Getting in w/o pre-med advisors letter?

[Pembleton]

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I don't know whether to send my LORs with or without my pre-med advisor's letter. I have never met the advisor. I took the pre-reqs as post-bacc classes in the evening. My GPA and MCAT is not stellar. I'm afraid he would only discourage me from applying. Therefore, I think I'll send the LORs without his accompanying letter.

Do you think this is wise?

 

[loomis]

i did this (no premed letter) and have gotten into several schools...although my situation was a bit different (out of school many years, took requirements at undergrad but also postbac, etc.). there is another thread on this topic right now. reading it, it makes me think that it is much better to get your committtee letter....but it can be done with out it! good luck!
loomis

 

[loomis]

PS
i wanted to say that i *have* gotten slapped because of the letters ( i should post this in the other thread too!). I got rejected without an interview from hopkins because of the lack of committee letter/not submitting the right letters ( i called and asked)....i also have (no word since sept) gotten rejected without interview from harvard...while it most likely was cause i just wasn't qualified...i can't imagine that my lack of letter (i went to harvard college) would have been viewed positively!

however, i have been interviewing/accepted to a bunch of good places and at those places no one mentioned my letter situation. 🙂

 

[Amy B]

As a post bac it may be different for you. I do know that most schools require undergrads to get a letter from the pre-med committee at their schools. AT our school we had to gate our LORs and have them sent to our pre-med adviosr. We then had to meet with two committee members who interviewed us. Then they meet as a group and wrote a letter to send along with our LORs. Other schools may handle things differently.

Since you are a post-bac I would check with the schools where you are applying to find out if they waive it.

I did meet with a dean of admissions who told me that if they have an applicant apply that comes from a school they know has a pre-med commitee and that applicant didn't use them, she said they would strongly question why. She sadi it would act as a big red flag on their application, but again, this was for undergrad.

 

[ixitixl]

If your school does have a pre-medical advisory service that writes committee letters, than you might want to get that letter. Their job is to advocate for your getting into medical school. Unless you've seriously offended them in the past, they're not trying to keep you out. It might look a little strange if you don't have the letter. The first school that I sent my supplementary material to gave me a hard time until I submitted my committee letter.

 

[Amy B]

Ooops I forgot to mention that my pre-med advisor did handle mailing out all my letters when I notified him as to which schools needed them. He did this when I applied as an undergrad in 2001 and this year after I had been gone from the school since may 2002. No charge for this at all.

 

[Pembleton]

Thanks for the advice everyone.

This whole process can produce so much self-doubt.

I don't know the pre med advisor at all. As I said before, I took all the pre-reqs as post bacc evening classes. My post bacc grades are fine but my undergrad scores are terrible. I also bombed the MCAT. I want to apply but I don't want any further discouragement from any advisor. I had one advisor already tell me before taking post bacc classes that I had a terrible shot at getting into med school, that I didn't want to hear it again from someone else.

With my poor MCAT scores, I was all set to try again next year but then I got a few secondaries and decided to try my luck. Which brings me to where I am now, and it's already late in the game. Most of the schools will accept LORs without an advisor's letter.

I might just follow your advice and see what my advisor has got to say. I need all the help possible and maybe the extra push of an advisor's letter will be sufficient.

Thanks again.

 

[OnMyWayThere]

Any ideas as to WHY the medschools want a letter from a pre-health advisor SO BADLY? I mean, what's the deal? They know you from your transcripts and 1 interview. Why the constant demand?

 

[Chet Rogers]

My school doesn't have a pre-med advisor or committe, as far as I know of. I bet some schools are like this, also. I hope

 

[cmudan]

I applied to 10 school. Current have 3 interviews. Average GPA and lower MCAT. It was not even an option for me to ask my pre-med advisor. I did not like him and only met with him once during undergrad.

This shouldn't even be anything you stress over. there are much bigger steps in the game. I have had no problem up to this point, although I have great LORs from science faculty.

Don't worry, just do it.

cmudan

 

[camisho]

I'm at Hopkins and afraid I won't get a committee letter with my 3.1 ish GPA...I do have a good MCAT score though. Have there been cases where the committee simply won't write you the letter b/c your grades are too low for them? What if you mention that you're also applying to other types of schools that are slightly less competitive?

 

[toomuch]

I should have listened to my friends and not done the pre-med committee letter. I'm an engineer and I'm at one of the schools where the adcom and pre-med advisor believes engineering is the same as any other major and even easier than the others. I wanted advice one time and they even discouraged me from applying to medical school. They don't understand why someone would go into medicine and not engineering if persuing an engineering degree. My engineering professors were very encouraging, but not them. The committee at my school interviews you and keeps asking questions until they find at least one negative thing they can write in their combined letter.

I found out my negative comment when I actually received a call at home from a school that interviewed me. The interviewer told me all my recs were glowing accept one negative comment on the committee letter. He asked me to explain why they would have written this because he did not get that impression from me at all and he had to explain the comment to the admissions committee. I told him about the committee's discouraging attitude toward my application. I think the best thing would to see how your school writes the actual letter.

 

[TRUE]

Originally posted by camisho
I'm at Hopkins and afraid I won't get a committee letter with my 3.1 ish GPA...I do have a good MCAT score though. Have there been cases where the committee simply won't write you the letter b/c your grades are too low for them? What if you mention that you're also applying to other types of schools that are slightly less competitive?

I'm not 100% sure about this, but I don't think they can not write you a committee letter if your #'s aren't up to their standards. They can highly encourage you not to apply, which the committee at my school has done to a few people I hear, but they still write you a letter if you're insistent on going foward. I think the whole issue is that they don't know any better than anyone else on what your chances of getting in somewhere are going to be. There are just wayyyy too many factors in the whole process for them to be able to accurately predict it all. Go in there and ask them to write it for you. It can't hurt and if you don't write one you, you can tell schools that you tried to get one written but that they wouldn't write for you.

 

[DannGee]

Originally posted by OnMyWayThere
Any ideas as to WHY the medschools want a letter from a pre-health advisor SO BADLY? I mean, what's the deal? They know you from your transcripts and 1 interview. Why the constant demand?

my best guess is that the pre-med advisor is in a unique situation, since they typically work exclusively with people that are in some sort of pre-health discipline. therefore, they're probably better at finding attributes about someone that are exceptional when compared to other pre-meds than, say, a chemistry teacher or a doctor you've shadowed.

also- many schools don't have committee letters for medical schools, especially if you're at a smaller school or one that doesn't have a large number of applicants. in lieu of the committee letter, i think my advisor just wrote a "cover letter" to go into the packet of letters from my professors.