How to Answer the Medical School Secondary “Why Us?” Question

A strong answer to the medical school secondary “Why Us?” question involves naming something specific about the program, a faculty member’s research, a curriculum structure, or a population it serves, and connecting it to a concrete experience of your own that demonstrates your mission fit.

The “Why Us?” question appears on nearly every medical school secondary application, and it’s one of the most commonly mishandled prompts. Because it looks simple, most applicants treat it that way. And then fail to win an interview. 

Adcoms want evidence that you know the program well enough to make a specific, convincing case for why you belong there, and why they’d be making a mistake passing on you.

This guide breaks down why the question is asked, what a strong answer looks like, and how to write one that holds up against the rest of your application.

How Medical School Secondary Applications Work

The AMCAS application opens around the start of May each year, with submissions opening around the end of May to early June. That gives you roughly a month to prepare your primary application before the cycle officially opens. You apply in the spring before your intended start year.

Once you submit your primary, secondaries typically start arriving within two to four weeks. Each one should be submitted within 7-14 days of receiving it, without sacrificing the quality of your answers.

That’s a tight window, and it compounds fast. Depending on how many programs you applied to, and we recommend 25-30 medical schools, you could receive well over a dozen secondaries within the same general timeframe.

Receiving a secondary doesn’t mean a program is specifically interested in you. Most schools send them to nearly every applicant because adcoms get a clearer read on your level of interest, and schools collect a fee in the process, ranging from $30 to $200, with most schools charging over $100.

If you’re a strong applicant, you can expect several secondaries to land in quick succession. Crafting answers to common secondary questions in advance is the only way to keep up without your quality slipping.

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

Why Do Schools Include a “Why Us?” Question?

Schools include this question to gauge the depth of your interest. Adcoms only want to accept applicants who will make an active, effective contribution to the program, and a boilerplate answer tells them everything they need to know about how seriously you’re taking it.

If your response mentions the campus, the city, or mirrors the school’s mission statement back at them, adcoms will move on. Surface-level answers are easy to spot and easier to dismiss.

What they’re looking for is specificity. Why is this program the right fit for you, and why are you the right fit for it?

How to Answer the Medical School Secondary “Why Us?” Question

1 | Do Your Research (Beyond the School’s Website)

Start with the school’s website, but don’t stop there. What values does the program hold? Do they specialize in a specific kind of medicine? What differentiates them from the other programs you’ve researched? Do they offer extracurriculars you’ve been actively involved in before?

The applicants who write the most convincing why us secondary essays go further. They reach out to current students, dig into message boards, and, where possible, visit the campus. The goal is to build a specific enough picture of the program that your answer couldn’t have been written about any other school.

2 | Don’t Repeat Mission Statements

Adcoms are more than familiar with their own school’s mission statement. Don’t repeat it back to them.

What they want to see is how you’ve lived those values. When have you demonstrated them in your own life? Has your commitment to them cost you something? Have they pushed you to act when others didn’t?

The same applies to generic enthusiasm. Saying you’re excited to live in the city, or that you love their commitment to community health, lands with the same thud as every other applicant who said exactly that.

Take the mission statement and apply it to your life. Pick a specific moment that exemplifies the alignment between your character and the program’s values. That’s the answer adcoms are looking for.

3 | Be Specific: Medical School Secondary Essay Examples

Generic questions invite generic answers. Resist that pull.

Explain how your own past experiences make you a specific fit for this program. When have you lived by its values? Why will you uniquely benefit from what they offer? Have you been an active participant in extracurriculars they’re known for? Are there physicians on faculty you’re excited to learn from?

The more specific your answer, the harder it is to ignore.

Weak answer: 

“I am drawn to [School Name] because of your commitment to training compassionate, patient-centered physicians who serve diverse communities. Your mission statement resonates deeply with my own values, and I believe your location in [City] would provide me with exposure to a wide range of patient populations.”

This answer could have been written by anyone applying to almost any school. It tells adcoms nothing about you, and nothing about why this program specifically.

Strong answer: 

“Dr. [Name]’s research on health equity in rural Appalachian communities is the reason I applied to [School Name]. I spent two summers doing community health outreach in similar communities in Kentucky, and the gaps I saw there shaped my decision to pursue primary care. I want to train under someone whose work directly addresses what I’ve seen firsthand.”

4 | Continue Your Application Narrative

Building a cohesive narrative about who you are and why you want to be a doctor is essential to a successful primary application, and the same is true of secondaries.

Your secondaries are an opportunity to expand on the narrative you established in your primary. Adcoms already have your primary application, so repeating the same story won’t give them any additional insight into your personality. Use the secondary to shed light on another area of your life that you couldn’t cover in your primary. For a deeper look at how to do that intentionally, read our guide on developing a cohesive narrative for medical school applications.

If you are going to touch on an experience, moment, or lesson you’ve mentioned previously, make sure you are adding to it. Providing additional context is the only thing that justifies returning to the same examples.

It’s also important that your response to the “Why Us?” question fits well with the rest of your secondary. Each piece of the application adds to the same picture of who you are and why you want to be a doctor.

Our Secondary Prompts Database is updated every application cycle and includes expert tips and strategies for each school’s prompts.

Other Common Secondary Questions

The “Why Us?” question is one of many prompts you can expect to see across your secondaries. Familiarizing yourself with the most common ones before they arrive gives you a real head start.

Some of the most common secondary questions include:

• Describe yourself…
• Why are you an excellent fit for our school?
• How will you contribute to our community?
• What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses?
• Why do you want to be a doctor?
• How will you bring diversity to our campus?
• Describe a moral or ethical dilemma you faced and what you learned.
• Describe a time when you failed. What did you learn?
• If you took time off after your undergrad, what did you use that time to achieve?
• Where do you see yourself in ten years? In fifteen years?

Start drafting answers to these well before secondaries arrive. You could receive secondaries from 25-30 schools within the same general timeframe, and submitting each within 1-2 weeks of receiving it leaves little time to start from scratch on every question.

For a full breakdown of the secondary process, see our Medical School Secondary Application Guide.

How Competitive Is Your Medical School Application?

Secondary applications are time-consuming, and they arrive right when you’re ready for a break. How you handle them, and how you handled your primary, will determine whether you’re interviewing at your top choices or waiting on a waitlist.

Before you get deep into secondaries, it’s worth knowing where you actually stand. The Medical School Chance Predictor gives you a data-driven read on your admissions odds so you can prioritize the right schools and make smarter decisions about where to spend your energy.