AMCAS activities descriptions repeated on secondaries?

[anon311]

---

Members don't see this ad.

I haven't submitted my primary yet, but I'm getting there. Today I took a look at last year's secondaries for the schools to which I'm planning to apply and now I'm pretty confused. More than one school asks something to the effect of, "Describe your extracurricular/patient care/research/whatever activities."

Don't schools already have this information from the primary? My activities descriptions aren't overly long, but certainly long enough that answering a question like the above seems redundant.

I did a search on this and in previous years the answer appears to be that you have very limited space on your primary for descriptions, so they want more information. But wasn't the character limit for the primary descriptions raised two cycles ago? In other words, does this explanation still make sense?

Am I missing something entirely?

 

[LizzyM]

I haven't submitted my primary yet, but I'm getting there. Today I took a look at last year's secondaries for the schools to which I'm planning to apply and now I'm pretty confused. More than one school asks something to the effect of, "Describe your extracurricular/patient care/research/whatever activities."

Don't schools already have this information from the primary? My activities descriptions aren't overly long, but certainly long enough that answering a question like the above seems redundant.

I did a search on this and in previous years the answer appears to be that you have very limited space on your primary for descriptions, so they want more information. But wasn't the character limit for the primary descriptions raised two cycles ago? In other words, does this explanation still make sense?

Am I missing something entirely?

Yes, you missed the memo that said that medical schools can ask you anything regardless of how redundant it seems. When the school says "Jump" your response should be "how high?".

Of course, then there will the schools that want you to write just one thing: a check.

Welcome to the crazy world of med school admissions; enjoy the ride.

 

[Lukkie]

from what i read, the schools that ask this on the secondary usually just ask for 1 meaningful activity. my opinion is, they figure everyone puts down like 10 activities on the primary, only 2 of which are actually worth anything. so they want to hear in more detail about one particular activity which had a significant impact on your life.

 

[Shawnpremed]

Basically it's another way for the schools to make their own "primary" bc they don't want to read the AAMCAS'.

 

[Mattabet]

Yes, you missed the memo that said that medical schools can ask you anything regardless of how redundant it seems. When the school says "Jump" your response should be "how high?".

As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure that Yale's secondary actually does instruct you to jump several times, as high as you can before submitting it.

Below that, it says they'll know if you did it or not; if you didn't, your application gets thrown out.

I can just about guarantee you that 95% of premeds would cast a sidelong glance to make sure no one was looking and then jump their hearts out.

 

[student1799]

Just wait--the redundancy doesn't stop there. I had plenty of secondaries that required me to list all my prereq classes, even though they're on AMCAS too.
Worst of all: NYU and Cornell. Both bad these extremely annoying grids to fill put for the prereqs, which took forever to complete.
But when it comes time to submit the app, if anything goes wrong with the submission or payment, the WHOLE APP is erased and you have to start over. I had to do this 3x for Cornell, because the computer kept rejecting my credit card (although it never told me that). Turns out it didn't like my middle initial.