Top 10 Medical Schools that Use This Prompt:

• If you have already graduated, briefly (4000 characters max) summarize your activities since graduation. (Harvard)

• Have you taken or are you planning to take time off between college graduation and medical school matriculation? If so explain in 500 characters or less (Penn)

• If you have taken any time off from your studies, either during or after college, please describe what you have done during this time and your reasons for doing so. (2500 characters) (NYU)

• Have you already completed your undergraduate education, have you had your college or graduate education interrupted, or do you plan not to be a full-time student during your application year? If you select “yes,” this question appears: Describe in chronological order your activities during the time(s) when you were not enrolled as a full-time student.  (2000 char limit)

• If you are 2017 or earlier college graduate, please use the space below to tell us what you have done since completing your undergraduate degree. (350 words) (UCSF)

• Has there been or will there be a gap between achieving your last degree (baccalaureate or other degrees post baccalaureate) and the expected time of medical school matriculation? (300 char to explain if yes) (UCLA)

These days, nearly every medical student now takes at least one year off in between finishing undergrad and going into medical school, so if you’re one of the few who is considering applying as a senior in college, think really hard about this. While not impossible to go straight from undergrad to medical school, you must show a strong trajectory that convinces the reader that you are absolutely positive you want to become a doctor.

At first glance, this essay prompt seems to invite applicants to merely list their post-graduation activities. However, you should always look at prompts as invitations to showcase intangible traits that go beyond just listing your activities. 

Because most of these prompts have a word limit greater than 300 words, you have ample space to describe not only your post-graduation experiences but also the impacts of these experiences on you and character traits that have developed along the way. Take, for example, this response: 

When I moved to San Francisco after graduation, I thought I wanted to be an engineer and develop life-saving technology that could impact thousands of lives. I was fortunate to work with amazing clinicians and researchers on the cutting edge of clinical care. As an engineer with a startup, I helped develop a new drug delivery device, and I worked closely with inventive and caring physicians around the world on new software and devices that could change the way healthcare is practiced.

But even 3000 miles away, my Saturdays with a hypochondriac named Sally gnawed at the back of my mind. The sense of shared community and mutual learning that I had experienced as an EMT led me to look for a similar opportunity…

This response works well because it not only lists the work that the applicant did upon graduation, it also reinforces how, despite looking elsewhere for fulfillment, working with patients provided the most satisfaction. 

Particularly useful at the beginning of this essay, too, is that it shows the applicant’s versatility. She can be an engineer, but also have experience as an EMT. Both the knowledge required to “develop life-saving technology” and the knowledge required to have a deep connection with a patient like Sally make an ideal doctor. Rather than saying, “My work with patients and my abilities as an engineer provide me with a skillset to be a good doctor,” the writer is showing the reader how these skills played a role in previous experiences. 

The balance of description and reflection also makes this a strong beginning for a Post-Graduation Activities Essay. The writer does list out her activities, enabling the reader to mentally connect the dots with what’s been written in previous sections. 

However, the writer doesn’t belabor the point here. Rather, she expands upon these activities by describing the specific ways in which her Work & Activities proved less fulfilling and brought her further down the path of practicing medicine. 

In this case, the admissions counselor can’t ask himself, “If this person has an engineering degree and worked at a startup, does she want to be an engineer instead of a doctor?” Rather, the writer guides the reader towards the inevitability of medical school given a set of experiences. 

Keep in mind the ultimate litmus test of the application: “Am I convincing my reader that medical school is the inevitable next step?” 

Sometimes, the explanations are deductive, like the startup example above. That is, a set of experiences show how the writer does not want to do the things she’s already tried. 

Sometimes, the explanations are inductive, like the EMT example above, whereby a particular activity further reinforces a desire to attend medical school. 

Often, your journey will be a combination of both, and ultimately, examining this push and pull relationship will show the reader the inevitability of medical school.