Queen’s Health Sciences: Supplementary Application Essay Examples & Templates 2022/2023

If you are looking for guidance on the Queen’s Health Sciences supplementary application, including application essay essay examples and templates, then you’ve come to the right place. 

This Application Prep guide is fully updated with this year’s 2022/2023 application (i.e. for applicants planning on starting the program in Fall 2023).

IMPORTANT: The Queen’s Health Sciences Supplementary Essays will be available starting November 1, 2022. This year’s application will ask students to write 2 SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAYS from 3 randomly selected questions. Keep reading to learn how to approach these.

Before you dive in, it’s important to understand that the admissions committee receives thousands of applications every year. To help you stand out from the crowd, you need to demonstrate a clear sense of self, strong life experience, and exemplary communication skills.

Our ‘full student’ coaching process does exactly that. If you’re not working with a coach, be sure to read our Self-Awareness, Goal-Setting, and Interview Prep Skills Guides.

The Narrative Communication Approach™ is a particularly useful storytelling framework that helps you tell a clear and concise story, while creating an emotional connection with the reader. We typically use this approach for personal/moral essay questions, like those from Queen’s. All of our Queen’s Health Sciences essay examples and templates use this approach. 

However, we know that you’re applying to a Health Sciences program, and you’re probably used to STEM problem-based essays where you make data and evidence the stars, not personal connections. Our Deductive Communication Approach™ will help you write compelling essays that present a straightforward hypothesis and then provide compelling arguments and data to support it. 

You can use either one of these approaches for your essays, but make sure you connect with a coach to make sure you’re choosing the right approach for unique interests and experiences.

For more information about Queen’s Health Sciences, check out this page and don’t miss our Queen’s Health Sciences Program Guide.

2022/2023 Queens Health Sciences (BHSc) Supplementary Application

Similar to last year, the 2022/2023 Queen’s Health Sciences Supplementary Application is made up of 3 randomly generated questions. You must answer 2 of the 3 questions.

Each essay must be 2,000 characters or less (including spaces). 

On October 1, 2022, you can start applying to Queen’s through the Ontario Universities Application Centre (OUAC) (and you must complete your OUAC application by February 1, 2023).

The deadline to submit the 2022/2023 Queen’s Health Sciences Supplementary Application is February 15, 2023. 

You are also encouraged to complete and submit your Equity Self-Identification Form by February 15th.

REMEMBER: Queen’s Health Sciences no longer follows the previous November, December, and January submission cycles as it did for all applications before 2021.

You will have 30 days from when you access the questions on SOLUS to complete and submit your essays. If you do not submit the first randomly generated set of questions by 30 days, another set of 3 questions will appear for you to complete.

IMPORTANT: The last day to submit your essays is February 15, even if you received the questions less than 30 days before that (i.e. if you got the questions on January 30, the deadline is February 15, February 29 even though that’s 30 days).

You can see how many days you have left to complete the questions on SOLUS, shown here:

Queens Health Sciences Application Evaluation

Many students ask us how the Queen’s Health Sciences Supplementary Application is evaluated. 

Similar to last year, Queen’s Health Sci makes their evaluation rubric public to all applicants so that they can submit the strongest possible application. 

You will see that there are 3 main evaluation criteria, each of which are rated across 4 possible scores (Distinguished, Capable, Basic, and Unsatisfactory):

1. Positionality and Lived Experience. Positionality is the understanding of how your identity (e.g. race, socioeconomic, gender, sexuality, etc.) influences your biases in the world. Lived Experience is more commonly understood as ‘life experience’. Queen’s is looking for applicants who can connect their understanding of their position in life with significant experiences they’ve encountered.
2. Connection. Connection appears to simply be defined as answering the question clearly and identifying a clear learning outcome within that answer.
3. Personal Growth. Personal Growth is the demonstrated ability to understand one’s strengths and development areas, and pursue 

Here’s what the evaluation rubric looks like: 

There is also a final evaluation area, called ‘Communication Clarity’, rated either Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory. Improving real-world skills like communication is an essential part of our ‘full student’ coaching methodology. To make sure you get a ‘Satisfactory’ on the Communication Clarity part of your evaluation, read our Narrative Communication Approach™ Guide and our Deductive Communication Approach™ Guide.

QUEENS HEALTH SCIENCES CORE COMPETENCIES 

The courses and assessments in the Queen’s Health Sciences (BHSc) program focuses on teaching students a set of 7 key skills (or ‘core competencies’) to help their graduates be better healthcare providers. 

