Re-use secondaries?

[lainey234]

I did a search and didn't come up with this, hope it hasn't been addressed ad nauseam here.

I applied last year and got soundly rejected from everywhere without a single interview. In reality I applied prematurely. I feel much better about my app this year but I was wondering about secondaries. I put some time and effort into them last summer and most schools have the exact same secondary prompts they used last year. I am assuming that I was screened out at most schools and that no one physically looked at my app at others. Is it unwise to re-use my same secondary essays from last year?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[xxbruinxx]

I did a search and didn't come up with this, hope it hasn't been addressed ad nauseam here.

I applied last year and got soundly rejected from everywhere without a single interview. In reality I applied prematurely. I feel much better about my app this year but I was wondering about secondaries. I put some time and effort into them last summer and most schools have the exact same secondary prompts they used last year. I am assuming that I was screened out at most schools and that no one physically looked at my app at others. Is it unwise to re-use my same secondary essays from last year?

i think it's fine to re-use secondaries...I did for a lot of them, but def. added significantly b/c a lot changes in 2 years. There were a lot more *recent* things i could talk about, but i certainly used the general structure/phrasing of previously written secondaries. You might, however, find yourself wincing at what you had written the first time around, so don't be afraid to change.

best of luck!

 

[DrMattOglesby]

i just emailed a DO school to try and find out if re-using a secondary is okay.
I will come back with his response as soon as I get it.

 

[gman33]

As a reapplicant you want to try to improve every part of your application. This includes any essays. You won't get flat out rejected for submitting the same essay; in many cases they probably never even looked at it.

That being said, try to improve upon your past work if at all possible.

 

[DrMattOglesby]

i just emailed a DO school to try and find out if re-using a secondary is okay.
I will come back with his response as soon as I get it.

I spoke with an admissions counselor of AT Still University and was told that using the same responses won't be a problem.
Of course, if you have something new to say, or perhaps a different way of saying something, go for it.

 

[lainey234]

Thanks for the input guys. I guess if I felt like anyone had physically read my apps last yr, I wouls re-write or at least re-vise. But there at least 3-4 schools that I think just took my secondary $$ then through my app in the trash.

I'll definitley re-write for my state school, and I didn't apply DO at all last yr, so none of those will be re-writes. Thanks again and best of luck.

 

[DocsIn]

What schools were those?