Pre-Writing?

[deleted1040417]

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I am wondering where I could find essays for primaries and secondaries to pre-write? I don't understand how pre-writing works either if there is a possible thread I couldn't find?

 

[deleted889094]

Primary is just amcas. Basically personal statement and activities. Secondary prompts from the previous year can be found on the school specific threads. For example, if you want to apply to Yale, search "SDN Yale 2020"

 

[M&L]

I am wondering where I could find essays for primaries and secondaries to pre-write? I don't understand how pre-writing works either if there is a possible thread I couldn't find?

prewriting is really a key. Majority of schools have very similar questions, so prewriting will help you take the stress off, and will allow you to submit everything sooner.
i prewrote 70% of my schools, and every single school was submitted within 3-6 hours from receiving secondary invites.

 

[deleted1040417]

Primary is just amcas. Basically personal statement and activities. Secondary prompts from the previous year can be found on the school specific threads. For example, if you want to apply to Yale, search "SDN Yale 2020"

Ok, thank you very much!

 

[deleted1040417]

prewriting is really a key. Majority of schools have very similar questions, so prewriting will help you take the stress off, and will allow you to submit everything sooner.
i prewrote 70% of my schools, and every single school was submitted within 3-6 hours from receiving secondary invites.

That's sweet to know! I definitely need to think about the diversity prompt -- idk about many unique experiences or talents of mine, just a pretty boring person that likes to watch anime during their free time lol. If only being a weeb would count.

 

[r2med]

Yes, it is important and very easy to find past several years of prompts on a quick search online. Caveat - some schools do add/change prompts from time-to-time, but that was a minority in my case this year.

 

[Med Ed]

Pre-writing is great. I especially love it when applicants accidentally leave words like "osteopathic" in their essays. Or when the essay sort of addresses the prompt, so you can tell it was a generic version they did not bother to tailor (the horseshoes and hand grenades approach).

Occasionally the writer makes the end of the last sentence something like "...and that's why I really want to attend [Your Medical School]." But you can tell they just recycle the essay and change the name of the school. It's efficient from the applicant's standpoint, but it looks cheap on our end.

 

[r2med]

Pre-writing is great. I especially love it when applicants accidentally leave words like "osteopathic" in their essays. Or when the essay sort of addresses the prompt, so you can tell it was a generic version they did not bother to tailor (the horseshoes and hand grenades approach).

Occasionally the writer makes the end of the last sentence something like "...and that's why I really want to attend [Your Medical School]." But you can tell they just recycle the essay and change the name of the school. It's efficient from the applicant's standpoint, but it looks cheap on our end.

Great point from application reader's angle. I am sure you can tell the difference between custom and copy/paste with minor changes. However, as an applicant to 20-30 schools, each school averaging 3-5 essays, most of them similar to others, there is just not enough time in the day to custom write each - especially with coursework, volunteering, shadowing, MCAT prep, and the whole nine yards. Guess that is where applicants need a balance - pre-write, but edit very carefully before submitting.

 

[Goro]

Pre-writing is great. I especially love it when applicants accidentally leave words like "osteopathic" in their essays. Or when the essay sort of addresses the prompt, so you can tell it was a generic version they did not bother to tailor (the horseshoes and hand grenades approach).

Occasionally the writer makes the end of the last sentence something like "...and that's why I really want to attend [Your Medical School]." But you can tell they just recycle the essay and change the name of the school. It's efficient from the applicant's standpoint, but it looks cheap on our end.

It's even more fun when they write "..and that's why I really want to attend XCOM", and I'm not at XCOM. Makes for a great skewer in interviews.

 

[deleted1040417]

In the personal statement, is it too odd to include the fact that I drifted away from medicine so much in my early years? That I just kept thinking of other fields like optometry?

I have had days where I thought about pursuing optometry, but I just always end up coming back to medicine. After the summer, I haven't even hesitated or rethought my decision though.

The Thing is I don't want to waste too much space explaining and focus on other aspects of the personal statement but feel like it was an important decision I made and kept fighting myself with throughout early undergrad.

 

[Med Ed]

In the personal statement, is it too odd to include the fact that I drifted away from medicine so much in my early years? That I just kept thinking of other fields like optometry?

I have had days where I thought about pursuing optometry, but I just always end up coming back to medicine. After the summer, I haven't even hesitated or rethought my decision though.

The Thing is I don't want to waste too much space explaining and focus on other aspects of the personal statement but feel like it was an important decision I made and kept fighting myself with throughout early undergrad.

If you have optometry-related ECs then it may be helpful to explain their presence. Otherwise it adds nothing to your story. Plenty of applicants spend significant time considering other career options. We don't really need the play-by-play.