These core competencies are: 

• Collaborator: Work effectively with other health care professionals to provide safe, high-quality, patient-centered care. 
• Communicator: Form relationships with patients and their families that facilitate the gathering and sharing of essential information for effective health care.
• Health Advocate: Contribute their expertise and influence as they work with communities or patient populations to improve health. 
• Leader: Engage with others to contribute to a vision of a high-quality health care system and take responsibility for the delivery of excellent patient care through their activities as clinicians, administrators, scholars, or teachers.
• Scholar: Demonstrate a lifelong commitment to excellence in practice through continuous learning and by teaching others, evaluating evidence, and contributing to scholarship.
• Professional: Committed to the health and well-being of individual patients and society through ethical practice, high personal standards of behaviour, accountability to the profession and society, physician-led regulation, and maintenance of personal health.
• Content Expert: Interprets and connects health sciences information, developing a depth and breadth of knowledge of the health sciences.

So, what does this mean for your Queen’s HS application? You want to show your potential in as many of these areas as possible, through your experiences, interests, skills, goals, etc. This will show the admissions committee that your values are aligned with their teaching philosophy and that you have the potential to excel in the program.

For example, when discussing your experiences, you could talk about a time when you had to go above and beyond to collaborate effectively with a team (i.e. the ‘collaboration’ competency), like a group project at school or as the captain of your school’s debate team. Or, you could talk about how you developed your leadership skills (i.e. the ‘leader’ competency) while volunteering at your local hospital and you took the initiative to create a support group for patients and their families on the floor you are working on (i.e. the ‘health advocate’ competency). 

You don’t have to be an expert in all these areas, but the important thing is to show that you’ve thought about them and are already making the effort to develop each core competency. 

Want to learn how to articulate how your unique skills, interests, and experiences are aligned with these evaluation criteria? Connect with a coach for support.

Queen’s Health Sciences Supplementary Application – Possible Questions 2022/2023

Below are Queen’s Health Sciences SE questions. The questions you receive will be randomly generated.

As you’ll see, most of the questions can be separated into 2 types of questions: Personal Questions and Moral Questions. 

Personal questions focus on you: your experiences, the people you know, your interests, etc. 

Moral questions prompt you to discuss issues like diversity, inclusion, injustice, and equity, and discuss how your experiences, learnings, and identity influence your opinions, beliefs, and biases.

IMPORTANT: While the questions come out in a random batch of 3 questions from the above list, we notice applicants will almost always receive 1 Personal Question, 1 Moral Question, and 1 either Personal OR Moral Question. 

Having trouble choosing an experience, interest, person, or issue (depending on the question you’re asked)?

Select questions that will allow you to: 

• Highlight key skills that are fundamental to who you are, like leadership, problem solving, time management etc.
• Draw upon specific traits that Queen’s looks for like commitment and dedication.
• Showcases your values, like making an impact on the world, or connecting with people around you. 
• Be unique and authentic.
• Discuss how you evolved as a person because of the learning outcome that the experience/person initiated.

Keep reading for breakdowns/tips, templates, and examples for both types of questions. If you have questions about this year’s application and need help writing your essays, connect with a coach for 1-on-1 support.

You Might Also Like

Program Guide

Queens Health Sciences: The Definitive Guide for Applicants (2023)

If you’re applying to Queen’s University for the Bachelor of Health Sciences (BHSc), or you’re simply interested in learning more…  Read more

Queen’s Health Sciences Supplementary Application: Personal Questions – Breakdown

The Personal Questions are all open-ended and are designed to help the admissions committee learn more about you and your experiences, values, skills, interests, and goals (learn more about how to answer personal questions in our Interview Prep Guide here — these can be used for written or video/in-person questions). 

As mentioned above, some of Personal Questions include:

• Tell us about an experience that shaped who you are today.
• Tell us about an experience that you did not expect to enjoy, but did.
• Reflect on your background, identity, an interest, or talent. Explain why it is so meaningful that your application would be incomplete without it.
• Describe an influential person in your life or someone you admire. Why?
• Tell us about an accomplishment you are proud of. Why?

Remember that your reviewers only know the surface level information, like your name and high school grades — they know nothing about who you are as a person, where you come from, and how your experiences have shaped your personality, interests, and goals.

These questions are your chance to make a lasting first impression and show what makes you unique and a perfect fit for the Queen’s BHSc program. 

You need to go beyond the surface and provide deep insight about who you are. The admissions committee wants to see that you know where you’ve come from (and where you want to go). You might not realize it, but displaying your strong self-awareness will help set you apart from other applicants — that’s why we’ve written a whole blog about it here.

