Even if you decide not to fully prewrite your essays, there are still plenty of ways you can prepare ahead of time.

My Experience with Prewriting

Personally, I didn’t get to prewrite nearly as much as I wanted to.

I was applying through both TMDSAS and AMCAS, trying to finish my primary applications as quickly as possible, scheduling my Casper exam, and somehow still attempting to enjoy my summer vacation. By the time I finally submitted everything, I felt like I had already run a marathon before the secondary applications had even started.

Looking back, though, I definitely wish I had spent more time preparing.

If you’re applying broadly, you’ll probably receive secondaries from most of the schools you applied to. Depending on how many schools are on your list, you could easily find yourself writing twenty, thirty, or even close to one hundred essays.

That’s why secondaries can feel so overwhelming.

After spending months perfecting your primary application, you’re suddenly asked to write another round of essays. It’s easy to wonder:

“Didn’t I already tell you everything about myself?”

Unfortunately, that’s just part of the process.

Should You Prewrite Your Medical School Secondaries?

If you have the time, my answer is yes.

Prewriting won’t eliminate the workload, but it will make the secondary season much less stressful.

That being said, I don’t necessarily recommend trying to write every single essay for every single school before you receive the prompts. If you’re applying to twenty or thirty schools, that’s simply unrealistic.

Instead, I recommend preparing in a smarter way.

Rather than prewriting individual essays, prewrite topics.

I’ll explain exactly what I mean later in this article, but this approach saved me a lot of time because I realized that most medical schools ask very similar questions—they’re just worded differently.

Where to Find Previous Secondary Prompts

If you decide you want to start preparing before your secondaries arrive, one of the best resources is Student Doctor Network (SDN).

Every year, applicants post the secondary prompts they receive, and you’ll quickly notice something interesting:

Most medical schools don’t drastically change their secondary questions.

Sometimes they’ll modify the wording slightly or replace one question, but many prompts stay the same year after year.

Because of that, prewriting usually isn’t a waste of time.

Even if a school changes a question, you’ll often find that the new prompt is asking about the same underlying topic. Instead of throwing away everything you’ve written, you’ll usually just need to tweak your response.

My Favorite Way to “Prewrite” Without Actually Prewriting

Here’s the strategy I wish someone had told me before I applied.

Instead of trying to prewrite every single secondary essay for every school, focus on identifying the major themes that appear across multiple schools.

Once I started submitting secondaries, I realized that admissions committees were essentially asking the same questions over and over again.

They might phrase them differently.

One school might ask about overcoming adversity.

Another might ask about a challenge that shaped you.

Another might ask about resilience.

Although the wording changes, they’re really evaluating the same qualities.

The same thing happens with questions about teamwork, diversity, service, leadership, and why you’re interested in a particular school.

Once I recognized these patterns, writing secondaries became much easier because I wasn’t starting from scratch every time. I already had experiences in mind for each topic and only needed to tailor them to fit the specific prompt.

So instead of prewriting essays for twenty different schools, I recommend preparing responses for the six major secondary essay topics that I encountered most often.

Let’s go through each of them.

1. Why Do You Want to Attend Our Medical School?

Without question, this was the most common secondary prompt I received.

Almost every medical school wants to know why you specifically chose to apply to their program.

At first glance, this seems like one of the easiest questions to answer, but I actually think it’s one of the easiest questions to answer poorly.

Many applicants fall into the trap of writing something generic:

“I like your curriculum.”

“I appreciate your excellent faculty.”

“Your technology is impressive.”

The problem is that those statements could apply to almost every medical school.

Admissions committees want to know that you actually took the time to research their institution.

So before you begin writing, spend some time learning about each school.

Look into their curriculum.

Read about their mission statement.

Explore the student organizations.

Research the hospitals they rotate through.

See whether they have unique research opportunities or community outreach programs that genuinely interest you.

Ask yourself:

Why did I decide to spend money applying to this school?

What was it that caught your attention in the first place?

The more specific you can be, the stronger your essay will be.

Bonus Tip: Don’t Forget the School’s Mission and Core Values

One strategy that helped me a lot was going beyond just the curriculum and programs and actually looking at each school’s mission statement and core values.

A lot of schools explicitly emphasize things like service, leadership, community engagement, innovation, or working with underserved populations. This is actually really helpful because it gives you another angle for your “Why this school?” essay.

Instead of only saying what the school offers, you can also connect it back to who you are.

For example, if a school values service, you can briefly highlight experiences where you’ve worked in community clinics or with underserved populations. If a school emphasizes leadership, you can talk about roles where you’ve taken initiative or led a team.

This does two things at once:

• It shows that you did your research on the school.
• It shows that your experiences already align with what they care about.

