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Get the committee letter. Otherwise, their may be negative presumptions lingering in the minds of those evaluating you, and that can be all the difference when acceptance rates are low and ad coms are looking to weed out applicants.
 
brainscience2 said:
i go to undergrad at a well-known school that uses a committee letter, but am contemplating not using it since my cycle will already be kind of behind from a late-ish MCAT / primary (wanted to focus on making sure my MCAT score was good). i'm not as worried about getting a bad rating or anything from the committee, it's mostly a timing thing.

if the rest of an applicant's profile is strong (let's say including very strong individual letters), would not using a committee letter hurt an applicant at the research powerhouse schools? also, would the answer change depending on which year you were in (eg traditional, 1 gap year total, 2 gap total, 3 , etc.) and what are considered "acceptable" reasons to not get one if your school is known to have one?

@Goro @LizzyM @Faha . all opinions appreciated!
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Go to the school's Admissions website and see what they want.

A rule of thumb is that med schools (T20 is irrelevant here) LIKE committee LORs and will ask you to explain why you're not using one, especially if you're from one of their feeder schools.
 
Is being a non-trad that graduated several years ago an acceptable reason? I have had great communications with my Health Professions Advisory Office, and the collected my letters and did customized letter packets for each of my schools. I was very thankful they offered this service to an alumnus. However, they could not offer a committee letter since I graduated a number of years ago. That's basically what I put in the explanation box. Is that acceptable?
 
I was a nontrad and applied without one of these special letters.
Frankly, I didn't even know it existed until already submitted my app (simply took the classes I needed, mcat, got professor/PI LORs, and applied)

Worked out wonderfully. To tie it back to your question, I was able to interview without a committee letter at a handful of T20 schools including: Harvard, Duke, Pitt, and Mayo... But, perhaps times have changed? This would have been about 8 years ago 😱
 
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WindmillChaser92 said:
Is being a non-trad that graduated several years ago an acceptable reason? I have had great communications with my Health Professions Advisory Office, and the collected my letters and did customized letter packets for each of my schools. I was very thankful they offered this service to an alumnus. However, they could not offer a committee letter since I graduated a number of years ago. That's basically what I put in the explanation box. Is that acceptable?
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That's acceptable, because the committee will not write a letter.
 
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