Secondaries dates

[sPreDoc]

---

Members don't see this ad.

If I want to request time off work to write my secondaries, what days should I request? When do secondaries typically come out and how much time will I need. I plan on submitting my primary the day it comes out and applying to ~25 schools

 

[Vhopeful]

If I want to request time off work to write my secondaries, what days should I request? When do secondaries typically come out and how much time will I need. I plan on submitting my primary the day it comes out and applying to ~25 schools

you can pre-write secondaries before they get sent out. The prompts are usually similar if not exactly the same as previous years. Another trick I used to reduce writing time was to write according to frequent asked topics (diversity, adversity, covid, etc.) and then tailored them a bit for each school. So far, it has worked great and I took a month to return all 20 secondaries.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Exactly. Take your spring/Easter break to find the secondary prompts and start drafting your answers to the common questions (like @Vhopeful did). That should cover the prompts that are expected. Do your homework on your schools if there are additional prompts of interest.

What you should do is give yourself enough time to get readers to give you feedback on your essays. You don't need to take time off of work. You are not writing the next NYT bestseller.

 

[shotgunlagoon]

For many schools, the prompts do not change from year to year. You can confirm this by looking through previous years’ threads. For the ones that do change, they’re not usually completely unique prompts and it’s fairly easy to adapt an essay you may have written for another school. Finally, secondaries are sent out in waves so usually the prompts are posted on SDN as soon as the first wave gets sent, and you have enough time to adjust your essays to any changes to prompts from the previous year.

 

[voxveritatisetlucis]

As others have suggested, it’s much better to write them incrementally. I write often both for work and fun. You can never really tell which dates/times you’ll be productive. I’ve had times where I spent 8 hours writing a single page. Not a joke. Others, I’ve written an entire term paper in a weekend. So it’s best to just space things out.

 

[PapaGuava]

As others have suggested, it’s much better to write them incrementally. I write often both for work and fun. You can never really tell which dates/times you’ll be productive. I’ve had times where I spent 8 hours writing a single page. Not a joke. Others, I’ve written an entire term paper in a weekend. So it’s best to just space things out.

This OP.

 

[shotgunlagoon]

Oh but also secondaries start being released in June-August depending on the school. There isn’t really a good time to take off to write them all because you might receive one in June and then like 10 at the end of July and then the rest trickling in over August. As everyone has said, prewrite as many as you can, then edit as needed.

 

[jhmmd]

The three most common secondary questions are:
1) Why medicine
2) Why this school
3) Mission fit/how will you contribute to diversity/what makes you different/etc.

You can recycle paragraphs from your own writing as long as it's not plagiarized. Try to get things done in a timely matter cuz apps are reviewed and accepted on a rolling basis (first-come, first serve). Good luck.