Secondary Essays

[....]

Well the Yale secondaries are siting there online waiting to be filled out....I just spent days and days perfecting my AMCAS essay and experiences list for AMCAS and now the thought of writing 15 more essays is daunting to say the least....

How much time did you matriculants spend on your secondary essays? were they generaly the same or did you have to write orininal essays for each school?
Most importantly, how polished were they....I sent my AMSAC essay to Essay Edge but dont have the cheese to send them 15 more! Someone show me the light!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Jillianrae]

I wrote separate essays for each of my 10 schools. although they were very similar and ocassional only details were changed. My essays went through approx 3 drafts each. They were carefully proofread (I copyedited the school newspaper and worked for the writing center, so I did this myself).

My advice, make sure that the essays are very carefully proofread. If you are still an undergrad, go to the university's writing center or academic assistance center and have someone there look at it with you. If you are no longer in school, see if you have access to a local school's resources. You may be able to arrange something proofreading wise with an english prof at a local CC or JC for little or no $. Premed advisiors are also really wonderful for looking at essays.

 

[Ginza]

I think you'll find that as you get more and more secondaries......they all have pretty similar essay questions. That was my experience at least. Writing the first few definitely sucked, but then I would just tweak them a little bit so that they fit the new schools' questions. I definitely didn't obsess over them as I had with my personal statement though.