How time consuming are secondaries?

[504196]

---

Members don't see this ad.

I am applying this cycle. I will be working 40-50 hours a week this summer plus a few hours a week volunteering.

I would like to apply to 15-20 schools. Will I be able to do this and still have some free time this summer? I guess I'm wondering how many schools people applied to while they were working full time and how time consuming it was.

 

[WillburCobb]

I am applying this cycle. I will be working 40-50 hours a week this summer plus a few hours a week volunteering.

I would like to apply to 15-20 schools. Will I be able to do this and still have some free time this summer? I guess I'm wondering how many schools people applied to while they were working full time and how time consuming it was.

I applied to 14 schools last year while working full time and volunteering. The secondaries sucked, but it was doable. Plus after you've done few you can start to reuse answers or parts of answers. I also didn't pre-write any and am a notorious procrastinator, so that didn't help either. But yeah, stay on top of it you'll be fine.

 

[BrawnsNBrain]

It's a subjective question. How well do you write? Are your first drafts written so beautifully that you don't need a second, third, fourth, etc... draft?
I wrote about ~20 secondaries, and had 3-4 people as peer reviewers for almost all of them. I'd probably say each secondary took me ~2-4 days depending on how quickly a peer reviewer got back to me and how easily I was able to commit to a final draft (committing to a final draft is the hardest part, in my opinion). This was while I was committed to other activities.

Here's some tips:
- Pre write some secondaries. They'll start getting posted in school specific threads soon, so pre write until you get your own invitation to submit a secondary.
- Have a word document/journal full of pre listed ideas of what to write about. I did this for the MCAT essay as well (back when there was an essay).
- Secondaries from different schools can be similar, so you'll be able to transfer ideas from one essay to another thereby making the brainstorming and ultimately the writing process shorter.
- Aim to submit secondaries within ~2 weeks of receiving the invitation to submit one.

 

[Catalystik]

- Secondaries from different schools can be similar, so you'll be able to transfer ideas from one essay to another thereby making the brainstorming and ultimately the writing process shorter.

Very true, and maybe some are too similar. Just be careful to proofread what you copy and paste so you don't inadvertantly include the name of another school in the essay. Very embarrassing and a guaranteed fail.

 

[mizzu]

So you have 168 hours per week... Let's say you sleep 7 hours a day... And volunteer 10 hours a week and work 50 hr/week, you still have 59 hours to write your secondary.

^_^

 

[darkjedi]

Each secondary does take a few days. To cut down on time and effort, I put together all the secondary prompts in one place and tried to group them into common themes. I wrote a handful of essays that I felt could be applied to multiple schools. The rest of the time was spent tweaking the essays to make them more tailored for each school as well as writing any more of the 'unique' secondaries.

 

[Patros]

On an individual basis, it depends. Some secondaries can be done in just a few minutes (just demographic info and no essays,for example), while others consist of several essays that will take many hours to complete and review. The average secondary entails a few short-answer questions (200-300 words), and should take a couple of hours. Shouldn't take more than 1 or 2 days to read, brainstorm, write, and submit a secondary.

Overall, it'll definitely eat up a good chunk of your time. I worked full-time and spent all my free time (2-3 hours a day) for about 2 weeks writing and submitting secondaries. It's annoying, but definitely doable, especially if you know what questions to expect. You should scope out the school-specific threads from the previous application cycle to find out what questions were used last year, because you'll probably see the same ones again.

 

[504196]

Alrighty I'll check out the school specific threads and start pre-writing once my school list is complete. Thanks everyone

 

[Catalystik]

Summary of Secondary essays: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/which-secondaries-to-start-with.920762/#post-12616829

You'll find that few Secondary essays change from year to year, but if you care to update this list and repost eventually , that would be great.

 

[Narmerguy]

Each secondary does take a few days. To cut down on time and effort, I put together all the secondary prompts in one place and tried to group them into common themes. I wrote a handful of essays that I felt could be applied to multiple schools. The rest of the time was spent tweaking the essays to make them more tailored for each school as well as writing any more of the 'unique' secondaries.

In addition, I found that it was best to start with the longest secondaries. It was much easier to go back to similar essay prompts and shorten an existing essay than to try to increase one. I didn't do this at first but wish I had. Also taking the hardest ones out when I was the most enthusiastic would have been helpful because I was definitely losing steam by the end and just slapping some stuff together to get it out my inbox.

 

[ace12345]

Pre-write! This may have saved my summer. The essay questions rarely change, and can be found at the top of each school specific thread.