Medical School Secondary Describe Yourself Prompt: A Complete Guide

To answer the “describe yourself” medical school secondary prompt, focus on one or two specific, well-examined details about your personality, background, or interests that your primary application didn’t have room for, then explain what they reveal about the physician you’ll become.

By the time a school sends you a secondary, adcoms already have your GPA, MCAT score, and activities list. What they want here is the person behind those numbers, the values you’d bring to their program and their patients.

This guide breaks down why schools ask this question, what admissions committees are actually looking for, and how to write an answer that gives them something specific to remember.

How Medical School Secondary Applications Work

The AMCAS application opens in early May, with primary submissions starting in late May to early June. Secondaries typically arrive two to four weeks after you submit your primary, and you should aim to complete each one within 7-14 days of receiving it.

For more information about ideal scheduling, read our Medical School Application Timeline Guide.

Applying to 25-30 schools, which we recommend, means you could be juggling well over a dozen secondaries within the same stretch of weeks. Most schools charge a secondary fee too, typically around $110, though the range runs from $30 to $200.

Sending out mass secondaries isn’t just about gauging interest either. Every secondary submitted is another fee collected, and schools know it. Getting a read on your enthusiasm and padding the budget happen to align perfectly.

For the full breakdown of deadlines, fees, and how to prioritize which secondaries to tackle first, see our Medical School Secondary Application Guide.

Why Do Schools Ask You to “Describe Yourself”?

Adcoms aren’t looking for a specific answer so much as how you choose to answer. What you decide to highlight and what you leave out tell them more about your values than any accomplishment could on its own.

Schools want more than high scores. They’re trying to figure out who will thrive in their specific program, which means understanding how you think before they can judge fit.

Treat this question the way you’d treat your personal statement, a chance to control your narrative rather than list your resume. If you haven’t nailed down your narrative yet, our guide to building a cohesive medical school application narrative walks through how to connect your personal statement, activities, and secondaries into a single coherent story.

How to Answer the “Describe Yourself” Secondary Essay

This question is asking for the details your primary application didn’t have room for, the parts of your personality that a GPA and an activities list can’t capture.

Don’t double back on stories you already told in your primary. If a topic overlaps, add new context rather than restating it. Adcoms are reading this alongside your primary, and repetition reads as a missed opportunity rather than reinforcement.

What’s shaped your closest relationships? What do you do outside of medicine that you’re proud of, not just what looks good on paper? Are you the person who listens, the person who leads, or the person who makes everyone laugh before a hard conversation? Ask yourself these kinds of questions, then pick two or three traits or moments you can speak to with real specificity, not a broad summary of your whole personality.

For example, a generic answer might say: “I’m a compassionate person who works well with others and cares deeply about helping people.” A specific answer would instead say something like: “I worked the register at my family’s restaurant every weekend through high school, and dealing with regulars who complained about everything taught me how to stay steady with someone who’s frustrated, a skill that’s come up more than once during my clinical volunteering.”

Whatever you choose to include, make sure you’re comfortable being asked about it in an interview. If you can’t picture yourself elaborating on it out loud, it doesn’t belong in the essay.

The details you choose should also sit naturally alongside the rest of your secondary. Every answer you give builds toward the same overall impression, so a hobby or story that contradicts your primary application’s narrative will stand out for the wrong reasons.

Other Common Secondary Essay Prompts

“Describe yourself” and “tell me about yourself” are just two of the prompts you’ll see across your secondaries. Knowing what else to expect lets you prepare answers before they land in your inbox.

Some of the most common secondary questions include:

• What makes you the right fit for our school?

• What are your strengths and weaknesses?

• Why do you want to be a doctor?

• Why this program? / Why us?

• Describe a moral or ethical dilemma you faced and what you learned from it.

• Describe a time you failed. What did you learn?

• Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

• If you took time off after undergrad, what have you achieved during that time?

Draft your answers before secondaries arrive. You’ll need to submit each one within 7-14 days of receiving it, so start early and tailor each response to the specific school once it’s in hand.

Get Ahead of Every Secondary 

You don’t have to guess what a school is going to ask, or start from a blank page once a secondary lands in your inbox. Our Secondary Prompts Database covers essentially every MD and DO program in the country, is updated every application cycle, and includes expert tips and strategies for each school’s specific prompts.

Look up your schools now, draft your answers early, and walk into the next few weeks already ahead of the applicants who are just getting started.