LOR Question

[mdphdhopeful]

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To previous MDPHD applicants:
Did you send in only separate letters or did you send a committee letter? My school doesn't have a committee but recommends having a composite letter writer (someone who gets all your other letters and writes a summary.) Did you send one of these composite letters in if your school didnt have a committee? Thanks.

 

[dfsdiego]

no committee at my school that I knew of, and no composite letter...a couple profs and a couple research mentors that were collected through a file service and sent out in one packet.

(and another interesting LOR comment, some schools I applied to asked for a letter from a non-science professor but I sent them the same packet of letters as all the other schools (no truly non-science profs) and still heard back positively)

 

[Thundrstorm]

1. Do a search because I remember us talking about this last summer when the 06 applicants were getting their apps together.

2. I had a composite letter that included all of my LORs but I also had my research letters sent separately to the MSTP offices. Every application was different in what it requested, but with the composite letter and 2 research letters, I never had a problem.

 

[CaipirinhaQuinho]

jhu pre-med committee puts together a really nice package of all the letters including a committee letter from one of the deans. I think this helped.

 

[Shatterstar17]

Cornell had something similar. I chose to send a few extra research letters though since my committee packet was only allowed to include three letters (one was from my primary PI, the other was from a long-term boss at work, and other was from a clinical preceptor). I'm not sure what unconscious biases are at work on adcoms on committee letters vs. composite letters, but I would hope/assume they'd be small to negligible. The only thing that I've discovered in this process that seems to be a disadvantage is if an applicant from a committee-letter-school chooses not to avail herself of the committee (raising a red flag with the adcoms 😱 ). The composite letter sounds like a good idea, especially since your PI could focus all of the other letters through the prism of your research. Make sure the originals are all included of course.