 The time to think about your secondaries is before you get them. Stay tuned to how best strategize and prepare for writing all those secondaries. Please make sure to subscribe so you don't miss a video. This is Write Your Acceptance. I'm Dr. Josie and as a personal statement coach, university writing faculty, I have worked with hundreds of students on their personal statements guiding them through that and the secondaries. Getting into programs like UF Shands, UM Miller, UCSF, Virginia Tech, Mayo, so stick around. The tips nine and ten are super super important and if you stick around you get a freebie at the end. Tip one, submit quality and fast. Usually the turnaround for students is kind of like seven to ten days. Some students will take a full two weeks to submit their secondaries. You will hear kind of students take their sweet time and still get an interview, but rolling admissions and you know, time is of the essence. So you really want to make sure that you are supporting yourself and strategizing whether that's a different order or kind of think about which ones you are submitting first, but seven to ten days ideal. Tip two, pre-write diversity. Why us and set back or a challenge that you've experienced. I would be pre-writing these while your primary application is being verified because that's a multi-week process and those are easily adapted to multiple schools and slightly different questions, right? I have a template if you want to kind of consider more guidance. It is in the description below. You can check that out. And I have a couple of videos that I'll link on actual Intel, especially for the why us essays. So you really think about kind of how to deep dive into those thoughtfully and intentionally about them research driven and it is kind of something that you can take time in, right? So if you're pre-writing, you have a little bit more time. So those are the three diversity, why us and kind of a setback or challenge and obstacle that you experience. I would start focusing on those. Tip three, compliment but do not repeat. So there may be an activity that you wrote about in your activity section in the primary app, right? You devoted 700 characters. So you can definitely use that experience for one of the essays in your secondaries if it matches the topic. But think about kind of using a specific patient story that's different than what you mentioned, right? That gives you a different kind of role or a completely different lesson that you can kind of talk about your kind of building knowledge base of the Alzheimer's facility or kind of the dementia research, the pediatric wing. So kind of, you know, zoom into a patient and the lessons, but then also kind of give different context. So really think about how you're going to add a different dimension and new information to that secondary, especially if it's listed in any of your activities section in the primary app. So compliment, do not repeat. Tip four, and this is a tricky one to navigate, but I want to be very honest with you guys. And we can definitely have a dialogue about this for the setbacks and obstacles essay. If you have to write any of those, I would not do bad grades. And I would consider very, very carefully to do something regarding mental health. So first bad grades, you will probably or there are a ton of kind of mini secondaries, I wouldn't call them full blown essays, but really kind of short answers where a lot of the schools will ask you if you got lower than a B minus or C in any science class, you know, tell us why and stuff. So you'll have moments and opportunities to talk about a low grade or kind of, you know, a moment where you had to adapt to a different study system. And you always spin that positively. And then mental health, it really just depends. You don't know who the reader is, you don't know who your kind of ad comms is with their kind of biases and their stuff, what they're bringing to your essay and what they're bringing to your information. Sometimes I see, I will kind of edit and work with students on secondaries and I'll see kind of like a beautifully written essay on depression or beautifully written essay on OCD or something very kind of vulnerable and honest to the student, but they never get to a point where they reassure the ad comms that they can navigate successfully a rigorous medical education, right? So when things get tough, that they're not going to kind of have to sideline their journey or they're going to kind of, you know, leave the program. So think very carefully with how you address any red flag, with how you kind of offer up any potential red flags that may be seen as red flags to someone who doesn't know you. Have you started prewriting your secondaries? Comment below. I'd love to hear your kind of strategy for survival. Tip five, answer the actual question. I know it sounds obvious, but because ideally, fortunately, you may be adapting a number of the secondaries, you want to make sure that you, after you kind of adapt most of the content, that you specifically answer the question. So if one of the questions is talk about a failure you had in what you learned, you answer that question, and then you're going to adapt that essay to talk about an obstacle and what you did to kind of bring everyone together, let's say the ending may be different. It may not just be kind of taking stock of lessons that you learned, it may be action oriented and showing how you kind of brought people together, argued a point and convinced others to kind of follow you somewhere. So it slightly changes at the end, right? And that is really, really kind of key. So you want to make sure that you yes, adapt and recycle whenever possible, but that you are specifically answering each and every question. So tip six is the why us, the why