In my opinion, this is one of the easiest ways to make your “Why this school?” answer feel more intentional and less generic.

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2. Is There Anything Else We Should Know?

This is another very common type of secondary question, and I didn’t expect to see it as often as I did.

Many schools include some version of:

• “Is there anything else you would like us to know?”
• “Describe anything not included in your application.”
• “Additional information you would like to share.”

At first, I thought my primary application already covered everything important about me. But secondary applications often give you another chance to highlight something that doesn’t neatly fit elsewhere.

This could include:

• A unique personal experience
• A challenge or disadvantage you faced
• An explanation for a lower GPA or MCAT score
• A meaningful life event that shaped your journey
• Something about your identity or background that wasn’t fully captured elsewhere

This is also where a lot of applicants choose to address context around their academic performance if needed. But even if you don’t have something “negative” to explain, you can still use this space to highlight something meaningful that didn’t fit into your primary application.

The key here is not to force something, but to think about:
What do I want the admissions committee to understand about me that they might not already see?

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3. Tell Us About a Challenge or Adversity You’ve Faced

This is one of the most classic secondary essay themes, and it shows up in many different forms.

You might see prompts like:

• Describe a challenge you overcame
• Discuss a significant obstacle in your life
• Tell us about a time you faced adversity
• How did you respond to a difficult situation?

Even though the wording varies, the goal is usually the same: admissions committees want to understand how you respond when things don’t go smoothly.

This isn’t just about the situation itself—it’s about:

• How you thought through the problem
• How you responded emotionally and practically
• What you learned from the experience
• How it changed the way you approach future challenges

A common misconception is that you need to pick the “biggest” hardship in your life. That’s not necessarily true. What matters more is reflection and growth.

You want to show maturity in how you processed the experience and how it shaped you moving forward.

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4. Teamwork and Collaboration

Another very common theme across secondaries is teamwork.

These questions might look like:

• Describe a time you worked in a team
• Tell us about a group project you contributed to
• How do you handle conflict in a team setting?
• Give an example of collaboration in a professional or academic environment

This makes sense because medicine is fundamentally a team-based profession. Physicians don’t work in isolation—they work with nurses, physician assistants, pharmacists, social workers, and other physicians.

When answering these questions, schools want to see:

• Your ability to communicate effectively
• How you handle disagreement or conflict
• Whether you can contribute to a shared goal
• Your role in a group dynamic (leader, supporter, mediator, etc.)

You don’t need to describe a perfect team experience. In fact, sometimes discussing a small conflict and how you resolved it can be more insightful than describing a smooth, ideal situation.

The focus should always be on how you contributed and what you learned.

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5. Personal Accomplishments

Some schools also ask about personal accomplishments that you are most proud of.

This doesn’t necessarily have to be academic or research-related. It can be:

• A leadership role
• An athletic achievement
• A creative or personal milestone
• A long-term commitment you’re proud of

The important part here is not just the accomplishment itself, but why it matters to you.

What did it teach you about yourself?
Why does it stand out compared to your other experiences?

Even if the accomplishment seems small, your reflection is what makes it meaningful.

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6. Serving Underserved or Specific Patient Populations

One of the most important and frequently appearing themes is service to specific populations.

This might be phrased as:

• Why are you interested in serving this community?
• How will you contribute to underserved populations?
• What experiences have you had with vulnerable communities?
• How do social determinants of health influence your motivation for medicine?

Many medical schools have a strong mission around serving underserved populations, whether that’s rural communities, urban underserved areas, refugee populations, or other groups facing healthcare disparities.

If you already have experiences in these areas, this is where they become especially powerful.

You want to clearly connect:

• What experiences you’ve had
• What you learned from them
• How they shaped your desire to pursue medicine
• How you plan to continue this work in the future

This is often one of the most important themes in the entire application process because it directly ties into the mission of many medical schools.

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Final Thoughts on Medical School Secondaries

If there’s one thing I learned from the secondary application process, it’s that repetition is normal.

You are not expected to reinvent yourself for every single school. Instead, you are being asked to present the same core experiences in slightly different ways depending on the question.

That’s why preparing by topic instead of by school is so helpful.

When secondaries start coming in, they can feel overwhelming—especially when multiple schools send them at once. It can feel like you’re suddenly drowning in essays after months of waiting.

But the truth is, most of these essays fall into predictable categories.

Once you recognize those patterns, the process becomes much more manageable.

You don’t eliminate the work—but you reduce the stress and confusion that comes with starting from scratch every time.

And once you get through secondaries, you’re already on the final stretch: interviews.

It’s a long process, and you’re in for a marathon, but you’re further along than it feels in the moment. Good luck and push through!