Am I playing with fire?

[nm825]

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I have a committee letter; however, I'm not 100% positive the letter is great because the interview was very rough. In terms of indiviual LOR, I only have one science letter. As a backup plan for a couple of schools that only require one science LOR, I'm just going to submit individual LORs. I'm only going to do this for 3-4/23 schools I applied to and only if the secondary doesn't ask for an explanation for not using a committee letter. Will these schools care if I do this if they don't mention anything about explanations for committee letters in secondaries?

 

[Vans42]

A lot of medical schools know which schools have committee letters, and if you don't include a committee letter and they know you should have one (exceptions can sometimes be if a student has taken many years off before applying) then it won't look very good for you at all. Why did you feel it went rough? It may not be as bad as you think.

 

[allantois]

Your school has no interest in writing you a bad letter

 

[Make Or Break]

I have heard that mine specifically will be honest about the traits they think the applicant needs to improve on.

 

[nm825]

Well, one of the four people on the committee (a science professor; the rest of the committee is a non science professor and the two pre health advisors who actually write the letter) grilled me with questions that I didn't have an answer to as I wasn't prepared for how adversarial he was going to be. I mean I have ok stats (3.65/3.54/35 MCAT), and id hate to be kept out of medical school due to four people who don't know me especially when my other letters are good.

 

[lmw312]

Can you contact your committee? At my school, the committee will give each applicant a rating ("strong", "competitive", etc.) and will disclose the rating to you should you ask.

 

[nm825]

Can you contact your committee? At my school, the committee will give each applicant a rating ("strong", "competitive", etc.) and will disclose the rating to you should you ask.

They don't have a rating system, unfortunately; they just write a letter.

 

[NickNaylor]

Understand that your ability to objectively evaluate an interview is pretty much nil. Choosing not to submit your committee letter based solely on how you perceive the interview to have gone would be unwise at best IMO.

 

[Goro]

It will be fine.

If your pre-med interview didn't go great, that might be a sign you need to up your game for the real thing.

I have a committee letter; however, I'm not 100% positive the letter is great because the interview was very rough. In terms of indiviual LOR, I only have one science letter. As a backup plan for a couple of schools that only require one science LOR, I'm just going to submit individual LORs. I'm only going to do this for 3-4/23 schools I applied to and only if the secondary doesn't ask for an explanation for not using a committee letter. Will these schools care if I do this if they don't mention anything about explanations for committee letters in secondaries?