Personal Statement vs. Secondary Essays

[LSiliati]

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Anyone have any insight onto which weighs more--personal statement or secondary essays? Also, are there different standards for personal statement or secondary essays? i.e. is your personal statement supposed to be "better" due to more time devoted to it? Thanks in advance for your advice.

 

[fun8stuff]

Anyone have any insight onto which weighs more--personal statement or secondary essays? Also, are there different standards for personal statement or secondary essays? i.e. is your personal statement supposed to be "better" due to more time devoted to it? Thanks in advance for your advice.

The answer to your question is that everything is important- every part of your application.

With that said, I believe the personal statement has more weight than the secondaries (but you don't want to screw up the secondaries because those can definately harm you if you do a poor job). I feel the personal statement is most important because it is the one essay that all schools request and use. The secondaries vary from school to school, so it only makes sense that the most important thing is the PS. At all of my interviews, my interviews had always read my personal statement, but not necessarily my secondary (based on comments they made- some would ask me to explain things that I wrote about in great detail in my secondary, etc)

You don't want to slack on secondaries. I had complaments on those as well as my personal statement. Everything is important! muhahahahha!

 

[LauraMac]

it seems to me like secondaries might be more important because they are the specific questions that that school wanted answered. just a thought...

 

[LSiliati]

bump

 

[Jeffy]

The best advice is to write the damn things and to do them well, not to nit-pick the nuances and psychology behind them along with legions of other anal SDNers.

Sorry, it's late.