Quality of Secondaries/Time spent on each

[idkididk]

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How much time on average did you guys write and rewrite each secondary application?

I spent a lot of time on my PS and had several people read it, but I can't ask people to read 20 secondary apps for me. I don't want to be spending 1 week per app, but I also don't want to burn myself out. How do you know when it's great/good enough?

 

[WedgeDawg]

I wrote 23 secondaries in 3 weeks. I only really rewrote one or two of them (as opposed to my personal statement, which I rewrote 5-6 times lol). I just asked a family member to read each essay once and then was generally like "k looks good enough - next!". Take them seriously, but you don't have to be overly meticulous. I ended up with 8 IIs with a late application (secondaries complete around Sept 1) and decent stats.

 

[Catalystik]

Not to add to anyone's neuroticism. Much. But some schools put a greater value on the Secondary than the Primary. So I agree with WedgeDawg to take them seriously. But disagree with the comment that you need not be meticulous. A serious mismatch in quality between the the writing of the two will raise concern about who authored what.

 

[idkididk]

Not to add to anyone's neuroticism. Much. But some schools put a greater value on the Secondary than the Primary. So I agree with WedgeDawg to take them seriously. But disagree with the comment that you need not be meticulous. A serious mismatch in quality between the the writing of the two will raise concern about who authored what.

Is this true because of the "why this school" essay? Because they're looking for students who fit the mission statement/characteristic of the school?

 

[hoihaie]

You don't need to return secondaries within 2 or 3 days. The speed has very minimal effect as compared to the quality of your essays. It's better to take a week or two to write them out well than to rush and get them in.

 

[vellez]

A LOT. Like, in July and August, I forwent the usual summertime activities to work on secondaries. For schools I was really serious about, you bet I asked my English-major/writer friends to look over my secondaries. You should treat them very seriously; do you think "I had a lot of other secondaries to work on" is valid excuse to XYZ-SOM for a lackluster secondary? Anyway, I had not-so-great grades, yet, I was still able to get 5 interviews, and I believe my effort on my secondaries helped my app out a lot.

 

[emraldragon]

Usually a day or two to write (with a couple of exceptions) and a day or two before writing to develop my ideas. The biggest exception was Georgetown's 5000 character (or was it word?) essay. That took a lot longer than a day or two. I had several PS readers and went through many iterations. Because I did not want to subject all those PS readers to 30+ unique essays, I had only one very dedicated (thank God family has to love you) secondary essay reader. She read through everything and edited both for content and for grammar. I would definitely have someone read them, secondary burn out happens and it means you might write something that seems like it sounds fine but really doesn't.

I ended up feeling like I was scrambling because everyone told me that secondaries had to be in within two weeks of receiving them. I met that deadline on all of the schools but I probably didn't do as good of a job as I could have if I had pre-written.

 

[hoihaie]

The autobiography secondaries, like UCSD or Vandy, are the hardest one and took the longest haha

 

[NickNaylor]

Is this true because of the "why this school" essay? Because they're looking for students who fit the mission statement/characteristic of the school?

Yes, and it provides you an opportunity to tailor everything you put in your AMCAS towards that school specifically. If you can't articulate a somewhat believable reason for why a school should be interested in you and/or why you would benefit from an education at a particular school, why should they take the time to interview you when they have so many other people to choose from?

I agree with the advice about not rushing secondaries. The idea that you need to get them back in within a few days is nonsense. Don't drag your feet in getting them back, sure, but at the same time don't sacrifice quality for attempting to follow a completely arbitrary timeline.

 

[NickNaylor]

What method would you suggest in pre-writing secondaries? Schools that sent them out earliest based on previous years? Schools that you are most interested in? Or schools that do not screen? Thanks.

I did them based on ease of completion. Some of them won't require anything other than verification of basic information. A few will require essays that may take a bit of time to complete. Most will be somewhere in between. I don't think it'll matter all that much.

 

[NeuResurgens]

I hear prewriting helps alleviate the stress too. You can usually get most of the prompts online here, and it can give you more time to distribute between schools.

 

[idkididk]

I hear prewriting helps alleviate the stress too. You can usually get most of the prompts online here, and it can give you more time to distribute between schools.

That is the plan. Seems like the two major topics are 'diversity' and 'why this school'. Also 'any additional information' which I will probably use the diversity essay.

 

[mehc012]

Not to add to anyone's neuroticism. Much. But some schools put a greater value on the Secondary than the Primary. So I agree with WedgeDawg to take them seriously. But disagree with the comment that you need not be meticulous. A serious mismatch in quality between the the writing of the two will raise concern about who authored what.

Oh good, now I can pretend that my PS was purposefully mediocre so that I could write my secondaries quickly and somewhat-less-meticulously!

 

[Catalystik]

Oh good, now I can pretend that my PS was purposefully mediocre so that I could write my secondaries quickly and somewhat-less-meticulously!

I like silver-lining-in-a-dark-cloud kind of people.