How important of secondary essays?

[relatively prime]

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Does anyone know if the medical schools actually read them all? I'm just wondering if they're important at all... it seems that a few schools don't even have essays in their secondaries... they just ask for money.
What's the deal?

 

[Explosivo]

Um, yeah they read them if they are interested in your application. If your GPA and MCAT are competitive and your Personal Statement is half-way decent, then chances are that they'll read them before granting you an interview. Once you interview, I'm not really sure they matter all that much anymore since I think the interview itself now takes precendence but I'm generalizing here so I'm sure there are exceptions.

If your stats aren't competitive at a particular school then they'll probably cash the check that you sent in with your secondary, toss the secondary, and send you a rejection letter dated the same day your check was cashed...happened to me 2 years ago at my top choice school. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="frown.gif" />

 

[vyc]

of course they take the secondary essays seriously. they're the ones who require that you write them. they wouldn't do that if they didn't care.

 

[relatively prime]

•••quote:•••Originally posted by vyc:
•of course they take the secondary essays seriously. they're the ones who require that you write them. they wouldn't do that if they didn't care.•••••To buy them time... to make sure the applicant is serious about applying to their school... to make you think there's a good reason they charge you $60 to evaluate you... I can think of any number of reasons.

Stanford is(was) an extreme example of the second reason I suggested... if you weren't really serious about wanting to go to Stanford then you wouldn't bother to do their insanely long secondary.

 

[brickmanli]

It depends. For example, the Pritzker secondary has a lot of penetratingly personal questions. I don't have great stats, but my essays managed to get me an interview and a waitlist.

 

[Cdc28p]

•••quote:•••Originally posted by relatively prime:
• •••quote:•••Originally posted by vyc:
•of course they take the secondary essays seriously. they're the ones who require that you write them. they wouldn't do that if they didn't care.•••••To buy them time... to make sure the applicant is serious about applying to their school... to make you think there's a good reason they charge you $60 to evaluate you... I can think of any number of reasons.

Stanford is(was) an extreme example of the second reason I suggested... if you weren't really serious about wanting to go to Stanford then you wouldn't bother to do their insanely long secondary.•••••Stanford??? Stanford's secondary was one of the shorter ones I got this year!

 

[relatively prime]

•••quote:•••Originally posted by Cdc28p:
•
Stanford??? Stanford's secondary was one of the shorter ones I got this year!•••••That's why I put "was" in paratheses... Stanford used to have an insanely long secondary.

 

[Original]

•••quote:•••Originally posted by brickmanli:
•It depends. For example, the Pritzker secondary has a lot of penetratingly personal questions. I don't have great stats, but my essays managed to get me an interview and a waitlist.•••••OMG pritzker's was painful. I spent days and nights and got a bad headache. 4 essays man! even the flashbacks hurt.

 

[vyc]

•••quote:•••Originally posted by relatively prime:
•To buy them time... to make sure the applicant is serious about applying to their school... to make you think there's a good reason they charge you $60 to evaluate you... I can think of any number of reasons.•••••i doubt that the reason why med schools have secondary essay questions is to "buy them time" or to "make sure the applicant is serious about applying"

what about the schools without any essays? i don't think Harvard, for example, had a secondary essay. is that bc they don't care if applicants who aren't serious about their school apply?

and i agree that Pritzker's was extensive. but i actually thought they had interesting questions that i almost enjoyed thinking and writing about. 🙂

 

[El Jefe]

I'm sure that secondaries are usually really important. That being said, USC's secondary questions all probed my weakest areas, so my responses were very lackluster (and rushed since I did them the day they were due). USC is the only school that accepted me, so apparently my poor secondary didn't really mean much to them.

 

[relatively prime]

Ok... but let's think about this... most medical schools have pretty much stopped making cut-offs at the secondary level... they send them to everyone these days because they realized they make more money this way.

So... do you really think they have time to go through ~thousands~ of secondaries?!

I personally think that they send secondaries to everyone just to get the extra cash... then trash the ones from applicants that don't make the MCAT and/or gpa cut-offs. Yeah yeah they say they don't have cut-offs... but I think they do... they just have different cut-offs for different groups of people.

 

[Wallace12]

•••quote:•••Originally posted by brickmanli:
•It depends. For example, the Pritzker secondary has a lot of penetratingly personal questions. I don't have great stats, but my essays managed to get me an interview and a waitlist.•••••OMG pritzker's was painful. I spent days and nights and got a bad headache. 4 essays man! even the flashbacks hurt.

Yeah Collins and Princeton for review. My quant came up 64pts idk how I ran out of time and guessed on a lot. But I focused on derivatives and other calc stuff I didn't know how to do without a calculator haha Aahhh I was so pumped haha

 

[Wallace12]

Wtf? It posted in the wrong thread sorry..