General Consensus: having others read your secondaries

[JayQuah]

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what do people think: tell um what's on your mind and slap the stamp on there, or take as much time as you did with AMCAS personal statement and recruiting an army to read your secondary essays?

 

[Saluki]

My plan: Have my advisor read over my secondary essays and leave it at that. I did like five drafts of my personal statement, and I just can't invest that amount of time in the secondary applications....

 

[WhatUpDoc!]

Yeah, I just finished up a secondary myself, didn't take it lightly, but also didn't wreck my brain on what to say. Most of what I said was just a re-hash from my primary app. + PS. Does anyone else think that secondaries are a bunch of BS. I think all medical schools should follow in Mayo's footsteps and just ask for an application fee. Makes no sense to repeat information that is already on AMCAS app.

 

[kdwuma]

you are all correct, that is why I actually eliminated certain schools who had unreasonable secondaries, Vandy got me though, becuase they invited me for an interview and I had no choice but to write the essay which was a biography, same as my PS.

 

[thegenius]

A friend of mine who is a resident at Stanford and went to Harvard Medical school told me that the personal statement is more important than answering some of those essays. So you want to do a good job with them, but don't spend weeks and weeks on them like you do on your personal statement.

 

[JayQuah]

Great responses all around. I have turned most of my secondaries in (after sitting on them for 6-8 weeks), and this thread is meant to reassure me (and others) that i didn't make a huge mistake by not spending as much time revising them as i did my PS. 👍 👍 👍
unless i'm mistaken...any more insights? I want at least a couple of bucks of people putting in their $.02

 

[NapeSpikes]

amcas personal statment = a few months

secondary essays = a few hours (when I actually got to them)

 

[Law2Doc]

what do people think: tell um what's on your mind and slap the stamp on there, or take as much time as you did with AMCAS personal statement and recruiting an army to read your secondary essays?

Just bear in mind that none of this is a formality, and someone at the school to which you are applying will read whatever you write, and use it to help or hurt you chances accordingly. Have someone else read your stuff, if nothing else then at least for grammatical reasons.

 

[Pontifex Maximus]

I have others read them, but I don't devote nearly as much time to them.