If you have completed your Student Identity Blueprint™ and gone through the Discovery phase of our coaching process, these types of questions will be easy for you to answer (if you haven’t, connect with a coach to get started). 

The most important thing to remember when writing these essays is to constantly refer back to the Supplementary Essay Rubric we discussed above. Your essay must have all three evaluation criteria: Positionality and Lived Experience, Connection, and Personal Growth.

Using these criteria, the Personal Questions should draw upon a significant life experience, circumstance, or person that helped you form your identity (Positionality and Lived Experience) and impacted your life to such an extent you experienced deep learning (Connection) and set yourself on the path to where you are today to accomplish your personal, academic, and career goals (Personal Growth). 

If you need help answering a Personal Question and creating an essay that gets you a “Distinguished” mark in these three criteria, connect with a coach now (and keep reading for templates and examples to help you as you’re writing your essays).

Find the mentor you’ve been looking for.

get a youth coach™

Queen’s Health Sciences Supplementary Application: Personal Questions – Template

Here’s a Queens Health Sciences SE template for the question: “Tell us about an experience that shaped who you are today.”

COACH’S TIP: While each template will change depending on the question, you can easily form your own template by reading our Narrative Communication Approach™ and breaking down the question into the 5 components listed below. Connect with a coach to talk out your storyline and get started on your template and essay.

• Hook (<150 characters) – Optional
  • Quickly capture the reader’s attention and set up the essay so they know what to expect.
• Context – Your Positionality (~400 characters)
  • Set the scene with who you were before this transformational experience and focus on explaining your Positionality (aka position in life). Use a lot of the insights from your Student Identity Blueprint™ here.
• Catalyst – The Experience (~350 characters)
  • Introduce the experience and details about how it happened. Preface what the experience caused you to do, so it naturally flows to the next section, which should discuss the impact the experience had on you. This is the Connection criteria they are looking for.
• Outcome – The Impact (~1,000 characters)
  • Discuss 1-2 ways this experience shaped you for the better over time and what was the direct result of this in your life. This is the Personal Growth criteria.
• Reflection – The Learning (~400 characters)
  • Tie what you’ve said to the big picture. How will the impact this experience had affect your future and how you see the world?

As mentioned above, if you prefer to use a more problem-based approach, use our Deductive Communication Approach™. Before getting started on your essay, connect with a coach to determine which approach is best for your interests, experiences, and goals.

Queen’s Health Sciences Supplementary Application: Personal Questions – Example

Here’s a sample Queens Health Sciences essay example response for the question: “Tell us about an experience that shaped who you are today.”

REMEMBER: This is an EXAMPLE ONLY and is NOT meant for you to copy. Why? First and foremost, this is plagiarism and is a serious offense. Plagiarizing these essays will result in immediate disqualification from the admissions process. This can be easily detected using technology and application reviewers are usually trained and/or able to spot when an application isn’t original and does not align with an applicant’s background, personality, values, etc.

Queen’s Health Sciences Supplementary Application: Moral Questions – Breakdown

The moral questions give you the opportunity to discuss your worldview and beliefs. 

They are meant to gauge how you interact with others, question and challenge certain assumptions, and apply your beliefs and values to your experiences and use them for personal growth. 

As mentioned above, some examples of Moral Questions include:

• Share an example of how you have worked to better understand or experience diverse perspectives.
• Describe a time when you witnessed something unjust. How would you respond to that situation now?
• What advantages or privileges do you have in life and how can you use them to advocate for change?
• What kind of impact or change do you want to create?
• How has a challenge that you have experienced shaped the way you approach life?
• Discuss the theme of equity and how it has influenced your life.

In your personal questions, you talked about your experiences and relationships, and learnings/growth you’ve had from those. The moral questions take it one step further to see how these things have shaped your actions, identity, and outlook over time. The admissions committee wants to know what your position in life is (and how it’s different from other applicants).

Just like the Personal Questions, you want to make sure your answers focus on the Supplementary Essay Rubric. Your essay must have all 3 evaluation criteria: Positionality and Lived Experience, Connection, and Personal Growth.

Using these criteria, the Moral Questions should draw upon a significant experience, circumstance, or dilemma that shaped your identity (Positionality and Lived Experience) and caused you to form, change, or reinforce your beliefs and/or values based on what the impact it had (Connection). These beliefs have shaped how you interact with the world and have influenced the personal, academic, and career path you want to take (Personal Growth). 

If you need help answering a moral question and creating an essay that gets you a “Distinguished” mark in these three criteria, connect with a coach now.

