Expiration date for LOR?

[MT2MD]

Hello, I am new to the forum and I have a quick question. I am currently a Clinical Laboratory Science major and will be graduating in May. I am thinking about Medical School but I will probably work for a few years before applying (need to save up some $$$).
Basically my school has a pre-med committee where they will store my LORs and after being interviewed by them, they will write me a letter and choose 3 additional LORs from my file. I have talked to the pre-med adviser and he suggested that I ask for the LORs and have the pre-med committee store them before I graduate when my professors still remember me.
He also told me that there are no expiration date for those LORs. I just want to confirm if it's true because I don't want to be in the process of applying and have to suddenly track down my professors because all of their LORs expired. Thank You

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[alibai3ah]

There is no actual expiration date (Atleast I don't think there is), because medical schools will take LORs from freshman year as well. However, I assume that they prefer LOR that are relatively recent so that they can better gauge who you are now (rather than 4 years ago). In terms of your situation, you should have your professors write you a letter of recommendation and send it in to the committee, because your advisor is right...they may not remember you after a few years. If you are really conscious about this, you can always contact them after a few years and tell them to use the same letter of recommendation and date it differently.

 

[moonshine2]

Go ahead and get them now. It will make it easier when the time comes for you to actually apply. You may have to add some additional letters once you are actually ready to apply, but you will appreciate having some academic letters in your portfolio that were written at a time when you really knew the professors. I had to go back and ask a professor I hadn't seen in over ten years if he remembered me well enough to write a good letter. Thank goodness I had worked for him and he did, or I don't know who else I would have asked.

Before I applied I called the school about my situation since I had been working for a while. They advised me to get 4 letters: 1 from an old professor, 1 from a new professor (they knew I had to do the bio prereq), 1 from a work supervisor, and 1 from a doctor/health professional that I had shadowed or volunteered with. I'm sure it varies by school, but this one particularly asked me to get a letter from an old professor. It would have been much easier if I had asked him to write it before I graduated.