Can you change LOR if it's not received?

[velouria]

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OK - I've asked for a total of 5 LORs. My school hasn't said which have been received. I want to submit ERAS but how do I know which letters to assign? What if I assign a LOR that never shows up? Can you change it later?

Do you only assign LORs to schools once your school tells you they've received that letter?

Will be so happy when this part is finished!
thanks

 

[specialk]

You can assign them ahead of time; your school will then upload them. For example, assume 4 letter writers, Dr. A, B, C, D. Place them on your ERAS that way. Your registrar will then upload Dr. A's letter to his assigned place in your ERAS. During this, you can assign different letters to different programs. Programs can only download the ones you assign to them after they are uploaded by your registrar. Prior to this, you can change them out. You can even withdraw them after they have been uploaded, but the program may have already printed them out.

 

[mrdowntoearth]

Do programs wait until they receive all of the required LORs before they review applications?

I have 2 more LORs that I'm still waiting for. One of them is from the IM Director (I'm applying to IM), and I've been waiting for 2 months! I'm almost done with my ERAS and planning to submit it in the next week.

 

[mvemsnp]

along those same lines, what happens when LOR's are re-assigned? I originally assigned one to all the program I applied to, then when i found out it kind of sucked, took it off. Unfortunately, about half of my list did download it. If i now de-assign it and put a new one in, what happens?

 

[NotAProgDirector]

along those same lines, what happens when LOR's are re-assigned? I originally assigned one to all the program I applied to, then when i found out it kind of sucked, took it off. Unfortunately, about half of my list did download it. If i now de-assign it and put a new one in, what happens?

Once we've downloaded a letter, it's ours to review. If you "de-assign" a letter, it's labeled with a little red X but it's still there. That only draws our attention to it further, so don't do that.

 

[HavanaGuy]

Hi,

I was just wondering if you could shed some light into this doubt I have, please! I have a great LOR from an reknown attending I worked with in specialty X stating that I was interested in specialty X and would make a great resident, etc. However, months after I changed my mind of field drastically to Y, from which I also got 2 LORs.

My question is can I still use that LOR without shooting myself in the foot? Given the choice: another OK LOR from new field Y or... great LOR from former field X, which would you recommend and why?

I'd really appreciate your opinion!

 

[mvemsnp]

so we can't technically "replace" old letters with new ones (as per ERAS), you can still electronically access deassigned letters? geez.

Once we've downloaded a letter, it's ours to review. If you "de-assign" a letter, it's labeled with a little red X but it's still there. That only draws our attention to it further, so don't do that.

 

[(nicedream)]

Once we've downloaded a letter, it's ours to review. If you "de-assign" a letter, it's labeled with a little red X but it's still there. That only draws our attention to it further, so don't do that.

Wow, that is good to know. According to ERAS, and word on the street, is that we could deassign documents and replace them with different ones, and unless the program had printed the old one out, it would no longer be accessible. Yikes.

 

[NotAProgDirector]

Wow, that is good to know. According to ERAS, and word on the street, is that we could deassign documents and replace them with different ones, and unless the program had printed the old one out, it would no longer be accessible. Yikes.

Just to be clear:

If you re-assign a new Personal Statement, the old one is overwritten. If the program did not print the old one out, the PD can't tell that you changed it. This is also true for transcipts, MSPE's, etc. If your school sends a new copy of a transcript, it replaces the previous version.

If you re-assign a LOR either 1) before the person submits the LOR to ERAS or 2) before a program downloads the LOR, then the PD also can't tell that you've done anything.

If your LOR writer submits a new letter for you (why they would need to do this is unclear, but anyway....), then again the old letter overwrites the new letter and unless the PD printed a copy of the old letter, the only thing available is the new one.

If your LOR has been downloaded to a program and you de-assign it, the letter remains in our system although it is marked "inactive".

 

[murmurs]

One of my friends mentioned that even you insist that you only apply IM, or
PM, or Path, or others during interview, program directors would know if it
is ture since the personal statement you submitted to different programs
would be marked as Personal Statement 1, Personal Statement 2 or others. I
am wondering if it is ture. If it is ture, apparently if you submit Personal
statement 2 to a IM program, you may submit Personal statement 1 to FM.

Is that right? I know program directors would not see the descriptive title
of PS, but would they see the PS1, PS2?

