Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine Secondary Essay Prompts

The 2026-2027 prompts

Want these drafted from your own story? Start with MedCoach

Collected from public applicant reports. Prompts occasionally change mid cycle, so confirm against your own secondary portal before you submit.

1. 01

   The Admissions Committee is interested in gaining more insight into you as a person. Please describe a significant personal challenge you have faced that helped shape you as a person. Examples may include a moral or ethical dilemma, a situation of personal adversity, or a hurdle in your life that you worked hard to overcome. Please include how you got through the experience and what you learned about yourself as a result.

   2000 characters
2. 02

   Please tell us about ONE research project to which you made a significant contribution. In your essay, describe your role on the project, the hypothesis of your research and whether you contributed to hypothesis generation, why the methods were selected to answer that hypothesis, your results, and interpretation of your results with respect to future findings. In addition, please briefly share your motivation for pursuing this research project and reflect on how this experience affected your future career goals.

   3500 characters
3. 03

   Describe an experience (or experiences) that changed how you understand the relationship between a person's health and the conditions of their life.

   1500 characters
4. 04

   What does your ideal career entail fifteen years after medical school graduation?

   1000 characters

How to write these well

• Turn secondaries around within 7 to 14 days of receiving them. Schools read speed as interest, and slow essays land in a bigger pile.
• Pre-write the universal question types (diversity, challenge, why us) once, then adapt per school. Adapting is rewriting the school specific half, not swapping the name.
• Name real programs. A why us answer that cites a specific clinic, track, or community partnership reads ten times stronger than praise for reputation or location.
• Stay under the limit without padding to reach it. Readers are working through thousands of these; a tight answer is a kindness they remember.

More schools in OH