What to do with too many secondaries and a busy work schedule?

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Dohnut

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I'm a non-trad, and my AMCAS just got verified yesterday and overnight I got a whopping 15 secondary invites. I applied to 30 AMCAS schools and 9 TMDSAS schools so I'm sure more are coming. I got a demanding full time job and have to travel frequently, so barely got enough time to finish these secondaries in a 2-week window.

What strategy do y'all think I should best employ to knock out these annoying secondaries and not negatively affect the process much?

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Well, I guess you should get used to working late and not getting much sleep. You'll be doing enough of that in med school, so now is a good time to start. Some of the secondary questions will be the same or very similar between schools, so one essay can be used multiple times. Just make sure you remember to change the school name and other minor details when you use the same essay. I accidentally sent Campbell an essay explaining why I wanted to go to VCOM, and I think it cost me an interview invite there. In my defense, Campbell plagiarized their secondary questions from VCOM, so it was an easy mistake to make.

Also, if you're applying to all the Texas schools, does that mean you're a Texas resident? If so, why bother applying to 30 other schools when you've got cheap tuition and relatively noncompetitive acceptance rates right there at home?
 
Well, I guess you should get used to working late and not getting much sleep. You'll be doing enough of that in med school, so now is a good time to start. Some of the secondary questions will be the same or very similar between schools, so one essay can be used multiple times. Just make sure you remember to change the school name and other minor details when you use the same essay. I accidentally sent Campbell an essay explaining why I wanted to go to VCOM, and I think it cost me an interview invite there. In my defense, Campbell plagiarized their secondary questions from VCOM, so it was an easy mistake to make.

Also, if you're applying to all the Texas schools, does that mean you're a Texas resident? If so, why bother applying to 30 other schools when you've got cheap tuition and relatively noncompetitive acceptance rates right there at home?



Haha, that VCOM/Campbell thing is quite funny.

To answer your question, yes I am a Texas resident. However, TMDSAS lumps undergrad GPA together with grad GPA, and my mindset while in pharmacy school was to work to pay tuition and do just enough to pass my classes, with absolutely no plan for further schooling at the time, so my grad GPA stinks. AMCAS on the other hand, separates undergrad GPA from grad GPA so my numbers look much better on AMCAS than TMDSAS. Then there's many people who took their prereqs at community level colleges and got straight A's, while I took all mine at UT-Austin so my undergrad GPA looks lower in Texas but I'm confident I'll be the much better medical student, with a Pharm.D. and 6 years' experience working with hospitals and physician offices to boot.

But hell, why does it matter, I've been out of school for almost 10 years! I just hope adcoms would look at the big picture instead of the lil' numbers after the decimal.

I'm thinking, maybe I should prioritize schools and do the secondaries accordingly?
 
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My advice/ what I'm doing...
-Paste all essay prompts into a separate word/google drive document. this allows you to save your work no matter what and makes it much easier to recycle.
-Don't feel like you have to do the whole thing in one sitting (some you do, but mostly not). I tend to open a new secondary on my lunch break and fill in the name, address, pick an option and coursework questions. I past the essay questions into my document, then when I get home in the evening, I write those and paste them in.
-I tend to have 4-5 open at once, so when I start getting writer's block with one, I can switch to another and keep my productivity up. Also, in opening these up, you sometimes have the happy surprise of the easy ones, which keeps you motivated to do others.
-use a spreadsheet or something to track your progress and make sure you don't miss any steps
 
For TMDSAS, I only had to write a few secondaries since a lot of them are closely enough related you can just tweak some small things from one to another. I would set yourself a goal and stick to it no matter what. Traveling by air? I would think at some point during the wait or in the air you write something. Driving? Maybe get a tape recorder and do a bit of talking to yourself to try and get an outline of what you want and it'll be that much easier.
 
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If you keep good notes and pre-write most of your secondaries, it's possible to reuse lots of essays pretty much word for word if they meet character limits. I've been doing a lot of this since I'm doing 40 secondaries. I'm going to read all of them prior to submission to make sure there aren't any glaring errors.

It probably won't be my best work, but I don't think that's what the secondaries are for.
 
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