Queen’s Health Sciences Supplementary Application: Moral Questions – Template

Here’s a Queen’s Health Sciences template for the question: “Describe a time when you witnessed something unjust. How would you respond to that situation now?”.

COACH’S TIP: While each template will change depending on the question, you can easily form your own template by reading our Narrative Communication Approach™ and breaking down the question into the 5 components listed below. Connect with a coach to talk out your storyline and get started on your template and essay. 

• Hook (<150 characters) – Optional
  • Quickly capture the reader’s attention and set up the essay so they know what to expect.
• Context – Your Positionality (~400 characters)
  • Set the scene with who you were before this experience happened and and focus on explaining your Positionality (aka position in life) like your values, beliefs, identity, and/or moral assumptions. Use a lot of the insights from your Student Identity Blueprint™ here.
• Catalyst – The Experience (~350 characters)
  • Introduce the experience where you witnessed something unjust and give details about how it happened. Discuss how you responded to the situation at the time (think of this as you ‘before’ you had the chance to reconsider how you’d react). Finally, talk about how the impact of this experience caused you to react (this is the Connection criteria they are looking for).
• Outcome – The Impact (~1,000 characters)
  • State how you would respond to the situation now (this is the ‘after’ scenario introduced above). Discuss 1-2 ways this experience changed you and how you view justice, and discuss how you’ve applied this to your life now. This is the Personal Growth criteria.
• Reflection – The Learning (~400 characters)
  • Provide the takeaway (or the moral) of the story. How does it relate to your life at Queen’s or your career?

As mentioned above, if you prefer to use a more problem-based approach, use our Deductive Communication Approach™. Before getting started on your essay, connect with a coach to determine which approach is best for your interests, experiences, and goals.

You Might Also Like

Rankings & Lists

Best Health Sciences Programs in Canada 2023 (Undergraduate)

You’re investing a TON of time, money, and energy towards your future.  You’ve gotten the grades, done a bunch of…  Read more

Queen’s Health Sciences Supplementary Application: Moral Questions – Example

Here’s a sample Queen’s Health Sciences essay example response for the question: “Describe a time when you witnessed something unjust. How would you respond to that situation now?”.

REMEMBER: All of the examples in the guide are EXAMPLES ONLY and they are NOT meant for you to copy.

While preparing to submit your university application can seem super stressful, just remember that all this hard work will totally pay off once you get that acceptance letter!

To help get you a bit more excited about possibly attending Queen’s Health Sciences, Youthfully Insider, HanShu, created this Day in the Life of a Queen’s Health Sciences student. Check it out below!

You Might Also Like

Application Prep

McMaster Health Sciences: Supplementary Application Essay Examples & Templates 2022/2023

If you are looking for guidance on the McMaster Health Sciences (BHSc) Supplementary Application, as well as essay examples and…  Read more

You’ve Got a Dedicated Coach in Your Corner

For over a decade, we have worked with thousands of students to help them achieve more than they ever thought possible.

Our coaches have a strong success rate supporting students as they apply to Queen’s Health Sciences, among other top university programs.

Our 1-on-1 Youth Coaching fills that gap that most high schools miss. We can help you build self-awareness through probing questions and assessments, set bigger goals to elevate your extracurriculars and future career plans, and improve skills that matter on supplementary applications, such as interviewing, written communication, critical thinking, and creativity.

We use a coaching methodology, called ‘full student’ development, that’s been proven to increase your chances of admission to top-tier universities and obtaining competitive jobs/internships.

So, what are you waiting for? Fulfill your post-secondary potential with the mentorship and coaching you’ve always wanted! 🙂

IMPORTANT: Want to share information and/or images from this resource on your own website, blog, article, etc.? Please ensure you reference content of any kind published by Youthfully Inc., in whole or in part, using the following statement: (1) Our Organization (Youthfully Inc.); (2) The title of our content/resource; and (3) the URL to our webpage where the content was originally posted. For example: “Sourced from: Youthfully Inc., ‘Queen’s Health Sciences: Supplementary Essay Examples and Templates’, https://www.youthfully.ca/queens-health-sciences-supplementary-application/.”

Not doing so is an infringement of copyright and is illegal. We spend significant time developing resources for students, so please take a few seconds to ensure they are referenced properly.

DISCLAIMER: While the information in this blog is considered to be true and correct at the date of publication, and although our team makes every attempt to ensure that the information is accurate and vetted by university staff, Youthfully is not in any way liable for the accuracy of any information printed and stored or in any way interpreted and used by a user.