How did you ask for letters of recomendation?

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How did you ask for LORs?

  • Sent email and asked for it

    Votes: 16 30.8%
  • Sent email asking to meet and then asked for it

    Votes: 23 44.2%
  • Showed up at their office randomly asking for it

    Votes: 13 25.0%

  • Total voters
    52

link9125

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Sorry I am sure this has probably been covered before but I was having trouble finding it using the search function.

How did you ask professors for LORs that you have been out of touch for awhile with. Did you email them and ask to meet. Or email them and ask them. Or just show up at their office one day.

Finally what did your email say?
 
For me it depended on how well I knew the professor and how easy they were to get hold of. Two of them I asked via email. One of them I just stopped by his office.

If you've been out of touch for a while, you probably want to email them.
 
sent an email asking if i could talk to them on the phone (i'm in another state and can't meet with them in person). if i was in the area, i would have sent them an email asking them a time to meet them in person.
 
mine were all from profs i had some sort of contact with during senior year (academic advisor, thesis advisor, pchem prof, women's history prof) so i guess i'm not much help in this situation. 😳 but i showed up at their offices and asked them.
 
I had already asked them in person last year, so I just sent an email asking for an updated letter.
 
I e-mailed my professors to set up a meeting with them. When I saw them in person I asked for the LOR's and brought along my CV to help them out.
 
This is what I did. Also, I printed out a non-official transcript and brought it along and gave them a copy.

Ditto. I also brought a copy of my personal statement. It was a rough draft, but it gave them an idea.
 
If a long time elapsed, I'd say try to see if you can schedule some time with them. Personally, the school where I got my undergrad was huge, so I doubt that professors would even remember me by first name a couple of semesters after.

I would say, e-mail them asking to see if you could meet, try telling them more about you on a personal level (they may wonder why you want to be a doctor), bring a transcript, resume, autobiography (if you have one) etc. so this way they can write you a more personalized letter. I'm sure you wouldn't want to be stuck with a letter that says: link9125 took my class it was hard and they got an A so they would make an excellent doctor.
 
In person if at ALL possible, to do otherwise is impersonal. Seconded (or thirded or whatever) for the above -- set up a meeting, be up front about it, be prepared to talk about your motivations for applying to medical school, bring resume/unofficial transcript. You want them to write a *good* LOR, right??
 
I was 3500 miles away from my LOR-writers when I asked for the letters so e-mail had to do.

However, I also sent them my personal statement and my resume.

Good luck :luck:.
 
I wouldn't say I showed up "randomly" at their offices, because I know my letter writers quite well so I asked them when I saw them in person. I guess maybe it was random, but I would have felt weird setting up an appointment just to ask for a LOR.
 
I ask my letter writers personally--for two I was already in their class so I just asked them near the end of the course. I did drop by the office of one professor whom I was not as close to to ask for an LOR.

I gave my writers a file with a resume/CV, personal statement (rough draft), a copy of my transcript, and my picture (extra measure ;D).

I liked to see my writers in person because it was more interactive and they could ask me questions and "interview" me about my motivations, ECs, life story, etc. (which some did)...more convenient I guess...in case writers are too busy to email back and forth for more info.

just my 2 cents
 
I asked them all personally, usually during their office hours. But since I'm shy, I actually got the nurses in the hospital to ask for my letters of rec for me, but it all worked out in the end. They still wrote my LOR's. Funny/ridiculous looking back at it now.
 
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