How would you know if you had a bad LOR ... ??

[Paws]

I've just been reading the other thread about the guy who got rejected 63 times and not one acceptance, and some people wondered if he had a bad LOR he didn't know about.

That, of course, got me totally paranoid and now I am stewing about whether I might have something negative in my committee letter. I know I am just being anxious and insecure (I admit it ... ) but, how would an applicant really know?

So this is my question: do schools have any sort of obligation to let you know that your professors don't like you, or that you're going to get rejected because of the crummy letters in your file? Can they really just send you out into the wasteland of thousands of dollars worth of applicaiton fees, etc knowing that you're about to get screwed?

My school's committee is pretty straighforward and mostly, they try and get rid of you before you get to the application stage (weeding ... ). If you actually make it this far, then they like you alot more and will be supportive. My interviewer said they try and write as positive a letter as possible and that they feel it's their job to support us - not damn us, which made me feel really good.

Still, any one else have thoughts, fears, experiences ...

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[kito]

Its really a matter of incentive. It is in the best interest of the committees to get their kids into medical school, because a high hit rate reflects well on the school. If you get a letter from a professor and it isn't positive, then chances are it won't make its way into the committee composite. At my school, the committee also offers to accept, review, and mail outside letters of recommendation, to simplify the letter mailing process (everything goes out together) and to act as a student advocate by looking over anything that will make it to the desk of the adcoms. It really amazes how efficient some of these committees are. I know for a fact that my committee letter made it to the medical schools before my secondaries did in virtually all instances, and my school has something like 200 kids to deal with on an annual basis. Either they are tremendously efficient, or I am early, or I am lucky. Either way it makes for a happy applicant.

 

[Amra]

How do you know if you had a bad LOR? You'd be in your lawyer's office filing a lawsuit for defamation of character, slander, and discrimination... and winning a nice out of court settlement...

Similiar to employment references, there is not really much they can say about you (legally speaking).
-A

 

[Paws]

You guys have good points, and Ankitovich, I agree with you especially.

I forget that these schools want to look good too and while they might try like heck to get you to drop out or be pushed before you finish the premed track, once you're here they do seem to relax and try and help.

Maybe this would be different if you just had a few letters individually. I have heard some really awful stories about that kind of scenario, and that it would be easier to 'bad mouth' someone, if the writter was so inclined. (I think that would have to be a really horrible person, to want to do that tho ... )

whew ! another heeby-jeeby fear put to rest

 

[28129]

You shouldn't have waived your right to see the letters.

 

[Amra]

You shouldn't have waived your right to see the letters.

Amen!

 

[coredump]

Isn't that a 'no-no' during the application process? My undergrad specifically states to waive your rights when requesting letters.

You can also gauge what kind of letter you'll receive by the enthusiasm (or lack of) of your professor. If he/she seems hesitant during the process, don't risk it. However, ankitovitch makes a good point regarding committees: they wouldn't include negative comments.

 

[Gleevec]

Originally posted by coredump
Isn't that a 'no-no' during the application process? My undergrad specifically states to waive your rights when requesting letters.

You can also gauge what kind of letter you'll receive by the enthusiasm (or lack of) of your professor. If he/she seems hesitant during the process, don't risk it. However, ankitovitch makes a good point regarding committees: they wouldn't include negative comments.

Yeah, my premed advisor (who is very very good to our school) says you essentially have to waive that right, otherwise thats a flag in your application. They want to know they can trust the rec as honest, as opposed to having been filtered.

 

[calebho501]

Originally posted by coredump
You can also gauge what kind of letter you'll receive by the enthusiasm (or lack of) of your professor. If he/she seems hesitant during the process, don't risk it.

In rare cases though, an enthusiastic prof can still write a bad letter. My research supervisor's husband, when requesting a letter of rec for postdoctoral fellowship from his graduate advisor, got a bad letter. The professor was all happy and stuff about writing the letter, but then the letter ended up saying, "He has the skills, but not the motivation to pursue a career in science". My supervisor's husband waived his right, but found out about the letter from a staff who worked at the LOR office at the school.

 

[edfig99]

If you ask appropriately, you should never get a bad LOR. When you ask your recommenders to write, you have to be very specific and ask them if they can write a strong and positive letter of recommendation. If they say no, you move on, and if they are ambivalent, you can ask them what are their areas of concern and then decide to get the letter anyway, or move on.

