secondary angst

[drfancypants]

so does anyone else have trouble with the great getting in the way of the good when it comes to these secondary essays? i've not yet encountered any essays where i can write duplicate content. i'm pouring my soul out for each one of these, and have a hard time balancing my expectations versus what's reasonable with respect to time. do ya'll just churn out a few paragraphs over an hour or two, or carefully sculpt every word like the primary essay?

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[frescoengano]

few paragraphs in 2 - 4 hours. more time if its a school i really wanna go to (or if its a long secondary)

 

[PennFranklin]

OP I'm running into the exact same problem! I take a long time to write essays, which was ok with the personal statement bc every word has to be carefully chosen. Secondaries on the other hand have about 2-3 essays each, and I applied to 20 some schools. I think I'm gonna have to speed it up and not write every one as a masterpiece if I wanna submit them before October haha

 

[gls3]

I kept a long Word document running with all the essay questions and my answers - after a few primaries you'll start getting repeat questions. And even if its not exactly the same question, if its close you might be able to reuse paragraphs or at least ideas.

Just make sure if any of your essays mention the school name you don't accidentally copy/paste an essay on "why I am a good fit for school x" for school y's essay question - that's worth triple checking.

For future reference also - make sure you keep a copy of your secondaries and your answers that you submit - could come in handy to review what you already wrote to them beforehand if you get interviews at those schools.

 

[powersr8810]

Hopefully you didn't apply to the University of Washington, I had to write 6 essays, including a SECOND personal statement. My secondary essays totaled 4 pages!!!

 

[BBender716]

I don't know about this year's but the worst ones I did/heard of from last year were as follows:

5. Rush - many questions, small character limit (made it difficult to answer fully...)
4. Loyola - many questions about everything
3. Northwestern - similar to loyola but had longer responses required
2. Vanderbilt - if you had to write this one (screened) it was an autobiography
1. Duke - like Loyola + Rush except you could write as little (or as much) as you wanted... some wrote pages upon pages. Double