PCO - Letters of Recommendation

[DellGirl]

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I'm looking into my schools' specific requirements for LOR's, and the PCO website is the only one that doesn't seem clear to me. This is what is written:

• Arrange to have forwarded directly to OptomCAS the following letters of evaluation to fulfill the requirement for Pennsylvania College of Optometry at Salus University either:
  • A PreProfessional Committee letter of evaluation
  • Three natural science (Biology, Chemistry, Physics, or Mathematics) teaching faculty or two science teaching faculty and one practicing optometrist whom you have shadowed.
  • Letter packets containing the letters outlined in number 2.
• Additional letters will enhance the file but will not fulfill our required letters of evaluation.

Ok, is it me or is this just really poorly written?

First of all, the word "either" is thrown in there.. so is it really EITHER one preprof letter OR 3 professor letters OR 3 prof and 1 OD letter??

Second of all, it says letter packets containing the letters outlined in number 2. There is no "number 2"! So I would assume that means the second bullet point? And what is a letter packet? Like, put the letters in a folder?!

I know a lot of you have applied there, so thanks in advance for letting me know.
Otherwise I'll just email them 🙂

 

[stoikiometry]

The OptomCAS limit is four so I used this to cater to as many schools as possible: optometrist, advisor (we have no committees), two science professors. (this worked for Salus)

 

[ec731]

I don't think its just you, I was pretty confused myself as well. When I applied, my 4 recommendations were from an optometrist, health profession committee, science professor and an extracurricular supervisor. PCO didn't care so much about my extracurricular supervisor, they were more interested in the first 3 recommendations.

As for the letter packet, I think what they mean is that... when a committee submits a letter on your behalf, in addition to the letter they write, the committee also submits the "pile" of recommendations that you used to receive their (committee) recommendation. Hope that helps 🙂