Committee Recommendation Ratings

[pookey123]

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[WaveRace]

That's rough. It seems like something has to be wrong with your app if you are getting a negative committee letter. Your stats are good, which is why it's surprising. You don't have enough shadowing. How was the personal statement? What about volunteering? Were you involved over a number of years?

If you do decide to apply this cycle, don't use the negative committee letter. As for your DAT, check with individual schools. Most allow a 3 year window, some only have a 2 year window IIRC.


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[pookey123]

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[Faux]

id go individually. are those positive references?

 

[stoopidmonkeycatdog]

I obviously don't know you at all, so take anything I say with a grain of salt.

To me you seem a little immature? It's quite possible that their recommendation for you to take a gap year was for you to grow up a little bit and get some life experience.

It makes no sense to make rash judgments from reading a few paragraphs of text, but the yeah instead of yes, the swivelling around, thinking it is about the student org, and thinking they're screwing you over instead of doing their jobs properly leads me to believe you might be a tiny bit immature.

As for what to do on your application, in your shoes I would definitely decide to switch to professor letters of rec instead of the committees. You definitely don't want a bad letter on file.

 

[WaveRace]

Neither the committee or anyone else I have talked with have said anything else that was negative. My premed friend overheard my advisor cussing at the student org I was in so I think that is why. Been volunteering from the start. I have even shown my personal statement to an admissions counselor and their feedback was mostly good; have revised it even more since then.

Should I contact my letter writers to upload their letters to AADSAS once it opens? I am not sure how the application works. My advisor said she can forward my letters as well. Should I let her do it or ask my letter writers to be safe? Is it ok to give out my application number?

Once the application opens, there is a section of the application for letters of recommendation. You type in each person's name/email/etc. AADSAS sends them a secure link in an email, where they upload their confidential letter.

I'd say contact the individual references to have them upload the letters. As the two other people in this thread have mentioned, are those letters positive? There really is something missing from what you are telling us. It makes no sense for a committee to give the lowest recommendation possible (aside from no recommendation), to someone with good stats. Not to call you out, but I don't believe that a committee would give you a bad recommendation based on not liking your student organization. That's ridiculous. You have to have a red flag (or multiple) of some kind. You don't have to reveal them here, but you should figure out what they are and address them.

 

[pookey123]

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[pookey123]

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[stoopidmonkeycatdog]

I see what you mean. When I asked my advisor why, she did not mention immaturity and has never mentioned it in any of our meetings. I have met with her at least once every semester. People tend to think I am too serious, but I will definitely keep this in mind as a younger applicant. I thought swiveling slightly would be better than sitting perfectly still.

I admit it sounds kind of paranoid to blame a club, but when she cited "lack of dental experience" as the reason I was extremely surprised. Some schools have only 40 hours required, others don't have a set number of hours. The SDN consensus seems to be 100+ is best, which I am on track to reach before the application opens. During the committee interview the professors asked my advisor questions about dental school (they didn't know what AADSAS was or that there was a centralized application service, and wondered if the ps should be contain school-specific things).

Required = minimum

Think about this, most schools have a required GPA of 3.0. does that mean you would feel okay applying with a. 3.0 or 3.2? No. If you have near the minimum it is realistic to say you have a low amount of dental experience.

I don't think it's fair to write a bad letter of rec simply because of that though :/ like it has been mentioned, go with the individual letters.