University of Northern Colorado College of Osteopathic Medicine Secondary Essay Prompts

The 2025-2026 prompts

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

1. 01

   Please respond to one of the four essay prompts below in 500 words or less. Identity and Lived Experience: Reflect on a significant aspect of your identity or lived experience. How do you envision it shaping your practice as a future physician? Commitment to Community and Health Equity: Describe a time when you worked to address a health or social need in a community. What did you learn from that experience, and how has it prepared you for medical school? Collaboration: Reflect on a time when you engaged in a collaborative effort. What did the experience teach you, and how do you feel it will help you during medical training? Osteopathic Principles and Practice: What specific experience/exposure have you had with osteopathic medicine? How has this influenced your decision to become an osteopathic physician?

   500 words
2. 02

   Reapplicant: What have you done to strengthen your application? Please be brief and explicit.

   250 wordsOptional
3. 03

   Non-traditional Applicant: Please briefly describe your path to medicine. What motivated you to pursue medicine at this point in your life, and how will your experiences add to the quality of UNC COM's entering class? UNC COM considers applicants who are over 25 years old, three or more years post-graduate, or making a career change to be non-traditional.

   250 wordsOptional
4. 04

   Academic Challenges: If applicable, please describe any academic obstacles or personal setbacks (e.g., death of a family member, Low First-Year GPA, repeating coursework, challenges in prerequisite coursework, etc.) that impacted your education. What did you learn from the experience, and how have you grown as a result? How will this resilience support your success during medical training?

   250 wordsOptional

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.
• Heads up: this school also requires CASPer, so build that into your timeline alongside the essays.

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