The Secondary Application
After AMCAS sends your Primary Application to your designated medical schools, the medical schools generally request supplemental information. This constitutes the Secondary Application. Check the medical schools to which you are applying to identify their Secondary Application practices. Generally, most medical schools follow up by requesting the Secondary Application from all applicants to their school. As the Secondary Application gets underway, each medical school will have a distinctive process, but generally it involves three deliverables by you.
- Application fee.
- Answers to additional questions and several essays.
- Request to transmit your letters of recommendation.
General Procedures
- Some schools send invitations to all students applying to their school, other schools only send invitations after reviewing the primary application (4 to 6 weeks after submission) and some schools do not use a secondary application.
- There is usually an additional application fee for the secondary application. If there is one, and you received a fee waiver from AMCAS, you may be granted a waiver for your secondary application; ask.
- The secondary application will require you to complete a set of additional questions and several shorter essays specific to their school; be prepared to spend a significant amount of time on your secondary applications.
- When you receive a request in the secondary application to transmit your letters, contact HPA (prehealth@duke.edu) and ask us to transmit your letter packet.
- It is essential to keep your contact information with AMCAS current and to be available (especially via email) throughout the application process.