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I had the same issue in my first application cycle, but despite a significant increase in workload in my second cycle, I was still able to invest a lot more time into my applications. I think this was mainly possible because of the following:

  • Prioritization: I decided that besides keeping my learning to a level which would enable me to get a 2.1 at the end of the year, my number one priority was going to be to secure a TC. Firstly, this meant that I significantly decreased the time I was spending on university work in the first few months of the year. I focused solely on doing some of the essential readings to enable me to understand the basics as I was progressing through the course. My worries around the impact to my results were somewhat eased by the fact that I was going to have at least one month at the end of the year in which I could commit only to revising. Secondly, having applications as my no 1 priority meant that I had to significantly decrease the time I was spending on my personal interests and on my social and interpersonal activities. Although never easy, what helped here was being very straightforward from the start to people in my circle about what the next few months would look like for me.
  • Planning: A key element to managing your limited time will be proper planning. For your applications, you need to figure out (i) how many firms you are targeting, (ii) which firms you are targeting, and (iii) when you are aiming to submit each application. After you do that and start working, you will be able to estimate roughly how long it takes you to research and write a high-quality application. Subsequently, you should block out some times in your timetable every week exclusively for this purpose. Then, you can make the rest of your work/free time schedule around that.
  • Improving efficiency: A big issue for me in my application cycle was that despite spending many hours on some applications, the time was not well-spent. Whenever I would lack inspiration as to how to answer a question, I would fall into the trap of starting to do other things: from beginning a new application, to switching to university work, to taking my phone out and scrolling. What I did in my second cycle which really helped was to commit to not doing anything else but applications work in the allocated times. Although it was very frustrating at first, as time passed I realised I was really improving the output as to how many hours it was taking me to write a good answer.


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