us content. So why do you want to attend the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine or why do you want to attend XYZ, right? Content is king. It is not about the weather, it is not about the location so much, right? It is about the specific curriculum kind of programs that they have, the community outreach initiatives that you can participate in and how maybe perhaps you can mention a volunteer program that you started or a student organization that you kind of do or have been doing in undergrad, that then you would continue with XYZ, you name the program, the community initiative in the medical school program. And it is about kind of best fit. So a lot of students will borrow the mission statement and then kind of talk about how they align to those principles. I don't love that. I think sometimes mission statements sound the same and their buzzwords kind of strung together. So you want to make sure that if you do any of that kind of any borrowing from their mission statement, that it is anchored in specific experiences. That's why I like and I will link above a couple of the videos that I have and I have quite a few for the Florida schools because that's what people have been asking for. But you want to make sure that you're looking at community outreach, what you can do, curriculum, mentorship, right? So how do you see yourself kind of seamlessly fitting in academically, socially into their program? And that's how you make the case with research driven experiences that you can kind of narrate throughout that essay. This is too important. So I'm going to go with tip seven, continue with why us make sure that you have the right program name into the why us essay that you're turning in, right? And I'm going to link my template below if you want to get a specific guide and you can plug in information. So there are ways to adapt and recycle the why us essay, but make sure that you have outside eyes looking at this or that you kind of put it away and then come back to it with fresh eyes that you have swapped out all the names. This mistake happens every cycle. I hear nightmare stories. And so you want to make sure that you have kind of erased everything that does not belong there, right? Like a name of another program and get very specific, get as specific as possible. There's a specific course. If there's like I mentioned a volunteer experience that you can extend that you've continued to do. So think about kind of how you see yourself there, but then also be be careful with any mistakes that careless mistakes that could really cause some damage. Tip eight, find an editor. I know it's convenient. Obviously it's what I do, but it doesn't have to be me, right? I really urge students to find someone that they can either bounce ideas off of them or think about kind of once they've written, give it to them and just kind of clean it up. If you don't have an editor and you are kind of cleaning up your own grammar, consider reading it from bottom to top. So each, you know, you read the sentences out of order completely. So you're thinking your brain is plugged into the sentence level kind of coherence and not, you kind of know this by heart and you're not really flagging any of the mistakes. I always say, you know, if you can bounce ideas off of someone, if you can really kind of think about how to best tell your story in all dimensions, great, but if not kind of, you know, recruit friends or peers or family members and really make sure that they're as polished as they can be before you turn them in. Tip nine, know what you're writing. So if, when, definitely when you get interviewed, you have to be prepared to speak on any of the material you offer up in your personal statement in your secondaries. You want to make sure that you can kind of add more detail to whatever anecdote that you can offer up a different anecdote that you can talk thoughtfully about any kind of research that you mentioned. You don't have to know everything. And what I would tell you, if you are in a situation in an interview that you don't know the answer, I would cut it there, right? And don't let your, don't pretend to know something that you don't. And the earlier you do that versus kind of trying to get out of a hole, the better. But if it's your material, be fresh, be kind of on top of the detail so that you can add more context to it. Ideally the interview kind of becomes a conversation and an exchange of ideas that you have offered up to the interviewee, right? And not kind of a series of questioning. And tip 10, and this is super, super important. Think holistically about the entire application. Remember what you put in your activity section, what you put in your personal statement. And then the secondaries, depending on what that information is, how is this kind of deepening the values that you want to show? You want to show that you are ethical, that you're kind, that you're empathetic, that you have leadership skills, that you're committed to intellectual curiosity and a sense of lifelong learning, right? That you have clinical experiences adapting to patients of various socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, that you have cultural fluency, that you are kind of, you know, a leader and show leadership skills. I think I just said that. So I would write those all out. And then you want to see that you've kind of represented all of that in one way or another in your application. So they really get multifaceted version of who you are and your candidacy. If you are still working on your personal statement and you want my free guide, it's in the description below. I also linked my template if you want to kind of work through that for your secondaries. Give us a like, please subscribe, and I'll see you soon. Thank you so much for watching.