How long does it take you to write secondaries?

[jetsfan1234]

I'm curious how long it takes you guys to write secondaries. It takes me around 3 days for each secondary, and I usually have a few people look at it before I send it in. I have a feeling I am a slow applier compared to most of you guys.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[TSSVR4]

I do two to three a day. In the past two weeks I've done around 18.

I repurpose essays and recycle paragraphs when I can. I wish I could make them more personalized but its too late in the game to think about that.

Just want to be done before Oct 1 personally.

 

[milkandcereal]

I would try and knock out about 1-2 in the evenings after work. Once you get in a rhythm, you can pump them out pretty quickly. After doing so many of them, you'll probably be able to whip out a "greatest challenge" essay in a few minutes haha

 

[Shjanzey]

.

 

[thegypsyqueen]

I did 3-4 a day. So about two hours or so on average.

 

[jetsfan1234]

I did 3-4 a day. So about two hours or so on average.

Wow. Honestly this kind of speed is just incomprehensible to me, props to you. Do you have other people read it before you send it in, or do you just go on faith?

 

[karayaa]

how long are 2ºs usually? How many questions/total word count?
Are there any threads/sites that list common questions?

 

[type12]

I was under the impression one should not reuse secondary essays if they were rejected last year? 😕

 

[Etyan]

I usually top out at 4-5 essays/day, or 1 secondary per day! Definitely need to pick up the pace 🙂

 

[kyamh]

I at least started almost all the essays in advance (before being verified) so I had some extra time to kill while writing them. To me, it has been very important to personalize each essay. I think there may have only been one instance when I submitted actually the same essay (applied to 17 schools). Even essay topics that were similar always had slightly different wording. Example: for the challenge essay, some schools wanted to know how it affected my future as a doctor, others wanted to know what lessons I learned, another wanted to know what coping strategies I used and who I turned to for help....there were too many specifics to just write one version. Sure, a lot were similar, but I tried to always make sure that some of my language in each essay was similar to the language used in the prompt to make my "answer" part very clear. I also wrote several "why this school" essays that took at least an hour to research details for.

Anyhow, I have been writing secondaries on and off for about 3 months. I don't do one at a time - I work on many and come back to essays many times. The quickest I wrote an essay is 2 days (one day to write, one day to look back and reedit). Although this is definitely taking longer, I have not had the experience some of the other people on SDN wrote about where they go back and read their essays a month later only to not like what they wrote.

This is my first time applying to medical schools and I wanted to put my absolute best foot forward. I am a decent writer, but it definitely takes me a while (and coming back to an essay a week after I wrote it) to produce the best product.

Out of 17 schools there were probably 4 I didn't get to within 2 weeks of getting the secondary. I prioritized schools that are rolling and schools I have a real shot of getting into (state schools). Although I am probably at least a week later completing than most students who reuse more parts of their essays, at my two recent interviews I was complemented on my essays so I am happy I made this choice. Maybe a stronger/faster writer doesn't need the extra time though..

 

[mtbski]

I was on the slow side--roughly 3 days per secondary, and had other people read them over. I took a 2-3 weeks to finish a couple of them, but got ii's from those schools anyways

 

[CyberMaxx]

As others have said, when I started writing it took me longer, probably 2-3 days worth of work to be happy with my essays. After a few however, I began to be able to reuse essays. I agree with kyamh that you should be sure to personalize your secondaries, but some essays can be just copied and pasted. For example, I wrote my diversity essay to conform to the character guidelines of ~6 schools and used it for all of them. You should only do this if the prompt is exactly the same... and be sure to change the name of the school in your essays!!!!

 

[sourswts]

This seems like a good thread to ask this question and I apologize in advance if this is super obvious.
Aside from the clear disadvantage of being completed later because I took too long to write a secondary, is there any other disadvantages? Do schools actually take into consideration the time between they sent you the secondary and when you submit it?

 

[CyberMaxx]

This seems like a good thread to ask this question and I apologize in advance if this is super obvious.
Aside from the clear disadvantage of being completed later because I took too long to write a secondary, is there any other disadvantages? Do schools actually take into consideration the time between they sent you the secondary and when you submit it?

