Application Predicament - Input Highly Appreciated!

[CKP7175]

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[LizzyM]

Some schools I know of (Duke comes to mind) routinely submit the committee letter in August and it doesn't appear to hurt the Dukies one bit. Some schools will send you a secondary before the letters arrive and review the letters & secondaries concurrently. As long as everything, including the secondaries, is in by Sept 1 you should be fine.

 

[snowflakes]

So if you interview with the committee in late August, are you sure they'll still have your letter ready by late August? Some schools have quite a bit of lag time between the two events, since it may take 1-2 weeks just to write up your letter.

 

[LizzyM]

Is this a big feeder school? If so, med schools are likely to suck it up and save some interview spots for what it knows to be strong students from a school that sends many students its way. If the school is relatively unknown, then you might be better off with individual letters as it is unlikely that an adcom will have enough experience with your school to know that it has a committee letter.

 

[CKP7175]

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[LizzyM]

If I were in charge of an admissions office (and I'm not) I would hold your application until the committee letter arrived unless you were otherwise a superstar (gpa >3.9, MCAT> 37). So, there might not be any advantage to doing what you propose over just sending the committee letter.

If your school is not well known, the adcom may not even know that there is a committee letter and not expecting one, they may be happy with the individual LORs you offer.