Interfolio or my college's letter service?

[OCDOCDOCD]

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So for reasons that are explained in a past thread, I ended up requesting LORs from almost all my writers already and now I need to find a service for them to submit letters to. My college has such a service through VirtualEvals but it costs $50 a year; there isn't any charge when you send letters to schools though, so you can do that as much as you want. It has a convoluted sign up process though that requires physically mailing a bunch of documents and a check. It also has LOR writers fill out a short evaluation form in addition to the letter.

There's also interfolio, which is way cheaper per year ($19), is way easier to sign up for, and doesn't have pointless evaluation forms. However, they also charge you every time you send a letter to a school.

What I'm confused about is that I thought with MD schools all you have to do is send your letters once to AMCAS and then AMCAS sends your letters to every school that you request. If that's true, then interfolio would be way cheaper and would become the obvious choice.

Which would you guys suggest? Is there anything I'm not taking into consideration?

 

[aiwe]

Do you know how exactly your school's service sends letters to AMCAS? Because my school's service physically mails them, and AMCAS uses a PO box address, I had to choose regular postal service mail. It took 2-3 days for each letter to be mailed by the letter service, and then another 3-5 business days for AMCAS to receive each letter.

Because I ended up waiting on a lot of letter writers, this was very nerve wracking and delayed me sending in one very important letter.

Unless your school can instantly get that letter to AMCAS, I'd choose Interfolio. It's not worth the wait using the letter service.

 

[MusicJunkie]

I used Interfolio. I really liked having confirmation that my letters were delivered and I felt more in control of the process.

I used Interfoilo for both the MD and DO process. With DO schools, it was expensive because you have to send each individual letter to the school for a charge. For the MD schools, I sent the letters once to AMCAS, then used AMCAS (for free) to send the letters to each individual school.

 

[TheShaker]

So for reasons that are explained in a past thread, I ended up requesting LORs from almost all my writers already and now I need to find a service for them to submit letters to. My college has such a service but it costs $50 a year; there isn't any charge when you send letters to schools though, so you can do that as much as you want. It has a convoluted sign up process though that requires physically mailing a bunch of documents and a check. It also has LOR writers fill out a short evaluation form in addition to the letter.

There's also interfolio, which is way cheaper per year ($19), is way easier to sign up for, and doesn't have pointless evaluation forms. However, they also charge you every time you send a letter to a school.

What I'm confused about is that I thought with MD schools all you have to do is send your letters once to AMCAS and then AMCAS sends your letters to every school that you request. If that's true, then interfolio would be way cheaper and would become the obvious choice.

Which would you guys suggest? Is there anything I'm not taking into consideration?

I would go with Interfolio. At least you will have complete control over your account rather than having to go through your college all the time. Plus, you only pay the fee for one destination (even though I don't remember having to pay a fee to send stuff). You're sending the letters to AMCAS once, not a bunch of schools.

 

[OCDOCDOCD]

Do you know how exactly your school's service sends letters to AMCAS? Because my school's service physically mails them, and AMCAS uses a PO box address, I had to choose regular postal service mail. It took 2-3 days for each letter to be mailed by the letter service, and then another 3-5 business days for AMCAS to receive each letter.

Because I ended up waiting on a lot of letter writers, this was very nerve wracking and delayed me sending in one very important letter.

Unless your school can instantly get that letter to AMCAS, I'd choose Interfolio. It's not worth the wait using the letter service.

My school uses VirtualEvals. I forgot to mention that part.

 

[sazerac]

Interfolio, by a long shot. You can only wish the rest of the world was run as efficiently as Interfolio.

If the PPACA had put Interfolio in charge of all of US healthcare, there would be no crisis.

(notsrs)






(okay, somewhat srs)

 

[VictorAlpha]

I used interfolio, fwiw

 

[Elewynne]

Has anyone used the online AMCAS letter writer application? Good, bad? I'd rather not spend money on Interfolio if the AMCAS is basically the same thing.

https://services.aamc.org/letterwriter/

 

[IL Pre Med]

Is there any advantage of using Interfolio vs just regular AMCAS submission? You don't pay additional for submitting directly to AMCAS right? What's the plus side of using Interfolio? I would assume if you need letters again the following year (if you don't get in) you would need new letters instead of recycled ones.

Also, do you get to read the letters with either option?

 

[mcloaf]

Huh. My school used the veCollect client (made by VirtualEvals) to collect letters for writing the committee letter, but I never had to pay any money since I wasn't using VirtualEvals, per se--my school just mailed the committee letter packet to AMCAS, I believe.

 

[OCDOCDOCD]

Has anyone used the online AMCAS letter writer application? Good, bad? I'd rather not spend money on Interfolio if the AMCAS is basically the same thing.

https://services.aamc.org/letterwriter/

Is there any advantage of using Interfolio vs just regular AMCAS submission? You don't pay additional for submitting directly to AMCAS right? What's the plus side of using Interfolio? I would assume if you need letters again the following year (if you don't get in) you would need new letters instead of recycled ones.

Also, do you get to read the letters with either option?

The AMCAS letter service doesn't open up until applications do. So if you want to collect your LORs before then, you'd need a letter service to hold onto them. Granted you could ask your letter writers to do that, but that's asking for trouble imo.

Anyway, thanks for the replies everybody, I went ahead and signed up with Interfolio.

 

[EsotericAlchemy]

I have a question for those who have used Interfolio and had a premed committee. The premed committee wants to handle all the letters so that they can make a packet and write the committee letter. I don't want this process to delay things. Should I have letter writers send a copy to Interfolio and a copy to the premed committee? Ideally, I could have everything on Interfolio.

 

[OCDOCDOCD]

I have a question for those who have used Interfolio and had a premed committee. The premed committee wants to handle all the letters so that they can make a packet and write the committee letter. I don't want this process to delay things. Should I have letter writers send a copy to Interfolio and a copy to the premed committee? Ideally, I could have everything on Interfolio.

There's no point, med schools are going to want the CL, not your individual LORs. You can use interfolio for extra letters, but if you're eligible for a CL then you have to submit it.

 

[Oo Cipher oO]

Is there any advantage of using Interfolio vs just regular AMCAS submission? You don't pay additional for submitting directly to AMCAS right? What's the plus side of using Interfolio? I would assume if you need letters again the following year (if you don't get in) you would need new letters instead of recycled ones.

Also, do you get to read the letters with either option?

The advantage comes if are either apply to DO schools or if you don't get in during your first cycle. I didn't get in my first cycle and all my old letters from AMCAS disappeared. I had to go to all my professors a year later to request the same letter explaining to them I didn't get in the first time. I used interfolio the second time and severely regret not using it the first time. It's still confidential so you can't read your letters but it gives you control over your letters. The price to send letters in pittance compared to everything else in this blasted application process.

 

[S198]

Lucky, I applied to graduate schools and had to send letters to each individual school (I had ten different schools with ten transcripts and thirty letters). AMCAS is such a nice service.

Cheers,

S

 

[S198]

AMCAS letter service is working according to my records. Everything with them seemed fine starting with their ease of uploading and straightforward forwarding.

 

[earf]

I loved Interfolio. One of my professors refuses to use the AMCAS letter service because it was so complicated, whereas Interfolio is very user friendly.