Mt. Sinai Essays

[vp1001]

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Hi everyone,

I am filling out the Mt. Sinai secondary (a little late, yes...), and I'm not sure what to do about the essays. There is one on the MD secondary, labeled as optional, that says "Indicate the reasons for your specific interest in Mount Sinai." It seems that any MD applicant would be extremely silly to not fill out this essay lest they seem uninterested in the school.

But, on the MSTP secondary, there is a required essay that asks "What are your reasons for choosing to apply to the Mount Sinai School of Medicine MD/PhD program?" In my case the answers to these essays would be virtually identical, so I am tempted to leave the optional question blank.

This seems intuitively like a terrible idea, since leaving optional questions blank is a giant application faux pas, but if I wrote another essay I think it would come off as BS or a rehash of the other one since I already stated everything substantive. Did anyone else face this situation? Do you think it is okay to leave the optional one blank or write something possibly rude-sounding like "see MSTP essay"?

For the record, I am not interested in MD-only, so making the MD committee upset if they get forwarded only the MD secondary is not a huge concern.

Thanks!

 

[yeastfan21]

I just finally got to speak to an admissions officer about this question.

For the first essay prompt of the two (the optional one), talk about what you like about Mount Sinai Medical School (as opposed to other schools).

For the second essay prompt of the two (required for MD/PhD applicants), talk about why you are interested in undertaking a longer program (MD/Phd rather than MD).

In other words, second prompt is really more similar to the MD/PhD essay on AMCAS and is not really asking about why you like Mount Sinai.

Hope this helps...

 

[yeastfan21]

Not so fast, actually. I just got contradictory information on Friday.

Here's the deal. First I called the Mt. Sinai Med School Admissions Office, and the person told me to contact this one woman who deals specifically with the MSTP program. I gave her a call, but I had to leave a message since she wasn't in that day. When I hadn't heard back from her in a couple days, I tried the admissions office again... this time, the person I spoke to said she'd be able to answer my question. She gave me the answer I described in the previous post.

Then, on Friday, I got called by the original person on whose answering machine I had left a message. I decided, "What the hell?", and I tried asking her the same question to make sure she gave me the same response. To my surprise, she said just the opposite: you're supposed to talk about why you like Mt Sinai (as opposed to other institutions) in both prompts.

So I really don't know what to do. Unfortunately, I didn't tell the second woman that I had gotten a different answer from someone else (I was embarrassed about seeming obsessive, I guess). I do think, however, that the second woman was more reliable since she deals specifically with the MSTP... so if anything, err on the side of talking about why you like the Mt Sinai MSTP.

I'm probably going to end up writing answer the sort of answers the question both ways, just to cover my bases.

Hope I didn't screw anyone over with the previous info... (though it probably doesn't matter too much either way... I hope.)

 

[vp1001]

Thanks for the information. Unfortunately I already submitted and only wrote the MSTP essay, but I think my answer covers all the bases described here (why Mt. Sinai, why their med school, why their MSTP). Hopefully they won't penalize me too much for not doing the optional one... oh well.