If you're applying to 20 medical schools, you could be looking at writing up to 100 secondary essays. That’s overwhelming—unless you start early.
AMCAS takes up to four weeks to process your application, and many schools wait until that’s done before sending secondaries. Use this time wisely. Contact each school you applied to and ask for their secondary essay prompts. Then start outlining your responses right away.
Focus on common themes like adversity, diversity, and why you want to be a doctor. Once you have strong base essays, you can tailor them to fit each school’s specific prompts. Reusing content is fine, as long as your essays are thoughtful and specific.
Starting early is the best way to meet most schools' two-week goal for submitting secondaries.