Advice on how to juggle secondary applications?

[ball1313]

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I'm interested in gettings tips and advice on how to juggle secondaries as they start coming in. Did you have people read and edit your secondaries as thoroughly as you did for your PS? Or did you jsut try and submit as soon as humanly possible? Any advice is appreciated!

 

[justinbaily]

I took a middle road between thinking about the content of the secondaries and speed. In order to pace myself, I did a single secondary essay a day--no more, no less. So, for instance, if a school had a secondary with three individual essays, it would take me three days to finish. This allows you to make steady progress through your secondaries while aso ensuring that they are of high quality. I was working full-time last summer, so I was too exhausted by the end of the day to do more. On the weekends I would write the especially long and research-intensive "why this school" essays. After I finished them, my girlfriend would read them to make sure that they sounded like me and were free of typos.

I also cut Duke off of my list because of their time-intensive secondary.

 

[MiniMoo]

I worked on my secondary essays while my primary was still being approved so that by the time my primary was verified, I was able to turn in the secondaries within 1-2 days after receiving them.

If it was a weekend, I was able to finish around 1-3 secondaries a day (depending on how many essays they contained). On a weekday, I churned out about 1/2-1 secondary in the evenings after work. I always proofread the essays after writing, then proofread them again the day after to make sure I was completely satisfied (sometimes this resulted in additional changes/editing). After that, I considered them finished and moved on. I don't think it's necessary to obsess over secondaries like the PS.

Since many essays often have similar themes, the more secondaries you complete, the faster they usually go because you can recycle or reword a lot of previously written material.

Unlike my PS, I didn't have anyone else proofread my secondary essays.

 

[JJMrK]

You'll be surprised how fast you go through them. They'll probably take an hour or so each (on average).

 

[zeinz]

Get em' done as they come in and don't let them pile up. And seriously, a lot of schools ask similar/related questions for the ones where you have to write a short something, so don't try creating a completely new one from scratch for each and every one of them. That doesnt mean copy and paste the same response for each secondary....you get the idea?

 

[boaz]

1. They are less important than the PS.
2. They are generally easier to write because they ask specific questions (tho sometimes insane questions).

 

[addo]

When can you start doing the secondaries? When you submit your AMCAS?