I have read MANY a great letter and a bad letter (for med school and residency applicants.) Most LORs are an absolute waste of paper or file space (that's when you generally get the letter from the O Chem Prof or TA since you got an A in the class "so and so got an A and did very well and is in the top ten students in this class. I highly recommend him for med school")

The best letters come from people who not only know your achievements, but know you personally as well. That's pretty hard in most undergrads given the large class sizes, but most of the upper division courses have smaller class size, and then there's always GOOD TAs who work for great profs.

Bad letters don't lead to lawsuits - at least, not in reality (though I suppose theoretically they could) especially if you waive your right to see the letter. If you don't waive your right to read the letter, then you'll get a probably mediocre but positive letter that will be flagged. Then it's a matter of an undocumented phone call to get some background info (at least in the residency world that happens).

Just ask the right people the correct way, and you won't need to panic about this stuff.

 

[28129]

Bad LOR's are more common than you might think. I know a number of people that have gotten screwed over by them. It's damning to get even one explicitly bad comment.

A good LOR doesn't necessarily do a whole lot of good, just because of the rampant fraud out there. The applicant himself might have written the LOR. That's all too common. I know lots of people who ask for LOR's and then get a response "Yeah, just write it yourself, and I'll look over and sign it".

A number of teacher's I knew in high school who I asked for LOR's, showed me what they wrote (despite my waiving my right to see the letter), and asked me if there was anything else I wanted thrown in.

Perhaps LOR's count for more with residencies, but with med. school admissions they basically ask you to get recommendations from Profs. that you might not know all that well, so I don't think they put that much weight on it, unless you do get a bad comment.

Your right to retain access is something that you should consider carefully, and not just waive because the pre-med counselor pressures you to do so. I know people who retained access who got into good schools. I think it's more a point of clarification, rather than a red flag on your app.

It's equally likely of course that someone might misrepresent you in a positive way, and this could lead to confusions later on (at your interview, for example) that you misrepresented yourself. So you could claim that you retained access just to make sure that an overzealous recommender hadn't thrown in details of things that you hadn't actually done.

 

[joetxe]

I also just finished my personal statement for Ortho and was wondering if someone could provide some input.

thanks,

 

[Paws]

Originally posted by calebho501
In rare cases though, an enthusiastic prof can still write a bad letter. My research supervisor's husband, when requesting a letter of rec for postdoctoral fellowship from his graduate advisor, got a bad letter. The professor was all happy and stuff about writing the letter, but then the letter ended up saying, "He has the skills, but not the motivation to pursue a career in science". My supervisor's husband waived his right, but found out about the letter from a staff who worked at the LOR office at the school.

See, this is what I mean ! It's stuff like this that makes me nutts.

At my school we basically have to waive our right to see the letters. No choice. I really did my best to be a decent student, worker or whatever but I guess it's just the vagaries of human nature that we can't control. I mean, why would this guy be all nice-nice to his face, and then **** on him on paper. Unbelievable, and something my tired brain thinks about sometimes late at night ...

 

[joetxe]

Hearing this things has made me paranoid too. I recently asked for letters of recommendation.
two of my letter writers said "i'd love too" when I asked them for a letter.
The other letter writer said, I think you're a great guy, you'll be fine.

I can't imagine how they would backstab me, what do you all think?

 

[LP1CW]

If you want to view your letters, this will work. It's unethical and wrong, but I think having negative lettes out there might be worth knowing about and I think it's wrong for a professor to write a better letter while knowing that you need a strong one. If they can't write a good one, they shouldn't write it. It's dickheaded to deliberately hurt an applicant.


So, this is all you have to do. And it works because premed staff, secretaries, just send out the composite to schools and places like that where you want to have them sent.


Have a cousin, friend, in another state with a different last name set up a PO Box and have your letters sent their with attention to their name given. And then created a fake organization....maybe, a student could set up a service for all of us like that and then we could see the whole packet...

for example:
The Consortium of International Med. Appliants and Underserved Communities Program.
ATTN: JOE SMITH (your cousin)
PO BOX zzzzzz

 

[raspberry swirl]

i didn't get a bad LOR, but one of the recommenders sort of made stuff up in his letter because he didn't know me very well (i didn't really know any of my professors at all). he asked me before he wrote if it was okay to say that we had discussed a career in medicine and i had said yes. it was nothing major, however, at one of my interviews, an interviewer asked me " it says here in one of your LORs that you and so and so spent a lot of time talking about medicine. what exactly did you discuss?" and i had NO clue what to say-- i wasn't sure if my recommender was specific in the letter and i didn't want to contradict him, but i never actually spoke with him about it, so i sort of floundered through that one, and then it shook me up for the rest of the interview. i think you should waive your rights, but if you know the professor, it might not hurt to ask if generally there is anything you should know about what was put in your letter, in case questions come up in your interview.

