Generic recommendation letters

[wondergirl3]

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I go to a large state school, and all of my classes have hundreds of kids (my lowest class is ~130, while my other classes are 250+ students)
This large class size makes it much harder for me (and others) to interact with the professors. I go to office hours and there are already lots of people there, and sit in the front, etc, but I feel like it's almost impossible to separate yourself from a large class. I heard from upperclassmen of the relevant classes, that most of these professors use templates solely for recommendation letters because they simply are unable to interact individually with all of the students who come to see them.

Would this be a problem for medical school applications? (having generic letters)
The only descriptive and characterization letter I can get is probably from my PI, and nothing about me personally from any professor.

Will having the majority of my letters be generic okay for my app or will it serve as a negative?

Sincerely,
wondergirl3

 

[prdv]

Also went to a state school, also had the same problem. Yes, it is really hard to get to know these big shot professors with large amounts of students (worse, if they're mostly pre-med)

Do you have an employer/supervisor? a volunteer coordinator? Someone else who got to know you really well can be a great letter to add.

As for the professors, you're doing everything right. There are two things I did that seemed to work.

In one class, I knew I wanted a letter from this professor off the bat, so at the beginning of the quarter, I told him I'm planning on applying to medical school, and hope that I can maybe get a letter from him about my effort in this class. But only if he can write me a strong letter. He was receptive to that, and I think it made him observe my efforts in the class and office hours. At the end of the quarter when I got the A, I reminded him and he sent in that letter with no problems.

Another class, it was impossible to really get to know the professor. He never laughed at any of my jokes, nor did he seem that friendly to undergrads. Instead, I went to a lot of the TA's office hours and got to know the her very well. I asked the TA about a letter, and she was able to get the professor to co-sign it and I am confident that letter was strong.

Try to never have a generic letter! Never be intimidated. That was my problem in the beginning, but it never hurts to ask.

 

[mimelim]

I'm just going to leave this here:

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/letters-of-recommendation.985472/