LOR question

[brodaiga]

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I had a discusion today with the person writing the med school committee LOR at my school. He informed they assemble all the letters and combine them into one along with excerpts from each letter. He informed that I should not send in any seperate letters to the med school for this upcoming application cycle. However, I had always thought that at least some of the letters should be sent directly to the schools?? What am I supposed to do?

P.S. the majority of the individual letters are at the premed office, i would have to ask for more copies from the writers if I wanted to send them individually, PLEASE HELP!

 

[Apparition]

I was wondering about this also. Most school websites say that they will accept either a pre-med committee letter or 3 letters from profs if there is no committee.

 

[bigdan]

B-
Same thing at my school.

We get the letter written by our pre-med guy. He then sends the composite letter and then also copies of some of the individual letters along with it. Maybe ask if the same will happen for you?

dc

 

[mikedc813]

You don't have to send any individual letters if you have a committee letter. They make it simple for you by writing the composite letter so you just submit the 3 LORs to your committee like you said. Some schools might ask for additional supplemental LORs, but it's standard that just the composite letter goes to the admissions people.

 

[Obsidian]

I was under the impression that pre-med committees had to send along all of the letters they quote from. But, maybe that's just how they do it at my school. I'm not sure.

 

[brodaiga]

You don't have to send any individual letters if you have a committee letter. They make it simple for you by writing the composite letter so you just submit the 3 LORs to your committee like you said. Some schools might ask for additional supplemental LORs, but it's standard that just the composite letter goes to the admissions people.

I have letters from an MD, and another person I worked with non-school related, what about those?

 

[stoleyerscrubz]

do you get to read your LORs or your committee letter?

 

[brodaiga]

do you get to read your LORs or your committee letter?

neither, i turn them over to the committee sealed and they write the committee letter. Any advice what I should from past applicants? There must be people with premed committess facing the same thing...

 

[pjm]

Generally, you do not send any letters individually to schools. Just provide your premed office with a list of schools and they will take care of it.

Keep in mind that getting the letters to the MD school is a big problem in itself. If you have people send letters individually, you have to individually confirm with each school you apply to that they get each letter. This is a massive pain and can result in significant delay since your app will not be considered until all LORs are in.

A good premed office will be able to send the letters electronically to your desired schools, thus removing the USPS/Fedex part of the process. If they can't, urge them to figure it out. (Usually they scan the LORs into a PDF and send it to a PDF-savvy admissions assistant.)

If you believe that a particular LOR is very strong, you should ask your advisor to include that letter in full. Your premed committee should be an advocate for you in this process.

(I heard of a 1950's-era system where the premed comm would pick the people they felt should go onto medical school and just ignored the rest -- does this still occur in large schools?)

You may ask "how do I know if a LOR is strong since it is sealed" -- try to figure this out from your recommender and your advisor. Ask directly if your recommender can give you a strong, personal letter. Most of your letters should be strong and personal, or else they will be ignored.