Lengthy Secondaries

[curiousgirl11]

What are the worst secondaries out there? My list of schools is getting fairly long and I want to eliminate some on the basis of workload. Do any stand out in your mind as particularly long, annoying or costly?

Thanks!

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[tpham1030]

Duke has a monster secondary. I think its like 8 questions with no limit on words....

Kentucky is also bad if you are OOS because you need an additional personal statement to go along with 7 regular essays.

 

[chicubsfan]

Add Louisville. Oh and Rush is notoriously long and painful!

 

[chickensandwich]

ucsd!!! they want your life story in 7500 (something like that) characters but don't really give you any more direction than that, other than to not repeat your ps.

ohsu had pretty long ones too, i think 2 4000ish character ones, and if i remember, they didn't really overlap with other secondary q's very much.

u chicago, rush, and loyola are also ones i remember considering doing but backing away from due to length/content of the secondaries.

 

[organdonor]

I know that Louisville and especially UK have beastly secondaries. Although I might be biased since IU doesn't have one. These were the only programs I looked at.

 

[schrizto]

You can easily find out the secondary questions of schools on SDN and decide:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=625377

 

[slowbutsteady]

I applied to 25 schools and the only secondary i decided to punt on was Duke's. Ridonculous!

 

[JDska55]

For some reason, the Chicago area schools seem to be evil:
Rush: crazy long
Loyola: CRAZY long
Northwestern: Not that long, but the questions are surprisingly difficult to find a good answer for. Expect to put some time in on this one.

Hope it helps!

 

[GoodmanBrown]

Georgetown and GW's secondaries struck me as total BS. Both were very expensive (~$125 if I remember correctly) and just had me regurgitate information from my main application. And I was immediately rejected by both schools as soon as I turned them in.

 

[BlueElmo]

UCSD one, the autobiography, was pretty bad. I remember Brown's was also very long. There were a lot of questions for UCLA one too.

 

[starl3tte]

I have to agree with chickensandwich - UCSD's was particularly lengthy. I sat on that secondary for a while (I think that one had a 30 day limit...I definitely didn't finish it until very close to its due date). Oregon's was also quite long. It was the last secondary to arrive to me, and by that time, I was already traveling around for interviews, so I just let that one go.

 

[dingyibvs]

fsu or duke.

duke was five no word limit essays, some are pretty tough topics. fsu has 8 500 WORD limit essays, easier topics tho

 

[ButImLETired]

I remember there was one school that gave a super generic mission statement and asked you to reflect on it (maybe U Chicago?). It wasn't super long, but I just thought it was a ridiculous essay question, and there's almost no way to write something that doesn't sound dumb. Wow, you believe in treating the whole patient and in educating the next generation of healers? FASCINATING! I've never heard that before! Let me write 2 pages about it.
Duke was a beast, but they really care about the essays, which I appreciate. If I'm gonna put that much effort, it better count for something.
UCSD was looooong.
Georgetown was hard because it's really hard to write 2 pages on a school you don't know that well. It's probably great if it's your first choice cause you get to write them a love letter. Otherwise you're really just going with what's on the website, and that's lame.
Vandy is long as hell, but you only get the secondary if you get an interview, so at least you know it counts for something.