Pre-Med Committee Letter?

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

efex101

attending
Moderator Emeritus
15+ Year Member
20+ Year Member
Joined
Apr 20, 2002
Messages
2,713
Reaction score
74
Okay guys I am posting this for a friend. Has anyone seen what a pre-med committee letter looks like? The one that my school gave my friend to pass out to three professors is just eleven questions that asks to compare her to other students as far as motivation, maturity, emotional stability, interpersonal relations, etc. Then at the end of each question it has like one line for comments. Once this questionnare is filled out it goes back to the pre-med advisor and then he makes a cover letter with the compilation of these rankings. Does this sound what your school is doing? From our understanding we thought that the professors actually wrote a LOR and submitted that to the committee who then made a composite letter with the highlights from all the letters. Please help.

Members don't see this ad.
 
Hi Efex :)

My pre-med committee takes 3 science letters, 2 non-science letters, 1 volunteer letter, and 1-2 additional letters and two members interview you. They then take your resume, personal statement, transcripts, and all of the people on the committee sit down and write a letter about you based on your strengths and with a rating.
Highest Recommendation
High Recommendation
Recommendation
Not Recommended

Then they send the letter with your strengths and ratings off to the med schools when you request.

What your friend has is not really a committee, but a letter service. Med-schools will accept that too. You'll see on a lot of secondaries an option for pre-med advisor compiled packet.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
Where I went to college it was composed of 5 letters: two from interviews by faculty (the students are assigned to faculty interviewers and the interview is "open file", not unlike medical admissions), two from people you yourself designate (like physicians you shadowed, research supervisor, etc.) and the final letter is the cover letter from the head of the committee. The faculty interviewers fill out an evaluation form and write a letter of evaluation, and the cover letter is written taking everything into account, and includes the perfunctory overall rating on a scale. The committee head told me he speaks with the faculty interviewers personally before he writes the cover letter, but that sounds overly ambitious to me. I never got to see it but no medical school interviewers said anything about it, so it must have been adequate for their purposes.
 
Okay, it just seems odd that all my school is doing is getting these generic questions answered and that is it, not letters or nothing from the professors and no interview with the pre-med advisor. Also this advisor not really with it, if you know what I mean. He advises to apply to no more than ten schools and to not worry about LORs, he says that they are not that important, that gpa and mcat is most of your application :eek: I feel bad for my friend because she is really competitive and we do not want anything to mess her application up.
 
Yeah this particular advisor sounds like a real bozo. If I were your friend I would try to talk the advisor into accepting real LORs with the forms and have the advisor send the form with the LOR off.

Most med schools require 3 LORs, so I would get at least that many. Maybe 2 science, 1 non-science, 1 volunteer, and some if there's any work experience involved (some schools want to see these... Hopkins).

Good luck :)
 
Thanks Neuro, that is exactly what I told my friend. I also thought that our advisor is totally out of the loop here. Again thanks for your help and hope your trip to Spain was fenomenal! (he he)
 
Top