Admittances WITHOUT pre-med committee letter

[trunksvegeta]

Hello out there,

How many of you guys have or know someone that chose NOT to go through the pre-med committee and were successful. I understand most schools absolutely require going through the committee and look unfavorably upon those that do not. However, I have heard of instances where individuals have chosen to get the professors to send off the letters separately possibly because they had qaulms with the particular advisor at the school or simply didnt want to. Those that didn't, how did you get your professors to do so, and were you questioned about going through this route?

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[TechMan]

Not every school has a pre-med committee, so i don't see how that would negatively affect them.

 

[PeasOnToast]

Berkeley doesn't have a pre-med committee -- but we do use a letter service that "manages" your letters to be sent. Does your school have something similar? My guess is that if you go to a well- to moderately-known college, the medical schools are going to be familiar with the "normal" way of processing letters there. See if you can get around the committee letter by opting for batches of professor-written letters to be sent instead.

 

[rajneel1]

many schools have some type of letter writing service and medical schools will require that applicants use it or else explain why they haven't used it. it makes life soooooo much easier so i don't understand why people would not use that service!!!!!!

 

[Nuclearrabbit]

i think all the university of california schools use letter service.

 

[jot]

the rule is that if your school writes a committee letter, you must use it, and as the poster said above, if not you must explain. the letter gathering service is different, of course.

-jot

 

[relatively prime]

This is what I did. I asked my pre-med advisor, who is (though maybe not the best informed) a REALLY nice guy. I told him that I was having all my professors send their recommendations directly to him. I asked him to write a composite letter after he got all the individual letters. Then I gave him a bunch of labels (with medical school admissions office addresses) and stamps, and asked him to mail out a packet containing one copy of each letter with his letter on top. And of course, I asked him to put my AAMC ID number at the top. He was happy to do all this for me... but then again, I was the only person who asked. I doubt he'd have wanted to do this for 5-10 people.

It might he worth a shot for you to ask your pre-med advisor to do the same.

But you really don't NEED a letter service or composite letter. There are plenty of people at my school who in past years got into great schools without a composite letter.

Good luck!

 

[johnM]

My school doesn't have a committee or letter maageing service, so i just got a few profs to send letters for me. I also included a letter with my secondaries explaining that my school's situation and who to expect letters from. didn't seem to be a problem.