In this blog series we will be covering all aspects of Secondary Essays. Stay tuned over the coming weeks for guidance on writing compelling essays that will earn you a coveted interview spot.
You may not want to hear this, but… you should start your Secondaries as soon as you complete your Personal Statement and W&A—before the schools have even sent you their questions. There are recurring themes that you can bet will come up, and prepping things you can polish once you have the exact questions will make the Secondaries process much easier. You want to submit your answers within two weeks of receiving the questions to ensure you get one of a school's limited interview slots.
The good news is: You will be able to recycle your Secondary answers for different prompts and use aspects of your Secondary drafts for your super-short answers too. But to do this more effectively, you'll need to get organized.
We suggest that clients keep school-specific folders holding all of their responses. Having separate folders for specific topics is helpful too. For example, keep a Diversity Essay folder. School A's diversity prompt might require a response of 500 words or less. Save that edited doc to the school folder as "School A Diversity 500." Also, save it as "Diversity 500" in the Diversity folder. Perhaps much later, when School M's diversity prompt calls for the same word count, you can find your finished and edited 500-word essay in the Diversity folder and tailor it to fit School M.
When you pare down your 500-word essay to suit School Q's 250-word or 1,000-character diversity short answer (and you likely will), save that to the Diversity folder as "Diversity 250" or "Diversity 1,000 Characters." You're applying to so many schools that when you read your 40th prompt, you're going to ask yourself, "I know I wrote this as 500 words already, but for what school?!" You want all your hard work to be in easily findable locations.