 

[KnightDoc]

Pre-writing is great. I especially love it when applicants accidentally leave words like "osteopathic" in their essays. Or when the essay sort of addresses the prompt, so you can tell it was a generic version they did not bother to tailor (the horseshoes and hand grenades approach).

Occasionally the writer makes the end of the last sentence something like "...and that's why I really want to attend [Your Medical School]." But you can tell they just recycle the essay and change the name of the school. It's efficient from the applicant's standpoint, but it looks cheap on our end.

I generally LOVE your advice, but I honestly don't understand why this is a problem. Would your school really be unaware that I applied to 30 other schools but/for the fact that my essay looks "cheap" because I obviously tailored an essay that also addresses 20 other prompts to respond to yours as well?

I would love to just be able to select 5-10 schools where I would be a reasonable fit, and have a realistic expectation that I would be admitted to a few of them, like UG, but we all know that's not how med school admissions work in 2020. Why is recycling essays a problem, given the volume we are expected to write in a limited period of time? If it truly IS an issue, maybe adcoms could be a little less lazy, and a little more creative, and come up with a few prompts that are so dissimilar to everyone else's that recycling is not an option!!!!! Believe it or not, schools that really care about this already do it, much to our general consternation!! 😎

 

[Med Ed]

I generally LOVE your advice, but I honestly don't understand why this is a problem. Would your school really be unaware that I applied to 30 other schools but/for the fact that my essay looks "cheap" because I obviously tailored an essay that also addresses 20 other prompts to respond to yours as well?

Tailoring is only necessary if the pre-written response "sort of addresses the prompt." If there is already alignment between the the prompt and the pre-written response then there is no need to undertake substantial editing.

I would love to just be able to select 5-10 schools where I would be a reasonable fit, and have a realistic expectation that I would be admitted to a few of them, like UG, but we all know that's not how med school admissions work in 2020. Why is recycling essays a problem, given the volume we are expected to write in a limited period of time? If it truly IS an issue, maybe adcoms could be a little less lazy, and a little more creative, and come up with a few prompts that are so dissimilar to everyone else's that recycling is not an option!!!!! Believe it or not, schools that really care about this already do it, much to our general consternation!! 😎

We fully understand that many schools have similar secondary prompts. The cut-paste errors typically appear in the "why us?" essays, because there is little reason to include school names for most other prompts. Medical schools are similar in many ways, but you can discern some differentiation based on factors like public/private, urban/suburban/rural, primary care/specialized/indifferent, research-heavy/non-research heavy, etc. If a "why us?" essay is so generic that lit could apply to every medical school in the country, then I will ascertain that the applicant has not given much thought or effort to determining why they are applying to my school. I get why this happens, but it remains a missed opportunity.

If I were applying both MD and DO I would absolutely word search for "osteopathic" prior to pasting any responses to allopathic schools.

In summary, medical practice usually involves a never-ending series of relatively brief interactions where you ideally form a connection and pay close attention to details. Don't go through the trouble and expense of applying to a given school if you're just going to shoot yourself in the foot by phoning in the secondary. It's a waste of everyone's time.

 

[KnightDoc]

Tailoring is only necessary if the pre-written response "sort of addresses the prompt." If there is already alignment between the the prompt and the pre-written response then there is no need to undertake substantial editing.


We fully understand that many schools have similar secondary prompts. The cut-paste errors typically appear in the "why us?" essays, because there is little reason to include school names for most other prompts. Medical schools are similar in many ways, but you can discern some differentiation based on factors like public/private, urban/suburban/rural, primary care/specialized/indifferent, research-heavy/non-research heavy, etc. If a "why us?" essay is so generic that lit could apply to every medical school in the country, then I will ascertain that the applicant has not given much thought or effort to determining why they are applying to my school. I get why this happens, but it remains a missed opportunity.

If I were applying both MD and DO I would absolutely word search for "osteopathic" prior to pasting any responses to allopathic schools.

In summary, medical practice usually involves a never-ending series of relatively brief interactions where you ideally form a connection and pay close attention to details. Don't go through the trouble and expense of applying to a given school if you're just going to shoot yourself in the foot by phoning in the secondary. It's a waste of everyone's time.

We're totally on the same page. I would never write one generic essay for all schools, public and private, rural and urban, MD and DO. I also 1,000% agree with every harsh adcom criticism of careless errors like misspelling a school name, inadvertently leaving in an incorrect school, etc., etc. My point was merely that many of the prompts are similar enough, and we do have to answer them over and over and over again, that it as unreasonable for schools to expect us to create every response from scratch for them as it would be for us to expect them to send us a customized set of secondaries to respond to. 😎

 

[deleted1040417]

I'm planning to write strong essays tailored to my state schools but will see how horrible life is with all the other schools.