Late LOR Question

[NCMED101]

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So I was in the unfortunate situation where I was short a letter close to ERAS submission time. I had to ask for letter from an attending 2 days before ERAS opened. I submitted on the first day and have 2 letters in for the programs I applied to.

Question: Should I...
1.) Wait for the letter to come in. I don't know how long the attending will take to complete it and I don't want to pester them since I asked them late anyways.

2.) I have a third letter from IM Chair that I used for prelim programs. Never worked directly with him and letter is probably a generic rehash of medicine rotation comments. Should I use this letter as a "placeholder" so that my app is complete and just upload the late letter when it comes in?

I am a below avg applicant with scores of 225/246 so I'm not expecting to be in the first wave of invites, but based on previous threads some schools do seem to send a lot of invites in the weeks before Oct 1st. What's the better option?

 

[MedAnes2017]

Once you assign letters (btw, you can only assign letters if they are uploaded), you can't "un-assign" them, so I wouldn't use anything as a place holder. I've heard that as long as LoR are uploaded/assigned before MSPE is released, it's fine. I am also in a similar boat. My letters were finally uploaded yesterday, but now I have to decide which letters to assign.

 

[NCMED101]

Once you assign letters (btw, you can only assign letters if they are uploaded), you can't "un-assign" them, so I wouldn't use anything as a place holder. I've heard that as long as LoR are uploaded/assigned before MSPE is released, it's fine. I am also in a similar boat. My letters were finally uploaded yesterday, but now I have to decide which letters to assign.

Sorry, placeholder was probably a bad term to use. I meant more as in should I upload a mediocre letter to have a complete app before my last letter comes in (total of 4 letters)

 

[AdmiralChz]

It's probably OK to wait for a couple weeks of you have 3 letters because that's a complete application. Most programs won't review the LORs in depth until closer to interviews, anyway.

 

[NCMED101]

It's probably OK to wait for a couple weeks of you have 3 letters because that's a complete application. Most programs won't review the LORs in depth until closer to interviews, anyway.

That's the thing, I don't have a complete application because I only have 2 uploaded to anesthesia. I have a third letter, but haven't assigned it yet since its likely a mediocre letter. Should I assign this to the anesthesia programs and then assign the last letter when it comes in?