Recycling Secondary Essays?

[futureNCmed]

So I'm re-applying for the first time this year. I applied last year and made several mistakes (submitting extremely late, not having great LORs, and not enough ECs and volunteer work). This year I feel better overall about my chances but I'm really confused about how to handle my secondaries to schools I applied to last year.

This year I'm applying to about half-and-half schools I applied to last year and new schools. For the ones I've already applied to, should I just use the same essay prompts, or do you think schools will look at that as though I'm too lazy to write a new essay?

Any advice would be awesome! Thanks guys!

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[Kneige]

I am in a similar situation and have the same question of whether we can reuse the essay answers for secondaries.

 

[enolization]

I would go with the common sense answer of writing new statements. I'm sure you can reuse ideas here and there but chances are that you can significantly improve upon your previous essays, especially if you were rushed into completing the essays the last time around. I'm not sure if the schools hold onto our previous application and pull it up just to check, but if they do it wouldn't look good at all.

 

[codenamekris]

i applied unsuccessfully for entering class of 2006 and then successfully last year, with three interviews--two acceptances and a wait list. i completely re-wrote my primary statement, but in many cases i re-used my secondary essays or heavily edited the versions from 2006...in cases where my answers had really changed (like, what is a big challenge you have faced?), i re-wrote the essay completely...

 

[KingstonPre]

can we use the same essay for 2 different schools?

 

[codenamekris]

yes!

 

[futureNCmed]

Thanks for the advice guys.

I definitely plan to re-write those generic "Is there anything additional you want to add" prompts for the schools I applied to last year but some of the essays are pretty specific and nothing really has changed since last year.

For example, those "why do you want to go to this school" essays and those random ones like the ethical dilemma ones or which specialty you want to pursue. Those answers really haven't changed from last year! Should I stress over finding a new approach or just re-submit those and make sure to rock the general essays with something new?

Thanks again!

 

[Food]

You could get try getting feedback on your secondary essays from schools. At least one of them might be able to tell you something. That's what I did and applied the change to my essay. I kept the core principles the same, though. It ended up being fine since all the OOS schools I applied to are ones I didn't try for last year.