Advice on Selecting LOR

[threemileisle]

---

Members don't see this ad.

I completed a postbac program and have a committee packet (plus committee letter) available. The packet is to include four letters. Obviously, one will be the committee letter. Two others will be from two of the dentists I worked with. For the last, I have several options, but I'm not sure which would be best:

1) A letter from my previous employer. It shows I worked well in a structured setting, collaborated well with my colleagues, and that I was doing something with my life prior to returning to school. However, it's a few years old.

2) One of the letters from my professors (I have 3). They show my academic potential, but may also be redundant as most of the info in the letters is likely included in the committee letter.

3) A letter from a 280-hour clinical program in a hospital. This demonstrates my commitment to the community with 280 hours, but it's probably the least personalized of all of my letters, it's not dentistry related and it may be overkill given I already have two letters from dentists.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Glimmer1991]

Are you talking about choosing which letters go IN your committee letter, or are these letters going to be in addition to it?

If you upload a committee letter, are you able to upload 3 more? For some reason, I thought AADSAS would only let you upload committee + one extra.

 

[sjv]

Yeah, if you have a committee letter, you can only upload one more which would probably be a dentist letter in your case?

 

[ModifiedBass]

I don't know if I understand your committee packet system, but for mine I was able to send more than 6 LORs to the committee, then they wrote a letter and included the other letters in their committee packet to AADSAS. So my committee packet contained 7 separate letters. Talk to your committee and see if they will accept more letters, can't hurt.

 

[threemileisle]

Honestly, I'm a little confused myself. As I understand it, it's true that if uploading a committee letter to AADSAS, only one additional letter is allowed. But the "committee letter" is actually a committee packet that includes multiple letters sent by my pre-health committee. I was told that only four letters could be included in this packet, but I'll definitely double check on that.

That's what I was referring to in my original question. If I am indeed restricted to four letters in that packet, which of the ones I listed would be best to include as my fourth letter?

Now I'm also curious: if I am limited to four letters in the committee packet, should I then use the secondary upload to AADSAS (with the first slot being filled by the committee letter/packet)? I have no idea how ADCOMS view committee packets vs secondary letters.

 

[RUlaxin]

Hopefully I can clear this up..

My school has a pre-health committee, which I decided to go through as far as my LOR's are concerned. The committee wrote a letter of recommendation of their own, as well as picked 4 other letters to be sent along with it. The committee member who wrote my letter explained to me after our interview that he will choose 4 letters that best suit my needs, which is the perk of going through them. They then uploaded my "packet" containing 5 letters in total to AADSAS the following day.

 

[threemileisle]

Quick update:

Turn out that, in theory, the number of letters that can be included in a committee packet is unlimited. However, when uploading to AADSAS, the committee uploader is restricted to a 1Mb file size limit. Meaning it's unlikely to fit more than 5-7 letters.

 

[free99]

Meaning it's unlikely to fit more than 5-7 letters.

It's also very unlikely adcoms are going to read 5-7 letters.