COVID Essay

[pptf327]

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Hi!

After submitting my primary I am moving onto pre-writing secondaries. I have a list of all of the secondaries for all of my schools organized by topic (diversity, failure/challenge, why us, etc) and about 7 of the schools im applying to asked for a covid essay last year (some optional some not). my advisor seems to think this cycle is the last time to talk about covid/a lot of schools probably won't ask for it anymore (ex: michigan asked for it last year, but got rid of that prompt for this cycle), but im wondering what you all think! is it worth it to pre-write it?

thanks so much!

 

[LizzyM]

What were you doing in spring 2020? Did COVID interrupt your college career? delay your start of college by a semester or more? Require you to leave your college campus? Did you continue your studies online or take a break? Was there a change in your clinical experiences, community service, or ability to make a living (if you were working full-time before the pandemic) that changed your pre-med trajectory? Did you take on new responsibilities due to things that happened in 2020-2021? These are the sorts of things that I think adcoms were trying to get at by adding a COVID prompt. You can jot down your thoughts to these questions I've posed and then see if you are going to need to flesh out responses to any specific prompts.

 

[pptf327]

What were you doing in spring 2020? Did COVID interrupt your college career? delay your start of college by a semester or more? Require you to leave your college campus? Did you continue your studies online or take a break? Was there a change in your clinical experiences, community service, or ability to make a living (if you were working full-time before the pandemic) that changed your pre-med trajectory? Did you take on new responsibilities due to things that happened in 2020-2021? These are the sorts of things that I think adcoms were trying to get at by adding a COVID prompt. You can jot down your thoughts to these questions I've posed and then see if you are going to need to flesh out responses to any specific prompts.

i was a junior in college and had to leave campus. i continued the semester online (all As and an A-) and then continued with summer courses online (3 As) because they were 10% off. it did interrupt research though. the clinical trial i was working on obviously shut down and i moved to doing remote data entry. my PI was going to teach me how to take vitals, draw blood, etc. so that was super disappointing. and in terms of work it actually was great for me financially which i know is not the norm and i am extremely grateful. i was a full time nanny for two families (at different times) and they were my only non household interaction for months. and then helping them with online school was really challenging (and is the topic for one of my secondaries already). and then lastly, i graduated college in dec 2020 and got a job as a medical assistant. so i started working in healthcare during the pandemic pre vaccine which was quite the experience.

given all of that, do you think i should write the optional ones? thanks sm!!

 

[LunaOri]

Sounds like it had a big impact on your life experiences, so okay to prewrite in case you need it.

 

[pptf327]

Sounds like it had a big impact on your life experiences, so okay to prewrite in case you need it.

thank you so much!!

 

[LizzyM]

Agree with @LunaOri. I didn't really intend for you to answer me -- just throwing out areas of your life that might have been affected by the pandemic. But answering my questions does give you a good first draft. Good luck!