Some schools do explicitly and they give you a deadline when they would like you to submit it by. For example Wake Forest says that you should have it in within three weeks. Other schools may not have an official policy on secondary completion rate (beyond the final deadline), but may take the time for completion into consideration. Others may know which schools tend to have this type of policy. There are perhaps some schools which don't care at all.

My assessment is that there is know way of knowing if a school takes secondary completion time into consideration, so the best thing to do is to get it in ASAP. Also, the sooner you get it in the sooner you can be offered an interview, and earlier interviews are advantageous.

tl;dr unless there is an explicit policy its hard to know for sure how much it matters, but it probably does matter a little bit.

 

[gyngyn]

This seems like a good thread to ask this question and I apologize in advance if this is super obvious.
Aside from the clear disadvantage of being completed later because I took too long to write a secondary, is there any other disadvantages? Do schools actually take into consideration the time between they sent you the secondary and when you submit it?

I can see immediately when your secondary is submitted. If there is a significant lag time I can presume that you were filling out secondaries from other schools ahead of mine.

 

[CyberMaxx]

I can see immediately when your secondary is submitted. If there is a significant lag time I can presume that you were filling out secondaries from other schools ahead of mine.

I could see why you might be unwilling to answer this, and I'm sure it depends on other variables such as when it is in the admissions cycle, but could you comment on what a "significant lag time" is?

 

[gyngyn]

I could see why you might be unwilling to answer this, and I'm sure it depends on other variables such as when it is in the admissions cycle, but could you comment on what a "significant lag time" is?

More than a week.

 

[lall]

double

 

[lall]

I can see immediately when your secondary is submitted. If there is a significant lag time I can presume that you were filling out secondaries from other schools ahead of mine.

To be honest, that's not really a fair assumption to make right away. I couldn't submit many secondaries that I had all the essays written for because of one thing: money. Without mommy and daddy footing the bill...life gets real. ha

 

[Narmerguy]

It's unfortunate, but what can you do? Don't worry much about it and get them in as soon as you can. I don't think I submitted a single secondary within 3 weeks of receiving them until maybe my last 2-3 when I had already written so many that I knew what I wanted to say. I hope that I can show the schools my interest based on my application, my fit, and how I conduct myself at the interview rather than when I sent essays with no formal "due date" back to them. If a school wants it sooner, I hope that they would ask for it by a particular interval--as many schools have.

 

[kyamh]

To be honest, that's not really a fair assumption to make right away. I couldn't submit many secondaries that I had all the essays written for because of one thing: money. Without mommy and daddy footing the bill...life gets real. ha

Yes! This is very true. Even if I had all my secondaries done the day they came in, I would still only be able to send in about 3-4 every two weeks (that's how often my paycheck comes in). All the money I have saved up is being sucked away by the primary fees and the flights for my first few interviews so it's waiting on submitting or not changing oil in my car/not getting an interview suit/not paying rent/not eating. Plus there is the whole having a 'real' job and already having to use all your vacation days on interviews....life gets real

 

[Moification]

Yes! This is very true. Even if I had all my secondaries done the day they came in, I would still only be able to send in about 3-4 every two weeks (that's how often my paycheck comes in). All the money I have saved up is being sucked away by the primary fees and the flights for my first few interviews so it's waiting on submitting or not changing oil in my car/not getting an interview suit/not paying rent/not eating. Plus there is the whole having a 'real' job and already having to use all your vacation days on interviews....life gets real

This. I also think it's unfair to consider more than a week significant lag time as many of us cannot dedicate all of our time to churning out essays.

 

[lall]

Yup. I'd really love to see gyngyn address the financial aspect to turning in secondaries. I hope ya'll take this into consideration otherwise I'm probably screwed. Eek

 

[volcomx]

I can see immediately when your secondary is submitted. If there is a significant lag time I can presume that you were filling out secondaries from other schools ahead of mine.

Do you take into account the fact that reference letters may come in much later? I was verified in early July and held onto many of my secondaries until late August when my committee letter came in. If I wasn't going to be marked complete until then, I figured there would be no rush for the secondaries. I was hoping to hear back from a journal regarding a paper submission, and waiting for an abstract to be accepted into a conference.

Clearly many of the schools on my list didn't care that I waited. But those California schools... 🙁