How Many Letters of Recommendation?

[Commando303]

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How many letters of recommendation did you end up with? I'm aware OptomCAS limits you to submitting four, but the option (which, I imagine, many applicants will take advantage of) to include, within that restriction, a "committee letter" effectively extends that range to infinity.

I guess my question, then, can be re-interpreted, "How many letters of recommendation did you submit to your school's pre-health department?"

Also, if you did get such a committee letter, did you also take advantage of the three other slots offered to you by OptomCAS? Probably, most people got at least one letter from an optometrist they shadowed, which would not have been turned in to a pre-health committee.

Thank you.

 

[Arctic]

I had massive problems trying to get additional LOR's processed through optomcas. At least my pre-health file was properly handled by them. Luckily, I had around half a dozen letters in my pre-health file (including optometrists) so I wasn't screwed. I do realize, however, that getting LOR's not in my pre-health file directly to each school I applied to would probably have been a pain as well..... I am not sure what the experiences of others were like?

 

[Commando303]

What sort of problems did you face regarding letters of recommendation, using OptomCAS? How many letters from professors did you have? How many from optometrists?

Thanks.

 

[misstd]

I sent it 3 LORs from professors and 1 from an optometrist

 

[yyk]

Simply put, I only had three letters in total:
-1 from an optometrist
-1 from my research supervisor (he was also my professor at first)
-1 from an undergraduate advisor (she was my professor several times since first year)

I did not have any technical issues with LORs and Optomcas, the system detected the electronic submissions instantly, but did not notify my profs + opt.

 

[melbk301]

I had massive problems trying to get additional LOR's processed through optomcas. At least my pre-health file was properly handled by them. Luckily, I had around half a dozen letters in my pre-health file (including optometrists) so I wasn't screwed. I do realize, however, that getting LOR's not in my pre-health file directly to each school I applied to would probably have been a pain as well..... I am not sure what the experiences of others were like?

So if your pre-health advisor has your file of other recommendations (which includes professors and an optometrist), he can send the committee letter plus those recommendations into OptomCAS himself? So does this mean you don't need to list those recommenders on the LOR section of the application and print out the Recommender Request form for each of them since the advisor basically will take care of all of it? Sorry, I'm really confused on this part. Thanks.

 

[Arctic]

If I remember correctly, I marked my pre-health advisor as a recommender for one of the four slots (by mail) and my entire pre-health file was mailed to optomcas; that is still the standard procedure as far as I know. I had at least 3 letters from profs, two letters from optometrists, and the overall committee letter all in my pre-health file, and Pennsylvania properly received all of that (already interviewed and been accepted there so I am sure of this). As for the LOR's not in my pre-health file, however, I consistently had technical problems with my recommenders not being able to log into the system; as a last resort, I ended up switching them to paper-mail requests (by deleting the e-request and making a new paper mail one). This could have been due to the fact that my additional recommenders were older, hence not as adept at dealing with electronic systems, so I can't necessarily blame optomcas for this. But whatever the cause, it still caused me quite a headache.

 

[vis10]

I submitted 4 LOR in total: 2 from professors, 1 from an optometrist, and 1 from an ophthalmologist.

 

[hurricaneuro]

I, like Arctic, designated one person on OptomCAS which was my prehealth advisor. She then sent all of my letters in my file to OptomCAS.

 

[mshea413]

I sent in three letters, one from a biology teacher that I work with as a lab assistant, on from a humanities teacher and one form an optometrist.

 

[289573]

Well I'm not sure how it works at your undergraduate institution, but I only sent in one LOR to optomCAS -- my Pre-health committee letter. However, in order to be considered for an interview and letter by said committee I had to submit 3 - 4 letters of recommendation. I submitted 3, one from an OD, one from a prof. I TA-ed for, and the last from my club's advisor. The Pre-health committee took these letters and the information from my interview with them to compile one huge committee letter -- my school's evaluation + the three letters I sudmitted to them. So even though I only submitted one letter to optomCAS, this one letter was essentially 4 letters packed into one. If your school bundles letters like this I would take this option; don't separate the letters unless you need to -- it saves you a lot of work! 😳

 

[Commando303]

I, like Arctic, designated one person on OptomCAS which was my prehealth advisor. She then sent all of my letters in my file to OptomCAS.

Yes, but, then, how many letters were sent in by your adviser?

 

[Arctic]

To answer your latest question Commando303, the pre-health letter (everything in your college's pre-health file they send out, meaning all the letters within it) is simply counted by the optomcas system as one letter. This 'one' letter can have, basically, as many letters as your pre-health file does, unless of course optomcas decides to change this policy in the future (I doubt it, but still a possibility).

 

[Commando303]

To answer your latest question Commando303, the pre-health letter (everything in your college's pre-health file they send out, meaning all the letters within it) is simply counted by the optomcas system as one letter. This 'one' letter can have, basically, as many letters as your pre-health file does, unless of course optomcas decides to change this policy in the future (I doubt it, but still a possibility).

Arctic, what do you mean by "[my] latest question"? As in, in this thread? I appreciate your reply, but I didn't ask the question to which you've responded.

 

[Arctic]

Sorry for any confusion I may have caused. The pre-health adviser at my, and most colleges I know of, send in the entire pre-health packet containing all LOR's you had sent to the pre-health file. This is all counted as one letter by optomcas; I thought this was the question you were asking, but if not, again I apologize for the mistake.

 

[Commando303]

No problem. I was just asking people how many letters, in total, they collected?

 

[Arctic]

I see what you're asking now. I had approximately eight letters (six from pre-health file and two extra through optomcas, although again I'd had some trouble with optomcas). I know one current optometry student who had about a dozen total, but really, all you need to make sure is that your LOR's, in totality, cover both your academic abilities and shadowing experiences (and if possible, pertinent work/volunteering). And obviously, try and get as stellar a rec. as possible.

More replies (on how many total LOR's people had) would be really helpful SDNers!!! I know basically everyone on here had to go through getting letters.

 

[Commando303]

Wow: eight seems to be the winner in this thread, so far.

 

[CaliOD25]

Just a thought after reading this thread so far: Do you guys think that the admissions committees really read 8-12 letters? Shouldn't it be quality over quantity?
Personally I only had three, and everything worked out fine for me.

 

[Arctic]

I absolutely agree that quality is of the upmost importance with regards to LOR's, and that you can not make up for a deficieny in quality by simply having a larger number of letters. For me, it just happened to work out that I had 5 letters in my pre-health file, plus one more counting the committee evaluation letter. I was required to have at least 3 profs by my university's pre-health committee, and I also had a couple of optometrists submit letters that way as well. Then, outside of those letters, there were two important volunteer programs I wanted to get letters from, which brough my total to around eight.

Again, for me it just worked out to that number, however, I wouldn't be surprised if others had far fewer. As for whether ad coms read all the letters, they probably did (or at least glanced through them), as they were reasonably short and many of them were discussed during my interviews; but I can't be completely certain, of course.