 

[(nicedream)]

One of my friends mentioned that even you insist that you only apply IM, or
PM, or Path, or others during interview, program directors would know if it
is ture since the personal statement you submitted to different programs
would be marked as Personal Statement 1, Personal Statement 2 or others. I
am wondering if it is ture. If it is ture, apparently if you submit Personal
statement 2 to a IM program, you may submit Personal statement 1 to FM.

Is that right? I know program directors would not see the descriptive title
of PS, but would they see the PS1, PS2?

Good question. I have 8 PS', not because I'm applying to more than one specialty, but because I have one for internship, one for my specialty in general, and then several different ones for programs in different states/regions, and then a couple corrections. It so happens that PS8 is going to most programs, I wouldn't want them to think it's a backup or something.

 

[mlw03]

i don't see how it matters what title a PS is given - how do they know if PS1-10 refers to different versions or edits? the content of the PS is likely far more important.

 

[NotAProgDirector]

In the ERAS workstation, the personal statement is simply labeled as such regardless of what "version" you send.

 

[murmurs]

So you mean there is no such PS1, PS2 exists? Only PS?

Thanks.

 

[NotAProgDirector]

So you mean there is no such PS1, PS2 exists? Only PS?

Thanks.

That is exactly what I mean.

 

[jskm]

I'm in an odd situation and hope someone can advise me. I submitted my application over a week ago, but am still waiting on my final LoR. I just discovered that this letter-writer is "away" and says he won't be able to submit it until October. (Yes, I gave advance notice and gentle reminders, perhaps too gently.) It's a research letter, but I assigned this LoR already to every program on my list as I got multiple abstracts/pubs and because he's an extremely well-known attending in his field. All of this is also very relevant to what I'm applying for. My dean even noted that his LoR could draw more attention than my clinical letters simply because of his name. His letter is irreplaceable -- my clinical letters are all from less-senior faculty.

That said, will a delay like this deter me from getting interviews to competitive programs? I never expected this to happen...

 

[mlw03]

i would hope that as long as the letter is in by a program's deadline it may delay you, but shouldn't cause you to lose out on any interviews. if this letter is expected to be that good, then i think you have to just deal with the waiting. unless you can replace it with an equally strong letter, you probably should wait and take advantage of all your time spent with this person who's such a big name in the field.

 

[saiyagirl]

Another quick LOR question.

Can you add a 4th LOR to any program you have already applied to even if you didn't assign it earlier?

Thanks 🙂

 

[NotAProgDirector]

I'm in an odd situation and hope someone can advise me. I submitted my application over a week ago, but am still waiting on my final LoR. I just discovered that this letter-writer is "away" and says he won't be able to submit it until October. (Yes, I gave advance notice and gentle reminders, perhaps too gently.) It's a research letter, but I assigned this LoR already to every program on my list as I got multiple abstracts/pubs and because he's an extremely well-known attending in his field. All of this is also very relevant to what I'm applying for. My dean even noted that his LoR could draw more attention than my clinical letters simply because of his name. His letter is irreplaceable -- my clinical letters are all from less-senior faculty.

That said, will a delay like this deter me from getting interviews to competitive programs? I never expected this to happen...

Many competitive programs wait until Nov 1st to start reviewing files. If the letter is submitted in early Oct, I doubt it will be a problem. Of note, if the person is "away" but you can contact them, they could write the letter, email it to their sec, print it on letterhead, and have someone sign it. Is it worth it? Probably not, but if it gets you more sleep, then maybe.

 

[Med0000]

My letter is not uploaded to post office yet, but I don't want it uploaded. How can I remove my letter and assignments from ERAS before it is uploaded? Any thoughts?

 

[Shalom77]

Go to the program on eras and uncheck the checkbox next to the letter you no longer want to send. If you go back to track applications you will see that the letter is no longer listed.

 

[HiddenTruth]

Quick question:

I had initially sent 4 LOR's (2 research, 1 chair, 1 strong letter from my specialty) to most places. I just received a strong clinical LOR from a place that I rotated at as an away student. I really want to use this letter as I have 2 research letters, at least at the places I have not heard from yet. Do you think it is a good idea to de-assign one of my research letters in place of this, and shoot an email to the coordinator advising them to disregard/remove that older letter? I definitely did this at the place I rotated at since I need that internal letter. Initially, I sent out 4 because I didn't know when this would creep in, and it finally creeped in today. What do you guys think?

I realize that there will be a red mark, but it's not as if my other letter is not strong, it's just that this is a clinical letter, but i may get dinged for "not following directions".