Secondaries are out!

<p>ha this thread is kind of funny in a way. Anyway, how the heck did you manage a 4.3 GPA? is that like getting A+'s in every class at a school where A+ = 4.3?</p>

<p>Yea, at my school an A+ is equal to a 4.3. I was really bummed to only score a 44 though. I'm pretty sure I did well enough on verbal to get a 15. I will request a rescore. Must've been some kind of scoring error. 14's are for pansies.</p>

<p>wow I'm impressed. I'll be even more impressed if you tell me you're chemE or bioE haha. And even though your stats are such that you don't even have to spend a second worrying about them, I'm sure it would've been cool to be the first person in history to score a 45. ah well, what're ya gonna do about it? I guess you can still brag about having the highest score in the country haha. good luck!</p>

<p>norcalguy, why do i get the nasty suspicion you're leading everyone up the garden path... ^_^ "14's are for pansies" lol.</p>

<p>Either I come off as egotistical enough to regard WashU as a safety school or people's sarcasm meters need a tune up. </p>

<p>And, people, stop PMing me for MCAT advice. I didn't get a 44!</p>

<p>lol, this thread is filled with missed sarcasm. I understand your pain norcalguy.</p>

<p>On a side note, I just turned in my SLU secondary (refer to BlueElmo's question which is how all of this got started). My Chinese parents were like, "You have Yale, UChicago, and UCSD secondaries, and you chose to work on ST. LOUIS' secondary!?!"</p>

<p>C'est la vie. In other news, anyone get pre-secondary rejections?</p>

<p>EDIT: norcalguy, do you have an MDApp profile?</p>

<p>Pre-secondary rejections are pretty rare from private schools, which are more than happy to accept your application fee.</p>

<p>"norcalguy, do you have an MDApp profile?"</p>

<p>yea</p>

<p>bdm, you mentioned that some secondaries are already available online and that you just need to dig through the websites to find them. Does this mean that the general public can see the secondaries (without submitting a primary)? And if so, do you know which schools do this? I was just curious as to how long/rigorous one of these was, and what kind of essay questions they ask. Thanks!</p>

<p>1.) No, I think you'd need to sign up or something. I'm afraid I don't remember the details.
2.) Yale, Baylor, Hopkins, Columbia, WUSTL were the ones I knew of.
3.) They vary in length. CA schools -- public and private -- are by far the most difficult, with the exception of Duke, which is a monster. Penn and Harvard do not have any essays at all; UCLA, Duke, and UCD have an average of eight apiece. Etc.</p>

<p>UCLA and UCSD have pretty extensive secondaries. I don't have UCSF's secondary yet but I heard that there's not much to write. You just send in the check.</p>

<p>UCSD's is fun, though. It's a good application. And it's the same as Vanderbilt's anyway, so if you're applying to both it's not that much work.</p>

<p>I don't like open ended essay questions like "autobiographical sketches" as much as short, direct questions.</p>

<p>It's certainly a very long, unguided essay. But I found it entertaining.</p>

<p>
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I was really bummed to only score a 44 though. I'm pretty sure I did well enough on verbal to get a 15.

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</p>

<p>
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And, people, stop PMing me for MCAT advice. I didn't get a 44!

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<p>norcalguy: Did you really get a 44 MCAT on top of a 4.3 GPA? You're really amazing. :eek: Do you mind sharing your secrets? Do you consider yourself as a genius?</p>

<p>HAHA, maybe you should reread your post dude. The answer is right there.</p>

<p>Just finished my last secondary! Took me around 2 months but I got through 26 of them. I have to say that my essays on the one I turned in today (Stanford) were truly disgusting. I basically didn't care anymore.</p>

<p>Just curious, does anyone know what percentage of applications are invited for secondaries? Is it done automatically, by computer, before the application meets a human eye? Are there aribitrary cutoffs for GPAs and MCATs below which a student will not be competitive for a given school? I would imagine some of the elite schools should be able to eliminate a certain percentage of the applicant pool based on stats or do they want to read secondaries of all applicants? Seems like the latter would be a waste of applicant's and the admissions committee's time.</p>