Let's talk about these secondaries

[Dr. Percival Ulysses Cox]

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As I'm prewriting these secondaries some schools have a word/ character counter that sometimes lets the prompt hit a page length of words and a lot of these questions can be answered without needing that much. The word around SDN is that for secondaries, you should get out what you need to say to answer the questions then stop. Keep the fluff to a minimum. I've also heard from the fellows in my lab that the people on adcoms only scan these secondaries for red flags because they have way too of them many to read. Some people on reddit have even thrown out numbers on certain percentage rules (i.e. make sure you hit 2/3 of the limit).

To the people on ADCOMs/ knowledgeable individuals/ previous successful applicants, did you really think that hitting the length (or a variation of it) was a factor for viewing the secondary as favorable?

 

[Peter Pan.]

As long as the message is good. And more often than not you’re gonna need to take up most of it to do that.