Can I Vacation During Secondaries??

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BMEpremed25

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I'm planning on submitting my primaries around June 15th, but I want to go to Europe for the entire month of July. I can't leave until July 1st, and the trip goes until July 27th. Is this a really bad idea? When is the busiest secondary month (How many weeks after submission)? I live in California, I'll probably be applying to around 30 schools. HELP!!

(I don't mind doing a FEW while I'm there, but I don't want to be overwhelmed)

THANK YOU! 🙂
 
While it is better to get secondaries in as soon as possible to get an early interview...

Yes, you can go on vacation. I would recommend, however, you look at the SDN secondary prompts thread, and write your essays before you leave so that you only have to submit them when the email comes while you are abroad. Get your letters ready early. Also, you can use Interfolio/Virtual Evals for your LORs so you only have to click to send.
 
hey, what is interfolio/virtual eval? for my school if my pre med committee sends out my letters of rec, do i still need to use this program?
thanks
 
While it is better to get secondaries in as soon as possible to get an early interview...

Yes, you can go on vacation. I would recommend, however, you look at the SDN secondary prompts thread, and write your essays before you leave so that you only have to submit them when the email comes while you are abroad. Get your letters ready early. Also, you can use Interfolio/Virtual Evals for your LORs so you only have to click to send.


That just made me so happy.

Should I submit early like June 1st and try to get things done AND submitted before I leave on July 1st or should I submit later on in June and hope that I don't have much to do until I get back?
 
hey, what is interfolio/virtual eval? for my school if my pre med committee sends out my letters of rec, do i still need to use this program?
thanks

if your school has a letter service, you can just use that.
 
I'm planning on submitting my primaries around June 15th, but I want to go to Europe for the entire month of July. I can't leave until July 1st, and the trip goes until July 27th. Is this a really bad idea? When is the busiest secondary month (How many weeks after submission)? I live in California, I'll probably be applying to around 30 schools. HELP!!

(I don't mind doing a FEW while I'm there, but I don't want to be overwhelmed)

THANK YOU! 🙂

Yes, I agree with a few others here. Write a couple of them/have them submitted before you go (maybe about 1/4), then do the remaining before you come back. As long as you get them in by August it's fine.
 
Just so you see both sides....

Secondaries can come in at in time during the summer (assuming your submit the amcas part 1 on the first day). If you get those secondaries in asap, sometimes you will get one of the first interviews and then hear back decisions from a few schools in OCTOBER. So if you are gone for part of the summer, you may loose a little, but granted not that much. But overall I would say you do not have that much to worry about.
 
I actually followed a very similar timeline last year. I put in my primary on June 17 and then was doing study abroad in mexico city from june 17 to august 12, i didnt do any work on my secondaries until the beginning of august(one or two schools had 3-week deadlines on secondaries) and i just did most of my secondaries in the week i came back after the 12th. I was probably earlier than most though there were a few people who got their stuff in even earlier at the end of july. Just for general info, secondaries generally come out throughout the month of july so thats when you can start to turn them around though some schools wont put theirs out till aug or later, all the questions are on old threads though.
 
I'm planning on submitting my primaries around June 15th, but I want to go to Europe for the entire month of July. I can't leave until July 1st, and the trip goes until July 27th. Is this a really bad idea? When is the busiest secondary month (How many weeks after submission)? I live in California, I'll probably be applying to around 30 schools. HELP!!

(I don't mind doing a FEW while I'm there, but I don't want to be overwhelmed)

THANK YOU! 🙂

Since you are asking...NO!!! YOU ARE FORBIDDEN😡
 
You should start working on them using this year's prompts. You're most likely going to get some secondaries during your vacation, which will be a pain in the ***. It happened to me when I was vacationing in Hawaii. It sucked but I had to do what I had to do. I brought my laptop and worked on essays while my friends were enjoying their vacation like how it should be.
 
just keep in mind that most medical schools have a deadline (two weeks?) and if you can't meet the deadline you will have to make sure your schools know. Most will make arrangements for a different deadline, but if you don't tell them anything, they will probably trash your file.
 
I actually followed a very similar timeline last year. I put in my primary on June 17 and then was doing study abroad in mexico city from june 17 to august 12, i didnt do any work on my secondaries until the beginning of august(one or two schools had 3-week deadlines on secondaries) and i just did most of my secondaries in the week i came back after the 12th. I was probably earlier than most though there were a few people who got their stuff in even earlier at the end of july. Just for general info, secondaries generally come out throughout the month of july so thats when you can start to turn them around though some schools wont put theirs out till aug or later, all the questions are on old threads though.

How did the rest of your application process go? Did this method hurt you at all?
 
I really don't think it hurt me at all. I got all my stuff in really early, much earlier than most applicants. I was 15 out of 25 in terms of the secondaries I converted to interviews, and that's the only stage that I think completion time will have any significant effect on. I'd say the average for most applicants is submitting in early september or so and being complete by late september and then into october.

I did have a 3-4 week delay at virtually every school i applied to in between when i received secondaries and when i turned them around, but because I was so early to begin with, it really wasn't a factor. I would say make sure you're complete everywhere by the end of august or so and you'll generally be early enough to beat the crowd, provided the rest of your application can put you through. Of course, getting them complete earlier is only to your benefit. If you want to take the entire month of july off then definately make sure your primary gets put in early as well as transcript requests so that verification time goes by while you're traveling and LOR's should also go in by the end of july since I know that's another reason why people's completions tend to get slowed down. For virtually all of my 8 weeks I really wasn't doing any secondary work(i.e. didnt do prompts in advance, etc), but I was able to get all 25 of them written and turned around in the first week I got back. Some people can't work as well on that type of time schedule. Being early I think definately helped me get as many interviews as I did. I know people who applied later that have had terrible luck with this admissions cycle.
 
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