You are entitled to see your recs under some privacy act from the 70's which I don't know the name of. Usually when you request recs from professors, you have to give them an accompanying form with it, and one of the parts you fill out is you voluntarily waving your right to see the recs. The schools will see whether you have wavied your right to it or not and may consider it in how accurate and candid the letter writer is being about you, so it's probably to your advantage to wave the right. That being said, there's nothing stopping you from asking your professor outright if they feel they can write a strong recommendation for you. Sometimes they'll even show it to you, even though they wouldn't be under any legal obbligation to do so, espically if you know the professor really well. In regards to sending them in, never never never send them in yourself. If you're school doesn't have a pre-med advisor or committee, then the profs should send it in themselves, or if you don't want to impose upon them to send it out to 20 different schools, just have them send a copy of the letter to either the carreer center on campus, they sometimes have services for sending out multiple copies of references and recommendations for students. Also, there are businesses out there that also do it. The downside of these businesses are that they cost money to use, but the upside is that they're generally more accountable because they're a business. If you tell them to send a letter to a location, they'll do it by the next day. As opposed to your school's services, where it all depends on how busy the staff is to get to your particular request thus taking several days longer (or in my case a week longer, since my pre-med advisor's secretary has been on vacation all week).
