I have given a name to all my PAIN and it is... Letters of Recommendation

[Rippey]

---

Members don't see this ad.

What a fu-ckin hassel! 😛 😛

This whole LOR process really needs to be centralized. Why can't we just send LOR's to AMCAS and then med. schools can access them whenever the hell they want (kinda like they do in TX w/ TMDSAS).

Here's my pathetic story:

1st recommender - left for Central America and will be gone for 3 months.

2nd recommender - advisor went overseas to Britain and nobody at my whole damn school knows when he'll be back.

3rd recommender - no problems, surprisingly 😛

And here's my favorite part... which happened last year during the '03 application cycle:

my recommender had his letter written for me a couple months before I actually needed them. So, later on, I visited him and gave him the envelopes (pre-addressed & pre-stamped, mind you) which I needed to have sent out and told him to do it as soon as he could. Months later, during my 1st interview, I learned that he hadn't sent them yet. I mean, give me a break! How hard is it print out a couple copies, stuff them in the damn envelopes, and throw 'em in the mail?

The weird thing is, my advisor knew how impt this whole thing was and despite my repeated reminders to him, he still chose to put it off 'til later...

I guess I'll never understand people.

Ugh 😡 😡

I know y'all could care less about my prob's but I just had to get that off my chest.

😛

 

[Megalofyia]

I was just lamenting today on this exact issue.
It's such a pain to have to ask the people who are doing you a favor to have to mail their letters to all the schools you are applying to rather than just having AMCAS send it off. I would think that part of the cost that we pay to AMCAS would pay for them to copy the letters and forward them.
Shoot I'd even be willing to give them more money to be able to simplify the process a little bit.

 

[BananaSplit]

Well, this probably won't benefit you this year, but you can suggest/petition to your Career Center that they establish a centralized letter service so that they can store, copy, and send out your letters. That way, you maintain confidentiality and there's less fuss for you. It probably won't do you any good this year, but you'll have the knowledge that some future applicant from your school will be grateful.

 

[Megalofyia]

Are you refering to something that the university you attend would do? What about LORs from people you work with and have nothing to do with the school you go to?

 

[dmitrinyr]

Tell me about it,

In my school we have one of those officially sounding "pre-health committee", which basically includes one "advisor" who knows less about med school than me and her administrative assistant who loses things (important things mind you) every time she has a chance to. We also have this wonderful policy of prioritizing which student gets a letter written first that applies from the school because the advisor has to write everyone a specific letter. So we had to go to the office right after submitting the amcas app. and telling them that we did so, and then maybe they start writting the letter. I tell you, I am amazed at how anyone from my college ever gets accepted at a medical school.

 

[Blanch]

Yeah, the LOR thing was really difficult. I feel like I might have spoiled relations with some of the professors with the number of reminders I had to send. I was living overseas and had to call international three times to get anything done from one prof. The first time he lied to me and said, "I just finished it and it'll be in the mail tomorrow." Two weeks later (already mid November) nothing. He finally came through, but I really thought I was sunk. Another prof went on an open ocean research expedition and had no access to computers or anything, so I had to have my TA draft the letter and she just signed it as soon as she came ashore.

 

[yettekal]

I agree with everyone. My school has a "pre-med advisor" who mails out copies to all the schools. Of course they lose stuff all the time cuz other pre-med students work in the office and they have a wonderful 6 week turnaround time. AMCAS needs to take care of this with all the money they get.

 

[skypilot]

Originally posted by BananaSplit
Well, this probably won't benefit you this year, but you can suggest/petition to your Career Center that they establish a centralized letter service so that they can store, copy, and send out your letters.

You could also use Interfolio.com which does this for you. It costs $5 per package of letters (times 20 schools equals $100) but it saves a ton of headaches.

 

[raining4days]

I use www.interfolio.com. The LOR writers only needs to mail/fax the letter to Interfolio. Interfolio will then make as many copies as requested and mail them as a package to all the addresses provided.

 

[ice_23]

Yea, either use interfolio, or petition your career development center to be the centralized location. At my school, ALL of my recommenders send their LOR's to the CDC, the CDC puts it on file, and then I just ask the CDC to send it to certain places. Effectively, our career development center takes the clerical burden off the recommender, which probably makes the recommenders happy (and I hope more readily willing to write great things about students...🙂🙂)

 

[Rippey]

whoa!

too bad i didn't know about interfolio a little earlier 🙂

sounds like the answer to my problems

thanks guys 😀 😀

 

[popeyepete]

I feel for you all. I have prehealth thing at my school and I still think it should be better somehow. So much of the app. process relies on others. Relying on amcas was bad enough and they lose transcripts etc. Of course that is after your school(s) don't send it to the right address etc. a couple times. Then it gets to amcas, they lose them. Then getting recs you have to deal with the advisor and people in the office who spell your name wrong and it doesn't get to the places etc. etc. Then you have to rely on the secretaries and stuff at the med school...I bet if somone did a propagation of error calculation somehow on all the steps involved in actually getting into a school it would be pretty outrageous.

All ya can do is check check check on everything and annoy everyone in the process.😕