Med school app process

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When is the earliest I can submit my LOR?

Is this done during the primary app or secondary app process?

I just want to make sure when I need to get all the LORs in order so that I can finish my apps early as possible.

Missing an LOR will not hold up your primary. Depending on the school it might hold up submitting or being complete with your secondary.

You can submit your LORs before you receive secondaries if you're able to. However, chances are they won't be downloaded or looked at until after you submit your secondary and are complete. That's when they begin to review your file to determine whether or not they want to offer you an interview invitation.

Timeline:

AMCAS opens up on May 1st
- Able to create LOR entries on AMCAS and print out LOR form to provide to letter service at school or individual letter writers
- LOR can be sent to AMCAS anytime from day 1 of AMCAS opening to the end of the application cycle
- You have a choice of assigning these LORs to each school you add on AMCAS

AMCAS submit date on June 5th
- You may leave all schools unassigned to any letter on your file, and can add anytime before or after submitting

Secondaries request LORs
- Re-open AMCAS and assign the required LORs to that school and resubmit AMCAS if you did not previously assign (takes 2 minutes)


My advice would be to assign all your schools the letters you want them to get ahead of time so its one less thing you have to worry about. The letters will only get to them when they choose to upload it off the server. Exception would be some UC schools like UCSF or UCLA which I believe specify that they might not want your letters until you get a secondary since they are screened. Also Mayo traditionally sends a LOR request if they are interested in you, but you can presend them the letters and they will only upload it if you get to that point so it makes no difference.

Usually your Pre-Med chair/committee sends one overarching letter containing LORs from your selected profs.

Originally Posted by NeuralNetwork

Timeline:

AMCAS opens up on May 1st
- Able to create LOR entries on AMCAS and print out LOR form to provide to letter service at school or individual letter writers
- LOR can be sent to AMCAS anytime from day 1 of AMCAS opening to the end of the application cycle
- You have a choice of assigning these LORs to each school you add on AMCAS

AMCAS submit date on June 5th
- You may leave all schools unassigned to any letter on your file, and can add anytime before or after submitting

Secondaries request LORs
- Re-open AMCAS and assign the required LORs to that school and resubmit AMCAS if you did not previously assign (takes 2 minutes)


My advice would be to assign all your schools the letters you want them to get ahead of time so its one less thing you have to worry about. The letters will only get to them when they choose to upload it off the server. Exception would be some UC schools like UCSF or UCLA which I believe specify that they might not want your letters until you get a secondary since they are screened. Also Mayo traditionally sends a LOR request if they are interested in you, but you can presend them the letters and they will only upload it if you get to that point so it makes no difference.

Do secondaries usually contain the types of letters that a particular school wants or do we need to do the legwork and look at each schools website. I know what the general standards are - 2 science, 1 non science, and then a PI if you did research, but I'm curious if schools actually spell out what THEY want.

Originally Posted by DAPI

Do secondaries usually contain the types of letters that a particular school wants or do we need to do the legwork and look at each schools website. I know what the general standards are - 2 science, 1 non science, and then a PI if you did research, but I'm curious if schools actually spell out what THEY want.

All schools spell out what THEY want. Letter requirements may or may not be listed within the secondary itself.

You should submit your letters to AMCAS as soon as you get them (but after the opening date of 5/1).

However, if you are still in the process of asking for LORs, it is better to give your letter writers an appropriate amount of time to write a good letter than to rush mediocre letters to AMCAS.

Note that not submitting your letters with the primary application will not prevent your primary application from being submitted to medical schools (something I was really confused about when I applied).

EDIT: I said before that it takes time to get your letters marked as received, which is untrue because the process is computerized. I checked back on my college letter service and realized the delay was actually on my college's end (so many pre-meds!), not AMCAS'. I apologize.