LORs over the limit...

[LAman10]

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Ok so I'm having all my professors send their LORs to my Career Center at my school. My career center will then forward all of them in a packet to AMCAS. However, my concern is that I have 6 letters, and I don't want to send 6 letters to every med school (I'd rather pick and choose 4-5 for each school). I believe I'll be able to separate my 6 letters into 6 separate "packets" per se, but my questions is:

when noting these letters on secondary applications, should I note them as if they're going directly from the profs to amcas? They're still coming from the career center, but now in 6 separate letters instead of one huge packet.

Also, how would I note this on the amcas app? has anyone done this or know how to do this or know of anywhere I could read up on how to do this? I'm just kinda confused now.

And if the 6 letter thing is no big deal, then please let me know as well. I mean, I'd rather separate it all out and then pick and choose, but since that's prob gonna be a hassle, I could just send all 6 to med schools if that doesn't matter too much.

 

[BlueElmo]

Ok so I'm having all my professors send their LORs to my Career Center at my school. My career center will then forward all of them in a packet to AMCAS. However, my concern is that I have 6 letters, and I don't want to send 6 letters to every med school (I'd rather pick and choose 4-5 for each school). I believe I'll be able to separate my 6 letters into 6 separate "packets" per se, but my questions is:

when noting these letters on secondary applications, should I note them as if they're going directly from the profs to amcas? They're still coming from the career center, but now in 6 separate letters instead of one huge packet.

Also, how would I note this on the amcas app? has anyone done this or know how to do this or know of anywhere I could read up on how to do this? I'm just kinda confused now.

And if the 6 letter thing is no big deal, then please let me know as well. I mean, I'd rather separate it all out and then pick and choose, but since that's prob gonna be a hassle, I could just send all 6 to med schools if that doesn't matter too much.

I just put down the individual letter writer names. I say separate the letters out. It gives you more freedom and options. If you group them together, then you have to send the entire packet to every school. I can't imagine some schools will be too happy having to read all 6 letters.

 

[Mattabet]

I'd probably just send the whole packet to every school. At my school, the committee put a nice cover letter on the packets that listed the contents, so taking it apart wouldn't have been an option for me (this was before the AMCAS letter service). 6 isn't very far above the maximum letter limit for those that have them (5-6 is common for the limit), and they're perfectly capable of ignoring superfluous information.

As far as the format, I remember having to do some aerobics to get the meaning into some secondaries, but just take it on a case-by-case basis and do the best you can. It's not a perfect system, and they know it.

 

[jenandhansun]

That was exactly the case for me, until I asked medical students at my school how they did it. They said to submit individual letters. If you send them your whole letter packet, your strong letters will be drowned out by the lesser significant letters.

May be paranoid, but who knows, maybe they will just look at the 1st 3 letters of the packet instead of reading the ones that you state on your secondaries. They are overwhelmed with paperwork too, ya know.

 

[red10]

We have a packet system at my school too. My adviser said to send all of them (I'll have 4 or 5) and let the schools sort it out. The watering down thing is a valid point but if you have a letter or 2 that you're not confident of its quality, don't include it in the packet and let any school see it.

I don't think we're the first to face this dilemma. Plus some secondaries have a place to tell them what letters to be expecting.

The only separate letter I'm sending is one of my non-academic letters but thats because its only required by 2 of my schools and its not going to be sent in until August and I don't want to make 10 other schools wait on account of a letter they don't need.