 

[Chronotropic]

Couldn't you just ask your advisor to look over your letters and make sure they are all appropriate?

 

[edfig99]

Originally posted by danwsu
Couldn't you just ask your advisor to look over your letters and make sure they are all appropriate?

yup. if you go to an undergrad that has a premed committee than the ONLY letter you really need in your med school app is the committee letter. most committees prefer to receive any other letters and they can attach it or incorporate it into their committee letter. the reality is that more is NOT better when it comes to letters. application reviewers read HUNDREDS of applications and they like them a little on the thin side.

if you have no premed committee than it may be helpful to have them sent to some type of advisor to look them over, but that would be kinda weird from a recommenders perspective.

 

[....]

If you ask right it can be done.

Just dont say "can you read me the letters"

say something like "I dont want my letters to be redundant, could you read over my 6 letters and tell me which would be the best to send to school X, so that they have the best overal picture"

 

[....]

"yup. if you go to an undergrad that has a premed committee than the ONLY letter you really need in your med school app is the committee letter. most committees prefer to receive any other letters and they can attach it or incorporate it into their committee letter. the reality is that more is NOT better when it comes to letters. application reviewers read HUNDREDS of applications and they like them a little on the thin side.

if you have no premed committee than it may be helpful to have them sent to some type of advisor to look them over, but that would be kinda weird from a recommenders perspective."

Good point. I go somewhere with a letter service though my advisor but no commite.

 

[donuthole]

Hey all

My school doesn't have a pre-med avisory committee, but we have a letter service that sends out individual letters from professors in a packet to the schools. Anyway, when i was a sophomore and junior, I collected most of my letters, but i did not know the difference btwn waiving and retaining my rights. so for most of them, I just retained my rights to see the letters. (looking back, i want to shoot myself! j/k) SO, within those letters, one of my letter writers actually had the balls to write something bad about me!! And this was a letter that I had access to. I worked with her for many years at a hospital, and she said at the end that I need to work on commitments and time management. The nerve!!! Anyway, I'm glad I got to filter that out!

 

[Paws]

Originally posted by LP1CW
... and I think it's wrong for a professor to write a better letter while knowing that you need a strong one. If they can't write a good one, they shouldn't write it. It's dickheaded to deliberately hurt an applicant.

I agree with LP1. As I think over my letter writers and the process at my school, I can only think of one person who might have written me a crummy letter. At our school we were required to have EVERY single professor and volunteer coordinator/employer write us something. We had no choice, so you really had to behave yourself and be a decent person.

One 'job' I had I was able to get the supervising professor's evaluation, the senior MD/PhD researcher, and finally the coordinator. The first two were really positive and great, but the last one I felt was not very nice and sure enough, when it came time for the letter to be done my prmed advisor went thru the letters and said in a very irritated voice: this person did not put the letter on letterhead, he should have known better ... (ahem)... and he told me to politely ask them again to do this.

Since it had been a year, when I emailed this person, he seemed much friendlier and apologized and rewrote it properly. The next time I sat with my advisor he looked thru the letters again and when he got to that one said: much better (or something like that).

So I guess he was looking out for my butt by doing that. Sindce I had 2 out of 3 letters being positive from that experience, it must have been clear that this was just a mean person, or whatever.

I mean honestly, if I were to read a letter actually written on behalf of someone that was a real flaming pile of dog poo, I would feel sorry for the applicant and think: this writer is a complete *sshole.

That's just me, I would be LESS inclined to take a nasty letter seriously, and would think the writer had real problems ...

 

[28129]

I don't think it's legal for anyone at your school to tell you, or even pressure you into waiving your right to see LOR's.

My pre-med counselor, when I asked her about it, said she "would never tell anyone to waive their civil rights".

So stop the convoluted reasoning. If you're concerned, keep your rights to see the LORs. If your school pressures you otherwise, talk to a lawyer.

 

[group_theory]

Some of the posters have complained that they barely knew the writers who wrote the recommendations.

For med school adcom, this makes all the difference in the world. True, it is hard to get to know the professor of an intro class (Bio, Orgo, Chem, Physics, etc). But if you took the effort, and got to know him/her, then the letter of recommendation would have a bigger impact.

Imagine this

"Jane Doe was a student in my Intro to Bio for premed class. She was 1 of 1200 students who took the class at the same time. She has an interest in medicine and got an A+++ in my class. The average grade in the class was a C-."

