How Time Consuming Are Secondary Apps?

[Tummytroubles]

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I am applying to 30 schools (Both DO and MD programs). My app will completed in June.

I was just asked to run a marathon with a friend this fall (early October). Training takes up a lot of time and I'm wondering if I'm going in over my head as I already work 50-60 hour weeks.

When have most people received their secondary apps? Are they spread out or do they come in around the same time?


Thanks!

 

[qw098]

I am also curious about this question.

Are secondaries time consuming?

 

[kexy]

I am applying to 30 schools (Both DO and MD programs). My app will completed in June.

I was just asked to run a marathon with a friend this fall (early October). Training takes up a lot of time and I'm wondering if I'm going in over my head as I already work 50-60 hour weeks.

When have most people received their secondary apps? Are they spread out or do they come in around the same time?


Thanks!

You will probably get most of your secondary apps around the same time, generally a few days to a week after you submit your completed AMCAS. This isn't necessarily problematic, because you can pre-write your secondaries based on the prompts found here: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/forumdisplay.php?f=826

The good news is that, since you're applying to ~30 schools, you will eventually be able to reuse a lot of the essays that you write. The bad news is that, if you do a good job on your essays (which you really, really should, since I swear it can make all the difference between an interview and a rejection), this will take you an incredibly long time. I would guess that I spent >120 hours writing, editing, and generally agonizing over secondary essays for ~35 schools. This was probably excessive, but I found some of the prompts really difficult to answer, and I applied to a lot of schools that required multiple essays.

How time-consuming secondaries are depends on what schools you are applying to. Some ask for two, 100 word essays and that's it. Others just ask for your credit card number! But some will ask for five 350 word essays, or three 1-page essays, and so on. It becomes very manageable if you pre-write the essays, though, so that as soon as you get the secondary you can glance over/edit what you've written, and return it immediately.

 

[vayntraubinator]

I'm guessing if you go through the secondary prompts and pre-draft them, you will save yourself time in advance. But I don't know which prompts change more often than other schools' prompts.







maybe those who have gone through the process can list how many schools they applied to and how long secondaries took to complete.

# of Secondaries completed:
Time to Turnaround:
Relative Quality/Weight you believe your secondary helped:

 

[TheMightySmiter]

The two secondary apps I spent the most time on were both schools I was rejected from. My recommendation for secondaries is to just write your answer truthfully and freely, then give it a once-over for writing style, spelling, and grammar. I had two secondaries that were essay-format, and for those you could spend a few minutes outlining. Otherwise, the prompts are mostly short answer. But, overall, I don't think you should spend more than an hour on each.

 

[Ismet]

You'll get your secondaries roughly at the same time. A few schools (GW comes to mind) send you the secondary right when you submit your AMCAS, they don't wait for verification (money hungry!). But you'll get most of your secondaries a few days after you are verified.

I had 18 schools on my AMCAS but I only completed 11 secondaries because I had already started the semester and I didn't have time to write essays for some of the lengthier secondaries (Hopkins, Commonwealth, NYU). You can check my MDApps for the time it took to submit my secondaries, it took me about 2 weeks for the ones that had essay components, but then again I'm a procrastinator and I should have given them higher priority.

 

[Snuke]

You will probably get most of your secondary apps around the same time, generally a few days to a week after you submit your completed AMCAS. This isn't necessarily problematic, because you can pre-write your secondaries based on the prompts found here: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/forumdisplay.php?f=826

The good news is that, since you're applying to ~30 schools, you will eventually be able to reuse a lot of the essays that you write. The bad news is that, if you do a good job on your essays (which you really, really should, since I swear it can make all the difference between an interview and a rejection), this will take you an incredibly long time. I would guess that I spent >120 hours writing, editing, and generally agonizing over secondary essays for ~35 schools. This was probably excessive, but I found some of the prompts really difficult to answer, and I applied to a lot of schools that required multiple essays.

How time-consuming secondaries are depends on what schools you are applying to. Some ask for two, 100 word essays and that's it. Others just ask for your credit card number! But some will ask for five 350 word essays, or three 1-page essays, and so on. It becomes very manageable if you pre-write the essays, though, so that as soon as you get the secondary you can glance over/edit what you've written, and return it immediately.

+1, except I think your projected hours are exaggerated. Once you get to secondary #7 or so, you should be able to start reusing. For my ~20 secondary essays (12 of my schools required them, some had multiple), I spent anywhere from an hour to two hours on each. The shorter ones were harder, because the word restriction means that every word counts. Others that are longer, you can be more verbose and less efficient.

Still, grammar is vital (spelling goes without saying). Have an idea and stick to it. And when you do reuse - make sure you alter the name of the school and the school-specifics

 

[Local Native]

I applied to 21 schools and probably put in ~130 hours into writing and editing my essays. I can't stress enough the importance of putting time and effort into these secondaries. Some schools weigh them heavily while others do not, so just do a decent job on each and every one. These questions also give you time to reflect on your activities and this will only help when it's time for interview season since a question from a secondary may show up as an interview question at another school. Don't look at these essays as a chore, but rather an opportunity for preparation and introspection.

 

[KLycos]

Took me about a month of writing essays after work.

 

[Ilovewater]

It's really time consuming especially for 30+ schools. When I applied, almost all of my secondaries came during July and August, so if you apply early, expect them around then. If you have time, you can start on some of the secondaries using the prompts posted in the "school specific" threads. A lot of schools also have similar prompts so you can reuse essays and save some time.

 

[diamethuel]

When I applied last summer, filling out the info for each secondary took less than an hour. Time spent writing the essays was more variable, since some schools have no essays at all while other schools will have like 8 essays (definitely not the norm, though). The word/character limits for the essays varied considerably as well. I would suggest, as others have also mentioned, that you pre-write your essays by finding schools' essay prompts from previous years by looking through the "School Specific Discussions" forum. Of the 30 schools I applied to, the essay situations were the same or extremely similar for all 30 of them compared to the prompts from previous years.

 

[EBTrailRunner]

The two secondary apps I spent the most time on were both schools I was rejected from. My recommendation for secondaries is to just write your answer truthfully and freely, then give it a once-over for writing style, spelling, and grammar. I had two secondaries that were essay-format, and for those you could spend a few minutes outlining. Otherwise, the prompts are mostly short answer. But, overall, I don't think you should spend more than an hour on each.

One hour to complete an entire secondary (pay-and-submit secondaries not included)? That's impressive. It often took me an hour to simply outline what I was going to write.

 

[NickNaylor]

One hour to complete an entire secondary (pay-and-submit secondaries not included)? That's impressive. It often took me an hour to simply outline what I was going to write.

This was more of my experience as well. Sure, there are likely people that can write a solid essay very quickly, but that doesn't mean you as an individual can. You should do the absolute best you can on secondaries. People often say implicitly or explicitly that secondaries aren't all that important and to simply get them turned in as quickly as possible. Bad idea.

A well written, well thought out essay that's turned in in two or three weeks is significantly better than a mediocre essay turned around in 48 or 72 hours.

 

[Cinclus]

I thought I would never finish 'em. They. took. so. long. man.

 

[KLycos]

I thought I would never finish 'em. They. took. so. long. man.

Basically, prepare for a long solid month of endless essays and filling out questions and boxes and grades and blah blah blah horrible July/August for me