LOR requirements

[Rugger81]

Our pre-med advisor told us that since our pre-med committee would be writing a big composite letter, we didn't need to send the individual letters to each school. But I was looking on some websites, and it seems like some schools (notably Stanford and Cornell) require or suggest more letters in ADDITION to the composite committee letter. WTF??

Anybody have any experience with this?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Dr.LeoSpaceman]

I have personally never heard of that. From what I understand, most med schools ask for a specific number of LORs. Some might only be 2, some may be 4. And some also require them to come from specific teachers, e.g. 2 Science, 1 Arts & Letters (or equivalent, thats what they call it at my school). There may also be a commitee letter requirement on top of those, but it can be waived if the school does not have a comittee. In short, I can see how you could have other LOR in place of a commitee letter, but not a committee letter in place of all other Letters.

Although, have you thought of the fact that they will compile all of you LOR and send a copy to each school? In this sense, you would not need your LOR writers to send copies to each school, just one to the committee. Then they would forward them with their LOR attached. I know thats how they do it for us.

 

[Ames980]

hmmm have you called the premed office to ask if they've experienced that before?

 

[mcjay]

It is always a good idea to have rec letters from past employers (med oriented work mainly). You can always send more than they ask for unless it says to not send them.

 

[ms2209]

At my school, they ask us to obtain 2 Science LORs, 2 Non-Science LORs, and 1-2 outside LORs in addition to the committee letter (for our pre-med file). I think this might be overkill, but that's what they request, nonetheless.

 

[Caristra]

I would suggest asking your committee about it. Chances are they have dealt with this problem before. They can just forward the letters to the right places.

 

[IndyZX]

im not getting a non-science letter, since id have no idea who to ask. if schools want to reject me cause of that, whatever.