Case Western

Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine Cleveland, OH · Private · MD

Average MCAT: 518
Average GPA: 3.87
Class size: 216 (10,647 applicants)
Tuition: $72,526 (per year)
Out-of-state applicants: Welcome

Deadlines

AMCAS deadline: Oct. 15, 2026
Secondary deadline: Nov. 15, 2026

Essays

Personal challenge (all programs) (2,000 characters)

The Admissions Committee is interested in gaining more insight into you as a person. Please describe a significant personal challenge you have faced that helped shape you as a person. Examples may include a moral or ethical dilemma, a situation of personal adversity, or a hurdle in your life that you worked hard to overcome. Please include how you got through the experience and what you learned about yourself as a result.

Context of care (all programs) (1,500 characters)

Describe an experience (or experiences) that changed how you understand the relationship between a person’s health and the conditions of their life.

Research or scholarly work (University Program, optional) (4 answers of 600 characters)

Have you participated in research or a scholarly project (capstone project, honors thesis, etc.)? If yes: A. Briefly describe your research/scholarly project and your role in it. If you have participated in multiple projects, choose one to discuss. B. What did you learn from the project? C. If you worked in a team, what did you learn about team dynamics? D. What challenges, if any, manifested during the project and how were they overcome?

Gap years (optional) (1,000 characters)

If applicable, please reflect on the time you are taking between college graduation and medical school matriculation, including why you chose to take a gap/growth year(s) and what you will be doing or have done during this time.

Additional information (optional) (2,000 characters)

Is there any further information that you wish to share with the Admissions Committee that may not be captured in the rest of your application?

Research (Lerner College Program) (3,500 characters)

Please tell us about ONE research project to which you made a significant contribution. In your essay, describe your role on the project, the hypothesis of your research and whether you contributed to hypothesis generation, why the methods were selected to answer that hypothesis, your results, and interpretation of your results with respect to future findings. In addition, please briefly share your motivation for pursuing this research project and reflect on how this experience affected your future career goals.

Career goals (Lerner College Program) (1,000 characters)

What does your ideal career entail fifteen years after medical school graduation?

MSTP essays (800 to 1,000 characters)

PhD Advisor: What do you look for in a PhD advisor, and who at CWRU would interest you? (800) Area of Interest: What is your specific interest in the MSTP at CWRU? (800) What is the hardest academic or research challenge you’ve faced so far? How did you handle it? (1,000)

Editor's notes

Get the MCAT right before you apply. Case won't send a secondary below 502 on your most recent score, and a later retake that drops below 502 cuts you off. The entering class of 2026 averaged 518.
Choose programs deliberately. One secondary covers the University Program, Lerner and the MSTP, and the school asks you to be intentional about each. Lerner requires more than two summers of hypothesis-driven research and its 3,500-character research essay will expose a thin record.
Case publishes its prompts in June, so there's no excuse for a late secondary. The FAQ says seats are already being offered by the end of October, and the University Program admits on a rolling basis. Aim to submit within two weeks of the invitation.
The context-of-care essay is the one to get right for the University Program. It mirrors the mission's line about preparing graduates to understand the contexts that shape health. Show one experience that changed your thinking, in your own words; the secondary page is explicit that it wants original writing, not LLM output.