COMPARE TO

"Jane Doe was a student in my Intro to Bio Class. Although she was 1 of 1200 students in my class, it was an honor for me to get to know her personally. She spend quite a few hours at my office, discussing topics from class, my research interests, her career choices, her interests, etc. I know she is dedicated to the profession of medicine and I would not hesitate to have a family member or myself see her once she becomes a physician. I wholeheartly endorse her application for medical school and know that she will make a magnificant contribution to humanity and medicine."

My point - ask LORs from people that you have spent time with, not just w/ Dept Chairs, and people you think will impress the adcoms.


If I see a good LOR for someone that has not waived their rights to see it, in my mind it carry less weight. Someone who has waived their rights to see the LOR removes the pressure from the writer, allowing him/her to write freely and express his/her true opinions. A good LOR might be what he/she really feels about the applicant, but without waiving the rights, the adcom has no way of knowing whether or not he/she was pressured to write good things (or just don't want to disappoint you when you read it).

 

[calebho501]

5 of my recommenders are kind enough to OFFER me to read over the LOR's to make sure they're alright, so I get to keep a copy of the letter, just in case anything comes up during interviews. When I read over these letters, I felt that one of them wasn't strong enough (Sounds more generic than the other 4), so I ended up not sending that one to some of the schools

I think the key is to find KIND people to write them. I didn't know 2 of the 5 recommenders too well, but the two were still willing to OFFER me to read over the letters.

My school doesn't do comittee letter, so I get to choose which individual letters to send to each school.

 

[Mylaina]

To slightly contradict what has been said...

My undergrad had a committee letter, which took 5 or 6 LORs from profs and mentors of your choice, and a mini AMCAS to make a composite letter. Thank goodness that all my LORs were sent to the schools because my composite letter was TERRIBLE.

We are allowed to see the composite letter, but we are encouraged to "waive our rights to see the LORs" because it gives the writer the ability to openly express his/her opinions of you. Just because you commit years of your life to one job or volunteer experience doesn't mean that a writer *has* to give you a sparkling review. Especially if there is a problem that they noticed (i.e. the time management and commitment problem mentioned above) and perhaps addressed and the applicant didn't bother to fix.

But anyways, committee letters tend to be writen by one person on the committee, and I happened to get one that liked to focus on GPAs. So regardless of the great LORs, the good MCAT score, and high grades in my upper level science courses, my poor performance freshman year brought my science GPA down and all he did was harp on that in the letter.

"She's good, this is what she has done. Her GPA is low. This is what one recommender said about her. Her GPA is low." Not the kind of letter that "pushes" the student to be accepted to medical school, eh?

 

[DrSal]

Man, i feel i must share this horror story about asking for a letter of rec from a prof.

This was my genetics professor. I'd gotten to know him a bit, went ot his office, got some points back on some exams...etc. got an A in the class. This was his last semester, so i thought the guy might like to do a good deed before heading off into the land of retirees. I tell him in January that i will need a letter, he agrees, and tells me to leave my resumee..etc at his office and that he'll get started on it. So by early feb my stuff is with him. The letter was due like late march or something. He had at least 5 wks to work on it.

So a good week or 2 before my application was supposed to be handed in i send out a reminder. No reply, and i check with the office, no LOR in my file. The other 2 prof's had sent in theirs. So i'm like, ok, whatever, and i re-send the same email like a week later, no reply. So i decide to stop by and give a gentle nudge to remind him, maybe he's busy. This was the day b4 the LOR was due, he opens the door sees me, tells me to GET AWAY FROM HERE, and that he's been on vacation for hte past 10 days and is v. busy and hasn't had time to do it. He'll try to have it in when he can, and he SLAMS THE DOOR IN MY FACE!!!!

I am not the most thick-skinned person in the world, and i had just read the "4 agreements" which tells you that you should never take things personally. This was clearly HIS problem, and not mine, he had 5 wks to do it, and he cites his 10-day vacation as the culprit...PUHHHHLLEEEEASSSSSEEEEEE.

Anyway, at that point i decided that my fate was decided, he'd never hand it in, or it'll be horrible, and i pretty much relaxed. He handed it 1 day after it was due.

But you know what, i think losers will always be losers. This professor was a loser. He actually said in class that he went thru all of undergrad and never knew what the R stood for in Bchm, it wasn't until grad school that he realized it stood for the rest of the molecule or whatever. Obviously, slacker type person, somehow made it to being a professor, started getting sloppy with his teaching and research, and making everyone around him miserable. Couldn't write a damn letter in 5 wks. I think he blew up on me b/c he felt small, and like a true loser, except he was the prof, and shouldn't have been like that...

Wow, i didn't know i still harbored al lthese feelings