letters of recommendation

[etztamar22]

Ok, I am very curious about this.I thikn the most difficult part of the application is organizing all the LOR's. I gor great ones from employers, doctors, teachers, and a pre-med advisor, but my application secondaries didnt get processed til Nov because getting everyone organized and sending their LOR's was a pain, took six months and tons and tons of naggingm, and it was so not my fault! If you reapply, do you really have to restart with all the LOR's or do the med schools give you seem leeway in this if your LOR's were an awesome part of you application in the year past like mine was?

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[Megalofyia]

Can you get your people to send a copy to an LOR service like referencenow? I did that the the months before I applied to med school and it saved me SO much grief. Now when I want to send LORs to some place it's really easy. I send them all in bulk and I can do it online. Plus it's easier on the LOR people cause they don't have to send multiple copies to all the schools. They just send one letter to one place.

 

[mocheese]

How does referencenow work? Do you have to pay them for each individual letter they send out? if so that could be extremely pricey. What are their rates? Thanks

 

[Megalofyia]

I think I paid them just one price per school I sent stuff too. Like 4 or 5 bucks per time, but that was if I sent all the LORs at once. If I had only sent one letter at a time then it would have cost 5 bucks per letter.

 

[Megalofyia]

It sounds like it could end up being expensive in the long run but really this cost was the least of my concernes. Not to mention it made things so much more convinent.

 

[Childe]

my school's premed office offers a similar service for free...

 

[DocHas]

I am requesting new letters from all of the same people for my second year of applications and with the exception of my work supervisor, all of the letters should be about the same. Would it reflect badly on me to have the same letters, dated 9 months ago, resent? I have already sent my secondaries to two schools and am getting impatient waiting for my letter writers.

 

[RxnMan]

I am requesting new letters from all of the same people for my second year of applications and with the exception of my work supervisor, all of the letters should be about the same. Would it reflect badly on me to have the same letters, dated 9 months ago, resent? I have already sent my secondaries to two schools and am getting impatient waiting for my letter writers.

ADCOMs understand a year isn't a lot of time, so they don't expect huge changes between letters. That's if they have your old letters, and if they bother to look them up.

 

[scowdeva]

To the above posts, I would suggest using VirtualEvals or Interfolio if you would like to use a letter service, as it seems all the schools are familiar with these particular services and it could avoid some trouble down the road.

I've also read on quite a few websites that it is perfectly fine to reuse your old letters for the next application year, but they also seem to request a new letter that pertains to an activity of yours that you did in the year to try and improve yourself (ie new professor from extra class, new volunteer supervisor). It may be best to try and get that extra letter in case you are applying to a school that wants it. That way none of us will have to do the letter scramble again!