PCOM Dean's Letter for Nontrads

[KoolKeith]

FYI for those nontrads who may also have this problem. I contacted PCOM regarding flexibility in having an LOR from the dean, pre-health committee, or advisor, and three faculty letters including two from basic science profs and was told that these are hard requirements and there are no exceptions.

My school had no pre-health committee, and I had no pre-med advisor. I also took my basic science classes 10 years ago, so it's near impossible to track those profs down and impossible to say that they would be able to write a better letter than the physicians I work with daily or my work supervisor.

Would love to hear if someone has been able to make it work, otherwise, hopefully this saves an older student out there the hassle and money of applying to PCOM.

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[GreyF0X]

...having an LOR from the dean, pre-health committee, or advisor..

What!? I hope other schools aren't like this.

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

What!? I hope other schools aren't like this.

It's a pretty general requirement... You can replace those with two science prof letter usually if you don't have a committee

That sucks that they aren't willing to look with you though OP. I think most schools will work with you.

 

[miakip]

What!? I hope other schools aren't like this.

Actually, some schools are strict on this.

They are nicer if your school does not have a premed committee. I know PNWU requires 1 science LOR, 1 MD/DO (DO preferred) LOR, and 1 committee or premed adviser LOR. However, if your school does not have a committee/premed adviser you can substitute with another science faculty LOR. If your school has one and you don't provide one you will have to provide a good reason. Luckily, my school did not cater to premeds and did not have such committees inline.

I always tell new Premed friends the importance of building relationships with their professors and visit them every office hour with questions in hand so they get to know you. LORs are very important and when you apply you kind of have an entourage of people on your side. I have a couple premed friends who graduated 2 years ago with weak professor relationships and are looking into Post-bacc programs to make these relationships to meet these science faculty LOR requirement.

Hope this helps.

 

[GreyF0X]

It's a pretty general requirement... You can replace those. With two science prof letter usually if you don't have a committee.

Thats what I thought as well, but it seems like OP is saying you need a committee letter AND the general 2 sci 1 non-sci LORS.

Actually, some schools are strict on this.

They are nicer if your school does not have a premed committee. I know PNWU requires 1 science LOR, 1 MD/DO (DO preferred) LOR, and 1 committee or premed adviser LOR. However, if your school does not have a committee/premed adviser you can substitute with another science faculty LOR. If your school has one and you don't provide one you will have to provide a good reason. Luckily, my school did not cater to premeds and did not have such committees inline.

I always tell new Premed friends the importance of building relationships with their professors and visit them every office hour with questions in hand so they get to know you. LORs are very important and when you apply you kind of have an entourage of people on your side. I have a couple premed friends who graduated 2 years ago with weak professor relationships and are looking into Post-bacc programs to make these relationships to meet these science faculty LOR requirement.

Hope this helps.

What if there was no committee when you attended and was implemented after you left?

 

[miakip]

I would contact your undergraduate college. I knew my school had a pre-health advisor (catering towards the school's optom, pharm, and PA paths) so I contacted them asking if there was an official premed committee since graduating ( I am 2 years going on 3 post-undergrad). And they said no.

If they were to have said yes, I would explain my situation and ask if they would be confident in evaluating my app and writing me a positive letter for a nontrad. If they were to respond no, there would be your valid reason to why you do not have a committee letter.

 

[KoolKeith]

It's a pretty general requirement... You can replace those. With two science prof letter usually if you don't have a committee

That sucks that they aren't willing to look with you though OP. I think most schola will work with you.

Yeah, I was hoping so. I really liked the look of PCOM's curriculum and rotations. I have two letters from science profs but unfortunately they are from grad school, not basic science pre-reqs. I know it's the nature of the hoops we have jump through, but it's frustrating for people to have to track down some prof from 10 years ago to write a weak letter when I have 6 other strong letters from people who know me well.

 

[KoolKeith]

Thats what I thought as well, but it seems like OP is saying you need a committee letter AND the general 2 sci 1 non-sci LORS.



What if there was no committee when you attended and was implemented after you left?

