Secondary Burnout Thread

[woodside9]

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Here you report if you had a secondary burnout, what strategies you used to get over it, and what you might have done differently if you could (god forbid) do it all over again. General discussion about how much secondaries plague your pre-medical existence is also welcome 👍


Related questions: Did you decide not to complete certain secondaries? Did you strategically complete secondaries in a specific order? Did you pre-write, and if so, how much did that help? What deranged activities did you participate in to take your mind off of secondaries?

Thanks in advance for posting, and good luck everyone

 

[ShenanigansMD]

Lol this happened to me, and I think it might have hurt the quality of my essays. If I had known I would have given myself more time, instead of thinking that I needed to turn them in asap. My entire summer was worrying about secondaries... what a waste.

 

[MedPR]

By the yime I was burned out I had prewritten so many that I could just mostly copy amd paste 👍

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[woodside9]

Lol this happened to me, and I think it might have hurt the quality of my essays. If I had known I would have given myself more time, instead of thinking that I needed to turn them in asap. My entire summer was worrying about secondaries... what a waste.

I agree, I didn't pre-write 🙂meanie🙂 and at one point I had about a dozen secondaries I had to do and wanted to complete as soon as possible. I think each secondary deserves at least a day or two of writing/editing/revising to make it the best it can be. At a certain point they just get repetitive and boring. The only one I enjoyed writing was USC's

 

[dnovikov]

USC's was fun too

 

[Ellie Arroway]

I got a little burned out. There were a couple times when I had to take a two-week break. I had one really early interview and I worry that the burned out feeling showed through a little. But with any luck I'll hear about that school on Monday...

Also, my favorite secondary was Mayo. 😀

 

[femoralgirl]

I got a little burned out. There were a couple times when I had to take a two-week break. I had one really early interview and I worry that the burned out feeling showed through a little. But with any luck I'll hear about that school on Monday...

Also, my favorite secondary was Mayo. 😀

Without a doubt!

 

[Slowpoke]

I filled out around 37 secondaries. I still have a hard time contemplating how I ever managed to fill that many. I suppose it may have been the thought of having to re-apply.

 

[cheechootrain]

I burned out. Solution, Jack Daniel's on the rocks.

 

[sodarayg]

I'm still burned out. I submitted 19 secondaries around 8/8-8/13 and I still have 3 that I am planning on turning in.... possibly...

 

[ShenanigansMD]

I'm still burned out. I submitted 19 secondaries around 8/8-8/13 and I still have 3 that I am planning on turning in.... possibly...

Haha join the party.

 

[stoutt]

I applied to 32 schools, and completed 29 secondaries (rejected pre-secondary for 2 and realized I didn't meet the pre-req requirements for 1). I just plowed through them. IMHO I think that many secondary essays are similar enough that they can be tailored to many schools. You obviously won't be able to copy/paste whole chunks of text but if themes and experiences from you application are important to you then they will be things that you want to talk about in most of your essays. This may sound crazy but make the secondary essays you have already written work for you. It is easy enough to rewrite essays for MANY schools. Also I didn't prewrite any secondary essays. I think that while you may save yourself a little bit of time at the beginning if you do, a total respit from "med school stuff" between primary application submission and receiving secondaries is a better use of your time (obviously if you apply later in the cycle this is impossible b/c you will likely receive secondaries will be received immediately).

Another piece of advice: Work HARD on the secondaries you receive early so that the amount of time you need to put into the essays as you receive more decreases. For the first ~10 secondaries I got I put a lot of time into them to make sure I had a solid base of essays. By the time I received my last secondaries I had to put very little time into them b/c I had already written virtually the same essay.

One last thing: schools are receiving several thousands of apps and are reading through even more essays. Essays will blend together in the eyes of the adcoms and, like personal statements, unless you have a truly amazing story or experience that will catch the adcoms eye, it is most likely that your essay is extremely similar to hundreds of other essays that they have read. Secondary essays don't need to be shakespeare, they just need to be solid.

Take everything I have just said w/ a grain of salt. I'm not accepted anywhere yet but I have had several interviews and feel that the technique I used for secondary essays worked (for me at least).

 

[speakwhales]

I applied to 32 schools, and completed 29 secondaries (rejected pre-secondary for 2 and realized I didn't meet the pre-req requirements for 1). I just plowed through them. IMHO I think that many secondary essays are similar enough that they can be tailored to many schools. You obviously won't be able to copy/paste whole chunks of text but if themes and experiences from you application are important to you then they will be things that you want to talk about in most of your essays. This may sound crazy but make the secondary essays you have already written work for you. It is easy enough to rewrite essays for MANY schools. Also I didn't prewrite any secondary essays. I think that while you may save yourself a little bit of time at the beginning if you do, a total respit from "med school stuff" between primary application submission and receiving secondaries is a better use of your time (obviously if you apply later in the cycle this is impossible b/c you will likely receive secondaries will be received immediately).

Another piece of advice: Work HARD on the secondaries you receive early so that the amount of time you need to put into the essays as you receive more decreases. For the first ~10 secondaries I got I put a lot of time into them to make sure I had a solid base of essays. By the time I received my last secondaries I had to put very little time into them b/c I had already written virtually the same essay.

One last thing: schools are receiving several thousands of apps and are reading through even more essays. Essays will blend together in the eyes of the adcoms and, like personal statements, unless you have a truly amazing story or experience that will catch the adcoms eye, it is most likely that your essay is extremely similar to hundreds of other essays that they have read. Secondary essays don't need to be shakespeare, they just need to be solid.

Take everything I have just said w/ a grain of salt. I'm not accepted anywhere yet but I have had several interviews and feel that the technique I used for secondary essays worked (for me at least).

I haven't been accepted yet but I would also agree with this, except I did copy and paste large chunks of texts. Sometimes entire essays. I think the first ten were rough to get through, but afterwards, it's a lot of creative editing.

If you're a pretty solid applicant, in terms of stats and ECs, I would not go jumping off walls for the secondary essays (maybe even the primary essays). I think they very rarely help, but can often hurt. So just play it safe and don't try to be too extra-ordinary.

 

[markyb03]

"Just keep swimming just keep swimming"

 

[Cheesehead12]

Definitely burned out...those Duke essays were killer! Completed mine based on how much I wanted to go to the school then random.

 

[TheShaker]

I submitted late so I completed all ~20 of my secondaries in one week. I just did the easy short essay ones first and then saved the long ones for last (out of procrastination and laziness).

After finishing Case Western's many essays and UCSD's autobiography, I was burned the **** out. I still had a few secondaries but I gave up at that point because I was so tired of talking about myself.

 

[Ravizzle]

I got burnt out. Took a week off. Bitchslapped myself to get back in the mood and just knocked out like 8 in 3 days. After a few I find u can copy paste a lot since there is so much overlap.

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