eLOR Question

[GatoGris]

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Hi all! First time poster, long time lurker 🙂

I have a question for those of you who have used VMCAS before. I know that all LORs are now eLORs, but do they have to be submitted by the letter writer? Obviously I can't do it, but what about an advisor?

My situation is this: One of my professors asked that if anyone in the class wanted an LOR, to please give him their info prior to May 7th and he will send in the LOR within a few days. As I'm sure you all know, VMCAS doesn't open until June. After speaking with one of the undergrads (I'm a post-bacc), I learned that for AMCAS, all the students have their letters sent to their advisors and then the advisors put them into the system. Does it work the same way for VMCAS?

I put a call and an e-mail into my advisor (whose performance thus far has, shall we say, been suboptimal), but haven't heard back from her yet. In any event, she has never had an answer to any one of my questions regarding the application process, so I'm not holding my breath.

In the end, it won't be a huge deal, because he said that if we can't have everything to him by the 7th, he will send it in in July. I just want to know if the process is different than what he is used to-he's a faculty MD at a teaching hospital, so I think that he's probably pretty used to AMCAS. This way i can have all my ducks in a row and make both of our lives easier.

Well, that was a lot of words for a simple question. Thanks for your help in advance!

 

[chii chan]

The person who is writing your LOR has to do it. You put in the information for the person writing the LOR (name, job title, email). VMCAS sends them an e-mail which gives them access to the eLOR section. I honestly shouldn't know what it looks like, but there are 3 sections, if I remember correctly. Only 1 of those is the actual letter that is limited to 3500 characters, or something. Some of the other sections deal with random questions/ratings about the person.

Keep in mind that you will need a vet to write one of these letters. It was discussed on this previous thread: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=9464745

 

[cowgirla]

Make sure this prof knows you well enough to write a strong LOR. The fact that he's offering to write the whole class letters in "a few days" would make me a little hesitant. For all you know he has a template for lor's and everyones is basically the same.

Ideally you want a prof that knows you well, knows your strengths, dreams, etc more than just " x performed well in my class". Adcoms want to know why this person thinks you'll make a good vet.

For example, I've taken 2 upper level sciences with my prof, he takes his dogs to the vet I work for, etc

 

[Minnerbelle]

After speaking with one of the undergrads (I'm a post-bacc), I learned that for AMCAS, all the students have their letters sent to their advisors and then the advisors put them into the system. Does it work the same way for VMCAS?

I did that with all of my LORs and had my advisor send it out as a committee letter (in paper form) to VMCAS. Be warned that you will have to get permission from VMCAS to do this beforehand and it's a pain in the ass. AND, a lot of vet schools will not accept them. Apparently, Penn, Tufts, and Cornell love them (according to my advisor). You'll have to do it usually in paper form, because there's a word limit on the VMCAS eLOR, and also, the letter from your individual LORs will be scanned in, not typed in. It's a pain in the butt and redundant, and I'm not sure it's worth doing... but it can't hurt.

That being said, most schools will not take them! So if you do that, make sure that you list it as an extra letter beyond the required 3 eLORs. VMCAS will not send your application to vet schools until you have 3 eLORs submitted.

So... if you're going the committee letter route, I would have your evaluator send a copy to your advisor, but also have him save an electronic copy for later. Otherwise, just have him hold off on it.

 

[NStarz]

I hate to hijack this thread, but Minnerbelle, can you elaborate a little further about the committee eLORs?

My school has a pre-professional health form that they ask us for, we submit it to the committee, and then they write a LOR. I am providing them with the application enginge (VMCAS) in the form. I'm sure they are used to dealing with more med than vet (and not sure if the AMCAS uses eLORs in comparison).

What did you have to do to allow for a committee letter to be accepted by the different schools (or just VMCAS, in general)?

 

[GatoGris]

Make sure this prof knows you well enough to write a strong LOR. The fact that he's offering to write the whole class letters in "a few days" would make me a little hesitant. For all you know he has a template for lor's and everyones is basically the same.

Ideally you want a prof that knows you well, knows your strengths, dreams, etc more than just " x performed well in my class". Adcoms want to know why this person thinks you'll make a good vet.

I hear what you're saying. However, I don't have any classes small enough to actually know my professors very well. Additionally, I think that he made this disclaimer due to the nature of the class. Basically, it's a rather small class (by this university's standards) about clinical research in emergency medicine. So you hang out in the emergency department, see all the cool stuff they do (some of which we do in vet med, some of which we don't) and help out with the studies they have going on. Because you get to work fairly closely with MDs a TON of pre-meds try to take it so that they can have an MD LOR. I took it because I am interested in clinical research. Since so many students ask him for LORs, he sets it up so that he can be as organized as possible. It still probably won't be the most personal LOR ever, but it is an academic LOR and that's what I need.

Keep in mind that you will need a vet to write one of these letters.

Definitely not an issue. Right now I have ~8500 veterinary experience hours. Because I work for a vet school (not saying which one, as I would like to preserve my anonymity), there are faculty vets willing to write my LORs.

I did that with all of my LORs and had my advisor send it out as a committee letter (in paper form) to VMCAS. Be warned that you will have to get permission from VMCAS to do this beforehand and it's a pain in the ass. AND, a lot of vet schools will not accept them. Apparently, Penn, Tufts, and Cornell love them (according to my advisor). You'll have to do it usually in paper form, because there's a word limit on the VMCAS eLOR, and also, the letter from your individual LORs will be scanned in, not typed in. It's a pain in the butt and redundant, and I'm not sure it's worth doing... but it can't hurt.

Wow. This sounds...unpleasant. 🙁


Thanks everyone for your input. Much appreciated. Promise not to lurk too much, Minnerbelle http://img2.studentdoctor.net/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

 

[Minnerbelle]

I hate to hijack this thread, but Minnerbelle, can you elaborate a little further about the committee eLORs?

My school has a pre-professional health form that they ask us for, we submit it to the committee, and then they write a LOR. I am providing them with the application enginge (VMCAS) in the form. I'm sure they are used to dealing with more med than vet (and not sure if the AMCAS uses eLORs in comparison).

What did you have to do to allow for a committee letter to be accepted by the different schools (or just VMCAS, in general)?

So what I did was picked 3 important evaluators (vet, PI, academic) and one extra vet (for Ohio), so a 4 total, and had each of them submit an eLOR through VMCAS. That involves putting their contact info in your VMCAS application, and VMCAS sends them a login and PIN so that they can submit your evaluation. I also had each of those 4 evaluators submit a copy of their LOR to my pre-health committee. On top of that, I think I had 4 additional LORs set to the pre-health committee but NOT to VMCAS.

I emailed VMCAS and confirmed with them beforehand that it would be okay for me to send them a committee letter. Then, in the VMCAS "Evaluations" section, I added the committee chair's contact info and checked off that it would be an "other" (rather than an eLOR) type of LOR. The committee letter was sent from my college to VMCAS, and VMCAS shipped copies of it off to all of the vet schools I applied to. I'm sure that the schools that don't accept committee letters just tossed them into the trash bin, but they got them anyway.

Hope that clarified it a bit. Feel free to PM me if you have any more questions. Piece of advice if you decide to utilize the committee letter. Be diligent about keeping track of your application materials for VMCAS as well as for each vet school. If you list all of your evaluators from your composite letter individually on your supplemental, but the person checking off your application materials only checks off your committee chair... your application may be deemed incomplete. I had to call VMCAS 3 times to make sure that they've found my committee letter after it was found as well.