Sorry if that wasn't written clearly in the OP. It's the committee/dean OR 3 faculty letters, two of which have to be basic science profs.

 

[KoolKeith]

I would contact your undergraduate college. I knew my school had a pre-health advisor (catering towards the school's optom, pharm, and PA paths) so I contacted them asking if there was an official premed committee since graduating ( I am 2 years going on 3 post-undergrad). And they said no.

If they were to have said yes, I would explain my situation and ask if they would be confident in evaluating my app and writing me a positive letter for a nontrad. If they were to respond no, there would be your valid reason to why you do not have a committee letter.

That's what I had done, no pre-med committee, and out of basic science undergrad for 10 years.

 

[GreyF0X]

Looks like I misunderstood the way OP wrote out their post. You can have either a pre-health letter OR 2 sci and 1 non-sci LORs. Theres no way Im going to a committee that was implemented a few years post-graduation for me.

 

[miakip]

How are you going to fulfill the Science Faculty LOR? That one is more tricky..

 

[MedArtist]

Yeah I called here months ago to ask about it since I am a non-trad. I have two sci LOR, but no non-sci. The admissions lady flat out told me no replacements. I was shocked. You may have more patience for the admissions folks than I did, but her bitter tone toward me was all I needed. One less secondary to deal with.

 

[hallowmann]

PCOM is strict on this. I had to go meet with the Dean on my undergrad to get a generic letter just to fulfill the requirement when I applied. The good news is that most deans/schools are ok with writing a general letter that says something basic like, this person attended school for x degree between x and y and they had no disciplinary/probationary actions against them. It's still a pain and might make it not worth it to even apply there.

 

[Ho0v-man]

I ran into the same problem. It wouldn't stink so much if DO wasn't marketed as "non-trad friendly", which is true, unless you want to go to the one DO school everyone's heard of...


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[KoolKeith]

Yeah I called here months ago to ask about it since I am a non-trad. I have two sci LOR, but no non-sci. The admissions lady flat out told me no replacements. I was shocked. You may have more patience for the admissions folks than I did, but her bitter tone toward me was all I needed. One less secondary to deal with.

I felt the same way. The antagonistic email response I received was a big turnoff. Maybe it's a Philly thing. OTOH, I confirmed that DMU is flexible on their letters and the woman I dealt with was really polite and helpful. Ironic that there is a lot of talk about how candidates are perceived at interviews based on how they treat ancillary staff (office folks, etc) when they think no one is watching, IMO it's a two way street. Oh well, DMU and KCU are looking better and better...

 

[futurexray]

Yeah, I was hoping so. I really liked the look of PCOM's curriculum and rotations. I have two letters from science profs but unfortunately they are from grad school, not basic science pre-reqs. I know it's the nature of the hoops we have jump through, but it's frustrating for people to have to track down some prof from 10 years ago to write a weak letter when I have 6 other strong letters from people who know me well.

I think if you look at their website it states you can have letters from undergrad, grad or a post bacc. As long as you have the three letters they want you can complete an application. The website as all the requirements you need.

 

[futurexray]

I always think it is amusing that we think schools are unfriendly when they state their requirement pretty clearly on their website and then we want them to make an exception. We don't get the answer we want so they are unfriendly. What do you want them to say? They get over 10,000 applications and all those that got complete had to get the same letters. If you can't meet the requirement move on

 

[KoolKeith]

I think if you look at their website it states you can have letters from undergrad, grad or a post bacc. As long as you have the three letters they want you can complete an application. The website as all the requirements you need.

I always think it is amusing that we think schools are unfriendly when they state their requirement pretty clearly on their website and then we want them to make an exception. We don't get the answer we want so they are unfriendly. What do you want them to say? They get over 10,000 applications and all those that got complete had to get the same letters. If you can't meet the requirement move on

Yes, the problem is that they stress BASIC SCIENCE letters from any of those sources you listed. My science letters are from grad science and my PI, which they said will not suffice. DMU and other schools post the very same requirements for their letters which is why I contacted them because some schools post one thing but are flexible based on specific cases. I was hoping they would say that they could see that I can do basic science by looking at the A's on my transcript and my MCAT score like most other schools. The point of the OP was to make people aware that PCOM is one of the schools that has rigid requirements and perhaps save someone a primary fee if they don't want to take the chance applying, and to also create a discussion where people may list success stories of applying without those specific letters.

