LOR Question

[madrigail]

Hey all,

I'm fairly new here and was a little confused....

It seems as if you all knew/had read your Letters of Rec. before they were sent to adcoms. I guess I was under the impression that you give your profs envelopes and stamps and then have them mail off the recs after they are written.

Do you actually get them to write the letter and then give it to you to xerox or something?

please help! clueless!

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[UseUrHeadFred]

Check to make sure your school doesn't have a group that receives and processes these for you. At my school, the Pre-Professional Admissions group receives all your letters of recomendation, compile them into a single letter, and, if you want, you can interview with them and THEY will also give you a letter of recommendation!

This makes it easy to submit to all the schools you apply to, since they have all the addresses and such, plus they add some credibility to the content.

 

[chopper]

Letters that you have not seen are looked at much more favorably by admissions committees, as far as I've been able to see. Apparantly, you have a legal right to see anyting written about you, so we had to sign a waiver - that went with the envelope we provided to our professor's, etc.

I haven't seen any of mine - but I can tell who is/is not writing a good letter by how motivated they were to write it, who it is coming from, etc.

I can't speak for others - I'm sure some have actually seen the letters. They may also have seen 'drafts' or the like.

I wouldn't worry about it - just make sure you ask people who you KNOW are going to write good ones. "Do you think you would feel comfortable writing me a postivie letter" is a fair question to ask.

 

[ChE_Babe]

What you're probably hearing is people talking about letters that professors provided them a copy of, so they know what was said about them.

My case is a good example...we have a pre-professional advisor to whom letters are sent. He takes them and sends them on to schools at your direction, but does not let you see what they say (kept totally confidential). However, two of my recommenders sent me copies of their letters at the same time they sent them to him, so that I would know what they said. So they had the option to keep me from seeing it, but elected to keep me in the loop (very cool by the way).

I don't think any schools accept copies of letters sent by you, so you need to check into whether or not you have an advisor/committee that will do it, or use a confidential letter service.

 

[madrigail]

Thanks for the quick replies! I also emailed our pre-med secretary lady and hopefully she'll give me the low-down as updates on the website are few and far between (as in haven't happened since 1998 )

 

[Blade28]

I always thought it was recommended you waive your right to see the letters before they're sent. If the prof wants to show you the letter anyway, great, but usually most people don't see their letters. Or am I wrong?

I didn't see any of my 5 letters.

 

[roja]

I signed the waivers and I had copies of all my letters (given voluntarily by the proffs). This held true for residency, except one.

 

[MG Md 2B]

Are the waiver's that you sign included with the secondary applications, or is that just something that you type up on your own?

 

[vtucci]

At my school, our pre-med office has a form for recommendations with the standard waiver of rights. The professors then send it to our pre-med office and the pre-med committee drafts a cover letter (summarizing and adding their own comments) and encloses our recommendations when they are requested by the medical schools-- with the secondary applications I believe.

I have had 3 of my recommenders forward copies of my letter to me after they sent it to my pre-med committee. With respect to the others, my pre-med advisor saw the recommendations and told me they were very good.