Being Complete even though all my LORs are not in?

[classicgirll]

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I had a quick question -
I submitted my primary and was verified, and sent secondaries. One of my schools has a minimum letter requirement of 3 and a maximum of 6. I chose to select 5 to assign to this particular medical school. So far, 4 of these letters are in and the 5th one is not. However, I submitted my secondary anyway, hoping that the 5th letter would arrive soon and therefore I could be considered complete when that happened. However, when I submitted my secondary, I was notified that I was complete - and would now be reviewed, even though all my assigned LORs are not in! This is one of the stronger LORs I believe so I really don't want to be considered without it. Is this normal? What do I do? Can I call the school and tell them to wait for that last assigned letter to come in? Thank you - and good luck to everyone!

 

[LizzyM]

I'm pretty sure that the school can see that there is one letter yet to arrive. I think that "complete" means that you've submitted the secondary which they were waiting for.

 

[honeybee87]

I'm pretty sure that the school can see that there is one letter yet to arrive. I think that "complete" means that you've submitted the secondary which they were waiting for.

Would you recommend waiting for LOR to come in before submiting secondaries? Or should we submit early instead? For example, for NYMC, I’m just waiting on my LOR to upload his letter (I already took CASPer).

 

[LizzyM]

Submit your secondary as soon as you can. A delay can be interpreted as lukewarm interest. Letters can trickle in through Labor Day (many committee letters are written in July and August while students are away and the pre-med office is quiet) but your secondary should be turned around within a week or two of receipt, if at all possible..

 

[classicgirll]

Each School has its own process. Part of this is when they start the full evaluation of an application and how/when they include letters in that process.

Most will have an initial screen/evaluation where primary, secondary, MCAT and LORs are noted for completeness. Historically letters, especially committee letters, are not not written and sent until after the start of the Fall term, many schools will start the evaluation process without them. At this initial screen, applications are assigned to a team, subcommittee or individual readers for full evaluation. This may mean your application is broken up into pieces and read by several people, who then comment/score/classify your their section according to guidelines/policy/outline previously developed by adcom. LORs would fall into that and could be evaluated at same time or later. The LORs may or may not be needed prior to II at some schools.

Just to extend further, in my terminology a team are a group of evaluator who deal with a stack of applications and provide recommendation/scoring. A subcommittee does the same thing but has voting powers for II. At some schools, previously defined metrics may be in place so individual evaluators can offer II based on them. For LCME requirements, the adcom must vote for acceptance. However, all other decisions during the process could be made by a team, subcommittee, or individual evaluator. Some schools have adcom with technically over 100 members and an extensive subcommittee process to offer II. Others have 25 voting members and each application is read in by only two faculty who decide or recommend II. Trying to explain the process at over 150 schools has more variables than I care to discuss. I call in the black box of admissions

Thank you for your thorough answer - you are a gem of a resource!

 

[honeybee87]

Submit your secondary as soon as you can. A delay can be interpreted as lukewarm interest. Letters can trickle in through Labor Day (many committee letters are written in July and August while students are away and the pre-med office is quiet) but your secondary should be turned around within a week or two of receipt, if at all possible..

I heard that you shouldn’t send letters that have not been added to AMCAS yet because they might not be uploaded (I’m experiencing this right now, my nonscience LOR is ghosting me 🙁. So still send the secondaries then? Should I still assign all the letters that I want to assign for that school, even if the letter isn’t in yet?