 

[Scrubs101]

Yeah I called here months ago to ask about it since I am a non-trad. I have two sci LOR, but no non-sci. The admissions lady flat out told me no replacements. I was shocked. You may have more patience for the admissions folks than I did, but her bitter tone toward me was all I needed. One less secondary to deal with.

Do you know if the issue was not having 3 professor letters or actually the non-science missing? Because I've got 3 science letters coming in, I haven't taken a non-science class in 2 years....(not as unfortunate as being well out of school, but I just don't take many non-science classes anyways)

I always think it is amusing that we think schools are unfriendly when they state their requirement pretty clearly on their website and then we want them to make an exception. We don't get the answer we want so they are unfriendly. What do you want them to say? They get over 10,000 applications and all those that got complete had to get the same letters. If you can't meet the requirement move on

Obviously since it's clearly stated there's nothing we can do about it and badgering them about it won't change a thing. But it is truly unfortunate, regardless of how many applicants they get they'll be missing out on quite a few quality applicants by making such strict requirements that don't really represent a good possible physician. Like I mean if they required healthcare exposure, service to community, or even certain GPA/MCATS itd be more understandable but requiring such specific letter requirements is just dumb. Making people go out of their way to ask a professor they're probably not super close with to write them a letter just because he/she is a non-science professor can negatively impact the schools selection and the applicants applications. And you may say it's clearly written so they have to prepare for this before they apply, but I mean I know I surely didn't go into undergrad going "I'm going to apply to PCOM and they're strict on LOR reqs so I should network with non-science profs too"(heck I didn't even know I wanted to apply to med school till most of the way through my second year).

Anecdotally I know an adcom that told me they actually lowered their MCAT cutoff recently so they would stop screening out potentially good candidates otherwise.

Screening out potentially amazing candidates due to something stupid like lacking a non-science letter is just annoying and in my opinion stupid. But you're right there's nothing we can do about it, and they've shown they're not open to substitutions or changes. So why bother complaining I guess lol.



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[futurexray]

Do you know if the issue was not having 3 professor letters or actually the non-science missing? Because I've got 3 science letters coming in, I haven't taken a non-science class in 2 years....(not as unfortunate as being well out of school, but I just don't take many non-science classes anyways)



Obviously since it's clearly stated there's nothing we can do about it and badgering them about it won't change a thing. But it is truly unfortunate, regardless of how many applicants they get they'll be missing out on quite a few quality applicants by making such strict requirements that don't really represent a good possible physician. Like I mean if they required healthcare exposure, service to community, or even certain GPA/MCATS itd be more understandable but requiring such specific letter requirements is just dumb. Making people go out of their way to ask a professor they're probably not super close with to write them a letter just because he/she is a non-science professor can negatively impact the schools selection and the applicants applications. And you may say it's clearly written so they have to prepare for this before they apply, but I mean I know I surely didn't go into undergrad going "I'm going to apply to PCOM and they're strict on LOR reqs so I should network with non-science profs too"(heck I didn't even know I wanted to apply to med school till most of the way through my second year).

Anecdotally I know an adcom that told me they actually lowered their MCAT cutoff recently so they would stop screening out potentially good candidates otherwise.

Screening out potentially amazing candidates due to something stupid like lacking a non-science letter is just annoying and in my opinion stupid. But you're right there's nothing we can do about it, and they've shown they're not open to substitutions or changes. So why bother complaining I guess lol.



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You can have three science letters from what I read on the website, two from basic science and the third from any science or other faculty.

 

[Scrubs101]

You can have three science letters from what I read on the website, two from basic science and the third from any science or other faculty.

Thank you!


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