Does a composite letter count as one of multiple letters?

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Some schools requires either a pre-medical committee letter, which at my school is all of your letters of recommendation in one letter (called a faculty composite). If I send this in to fulfill the "committee letter" option that most schools want would this cause me to exceed limitations on total letters or would all six of my letters be considered one letter.

I asked my advising office about this and got slightly confusing answer. It was something along the lines of "Send the composite, and if you are over their requirements they will probably read all of them anyway". That makes me nervous because I don't want to rustle any feathers by violating the rules.

From George Washington's site:
A Pre-Health or Pre-Medical Committee Letter (required if available to you) OR
Three individuals letters (with a maximum of 5), at least one of which must be from a science faculty member familiar with your academic work.

Above is an example of what I am talking about. I have the first part of the "or" statement but I wonder if the fact that it has more than 5 letters in it would cause a problem. I tend to think that the composite, no matter how many letters is contains, is viewed as one letter. That is how my school sent it in to AMCAS and it appears as one letter in AMCAS.

 

[LizzyM]

Some schools requires either a pre-medical committee letter, which at my school is all of your letters of recommendation in one letter (called a faculty composite). If I send this in to fulfill the "committee letter" option that most schools want would this cause me to exceed limitations on total letters or would all six of my letters be considered one letter.

I asked my advising office about this and got slightly confusing answer. It was something along the lines of "Send the composite, and if you are over their requirements they will probably read all of them anyway". That makes me nervous because I don't want to rustle any feathers by violating the rules.

From George Washington's site:
A Pre-Health or Pre-Medical Committee Letter (required if available to you) OR
Three individuals letters (with a maximum of 5), at least one of which must be from a science faculty member familiar with your academic work.

Above is an example of what I am talking about. I have the first part of the "or" statement but I wonder if the fact that it has more than 5 letters in it would cause a problem. I tend to think that the composite, no matter how many letters is contains, is viewed as one letter. That is how my school sent it in to AMCAS and it appears as one letter in AMCAS.

The committee letter has you covered. It doesn't matter how many pages or authors. The second has a limit of 5 because of the workload multiple letters creates for staff who have to upload those letters (or perhaps this rule is left over from the olden days when letters were written on paper, mailed to the schools, and physically placed in folders. Too many letters made too much work for the file room clerk.)