How should I manage my time with Secondaries?

[Lolaaa]

I submitted my AACOMAS and AMCAS on June 2nd and June 3rd to 34 schools in total. I'm just so overwhelmed with the secondaries and concerned that I might not make it on time. Does anybody have a suggestion on how to manage them? like should I aim to do one school secondaries per day? I'm a very bad and slow writer :/. Sorry I know this is a subjective question but I would love to hear what other people are doing or did before. Thanks

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[deleted993132]

I’ve been doing one school per day after work (Mon thru Friday). I take the weekends to refresh so I don’t burn out. I tried doing more than one a day and the quality of the later essays were a$$. I’m applying to 30 schools and I’ll be done mid July if all goes as planned.

also my strategy is to write the schools that don’t screen first because I’ll likely get their secondary requests sooner and it would be nice to send them back ASAP. Schools that screen may take a while longer to send secondaries and so I’m leaving the screen schools for late June early July.

 

[Lifeblood_20]

1. Prioritize schools you like the most, or have the greatest chance of getting into (i.e start with in-state schools, then reasonable "reach" schools, then lastly "wildest-dream schools")
2. Quality over speed. I spent 2-3 days per school & submitted 25 secondaries last year, when everything was functionally delayed by a month. Got everything submitted by end of September & got interviews and acceptances from schools I submitted relatively "late." (e.g. late September). there was little to no correlation to how early I submitted v.s. if I got an interview from any given school.
3. There is this myth that you must submit your secondaries within 2 weeks of receiving them, or otherwise med schools would think you are not interested in them. That is completely untrue. Schools do not care in the slightest how long it takes you to finish their secondary (unless they have 2-week deadlines or something, of course).

 

[KnightDoc]

I submitted my AACOMAS and AMCAS on June 2nd and June 3rd to 34 schools in total. I'm just so overwhelmed with the secondaries and concerned that I might not make it on time. Does anybody have a suggestion on how to manage them? like should I aim to do one school secondaries per day? I'm a very bad and slow writer :/. Sorry I know this is a subjective question but I would love to hear what other people are doing or did before. Thanks

????? You are in great shape!! You got an early start and are FAR ahead of most people. I don't know what the AACOMAS verification timeline looks like, but you have around 3-4 weeks before your AMCAS application will be submitted, so you have at least a solid month before you will be expected to submit any secondaries. As you progress, you will see a lot of your work can be used at more than one school with small modifications.

There is zero reason to feel overwhelmed. Literally tens of thousands people successfully muddle through each year, and you will too. Just get to work, at your own pace. As @Lifeblood_20 said, quality is FAR more important than speed, so do your best work, no matter how long it takes, and fight the urge to become anxious if it doesn't go as fast you as you planned. Good luck!!!

 

[Lolaaa]

I’ve been doing one school per day after work (Mon thru Friday). I take the weekends to refresh so I don’t burn out. I tried doing more than one a day and the quality of the later essays were a$$. I’m applying to 30 schools and I’ll be done mid July if all goes as planned.

also my strategy is to write the schools that don’t screen first because I’ll likely get their secondary requests sooner and it would be nice to send them back ASAP. Schools that screen may take a while longer to send secondaries and so I’m leaving the screen schools for late June early July.

Thank you! I might start with DO schools since I got verified yesterday. Do you recommend a website to check which schools do prescreening and which don't? I looked through reddit but the links were disabled or something. Good luck on this cycle!!

 

[Lolaaa]

1. Prioritize schools you like the most, or have the greatest chance of getting into (i.e start with in-state schools, then reasonable "reach" schools, then lastly "wildest-dream schools")
2. Quality over speed. I spent 2-3 days per school & submitted 25 secondaries last year, when everything was functionally delayed by a month. Got everything submitted by end of September & got interviews and acceptances from schools I submitted relatively "late." (e.g. late September). there was little to no correlation to how early I submitted v.s. if I got an interview from any given school.
3. There is this myth that you must submit your secondaries within 2 weeks of receiving them, or otherwise med schools would think you are not interested in them. That is completely untrue. Schools do not care in the slightest how long it takes you to finish their secondary (unless they have 2-week deadlines or something, of course).

the 2 weeks deadline made me hella nervous lol. Thank you!

 

[Lolaaa]

????? You are in great shape!! You got an early start and are FAR ahead of most people. I don't know what the AACOMAS verification timeline looks like, but you have around 3-4 weeks before you AMCAS application will be submitted, so you have at least a solid month before you will be expected to submit any secondaries. As you progress, you will see a lot of your work can be used at more than one school with small modifications.

There is zero reason to feel overwhelmed. Literally tens of thousands people successfully muddle through each year, and you will too. Just get to work, at your own pace. As @Lifeblood_20 said, quality is FAR more important than speed, so do your best work, no matter how long it takes, and fight the urge to become anxious if it doesn't go as fast you as you planned. Good luck!!!

Thanks for the reassurance! I actually got verified yesterday for aacomas so I think I should start working on their secondaries first

 

[deleted993132]

Thank you! I might start with DO schools since I got verified yesterday. Do you recommend a website to check which schools do prescreening and which don't? I looked through reddit but the links were disabled or something. Good luck on this cycle!!

Check this out! I did ctrl+f “screen” and it highlighted the schools that screen.

 

[Blueprint Med School]

I submitted my AACOMAS and AMCAS on June 2nd and June 3rd to 34 schools in total. I'm just so overwhelmed with the secondaries and concerned that I might not make it on time. Does anybody have a suggestion on how to manage them? like should I aim to do one school secondaries per day? I'm a very bad and slow writer :/. Sorry I know this is a subjective question but I would love to hear what other people are doing or did before. Thanks

One thing that helped me a lot and I'm not sure if it's been mentioned yet is to write all my responses into Google docs and make sure the question posed to me is above it because after a few secondaries questions started either repeating themselves or becoming somewhat similar over time and having at least the skeleton of what my answer will be to an archetypal question helped keep me from having to start from scratch every time.

For example, you'll see the question about why you're going into medicine or asking to talk about a time working with a diverse group so often that I would have my one or two important examples sort of sketched out in my Google doc ready to be adapted to whatever little specifics this particular School wanted out of them.

David D MD - USMLE and MCAT Tutor
Med School Tutors

 

[LunaOri]

I rather disagree with the advice to respond to your "favorite" schools first--after you have written a few secondaries, you may notice that your writing improves and your thoughts become clearer. When my offspring was writing secondaries, I noticed a big change in the quality of the essays as the application cycle progressed.

 

[Lolaaa]

Check this out! I did ctrl+f “screen” and it highlighted the schools that screen.

One thing that helped me a lot and I'm not sure if it's been mentioned yet is to write all my responses into Google docs and make sure the question posed to me is above it because after a few secondaries questions started either repeating themselves or becoming somewhat similar over time and having at least the skeleton of what my answer will be to an archetypal question helped keep me from having to start from scratch every time.

For example, you'll see the question about why you're going into medicine or asking to talk about a time working with a diverse group so often that I would have my one or two important examples sort of sketched out in my Google doc ready to be adapted to whatever little specifics this particular School wanted out of them.

David D MD - USMLE and MCAT Tutor
Med School Tutors

I rather disagree with the advice to respond to your "favorite" schools first--after you have written a few secondaries, you may notice that your writing improves and your thoughts become clearer. When my offspring was writing secondaries, I noticed a big change in the quality of the essays as the application cycle progressed.

Thank you all!