PreMed Committee Negative Letters

[Timbo0984]

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I have heard from a few family friends that premed comms wont hesitate to write that we hereby do not recommend, or recommend with great reservation this candidate to med schools. How would you handle that? I mean, should i ask my committee if they are going to write me a supportive letter, if not, y bother, let them not waste their time paper and ink, and ill use my 3 really impressive letters of rec. what do you guys think?

 

[LJDHC05]

If you have good LOR's and a good GPA and some hospital experience, you should have no problem getting a good committee letter. It's a non-issue unless you've slept with one of the committee member's kids or do not have a chance of getting in

 

[Supercluster]

At my school, the committee did "weed out" students who they thought were bad bets, although they often could be convinced to write a letter if the student offered to take a year or two off to better his/her application. Thus, my committee did not, as policy, write any bad letters. I am sure that some were better than others, but I am also sure that all of them were positive endorsements. However, this is just one example. Although it must be awful to be weeded out, I think that's preferable so at least you would know that you needed individual recs rather than having them lead you on.

 

[psipsina]

At my undergrad, the purpose of the the pre health is to weed out the people it thinks won't get in before the admissions process, so that the university's %accepted stat is better. Thus my pre-health office refuses to write a commity letter for anyone without at least a 3.2 GPA. If they agree to write the letter, then they want you to get in, for the sake of the university's stats (not you, of course), so they sell you like crazy. I don't know how other university's work but this is how Tulane operates.

 

[Hook17]

I was told my committee was the deciding factor if you got in at some schools in our state. They write 3 different types of letters. We do not recommend, we recommend, or we highly recommend this student for medical school.

 

[LJDHC05]

I was told my committee was the deciding factor if you got in at some schools in our state. They write 3 different types of letters. We do not recommend, we recommend, or we highly recommend this student for medical school.

A pannel of 7 reviews every case and we get 1 of 4 different rankings at Holy Cross. Very Highly Rec'd, Highly rec'd, Rec'd, not rec'd.
-Very High and high are 95% chance of getting in,
-Rec'd means they tell you to take a year off and then they'll write
-not Rec'd means they will not write a letter and you have to go at it alone.

people have gotten in without help and I was part of the 5% that didnt get in anywhere because I was a mud phud applicant and wrote a crappy PS that really screwed me over by making me seem like i already had my path picked out.

 

[BlinkyCat]

I have heard from a few family friends that premed comms wont hesitate to write that we hereby do not recommend, or recommend with great reservation this candidate to med schools. How would you handle that? I mean, should i ask my committee if they are going to write me a supportive letter, if not, y bother, let them not waste their time paper and ink, and ill use my 3 really impressive letters of rec. what do you guys think?

Why would the committee ever write bad letters? That doesn't make sense to me. When you have your committee interview, did they try to dissuade you from medicine? If they're like, ok, sure, we'll write you the letter, then I'm assuming they're gonna do everything they can to make you sound fantastic. You getting into med school makes them look good. Unless your school doesn't care...I know mine does because they brag about their above 90 percent acceptance all the time.. So.I'm guessing if they 1) Did not dissuade you but in fact encourage you 2) Cares about image and their numbers, then I wouldn't worry too much. This is just my humble opinion based on my friends who went through this already. 🙂

 

[jbrice1639]

the committee at my school doesn't write negative letters. they tell you up front that they don't think you should apply through the committee because they don't want to recommend you, and that's that. you can still apply on your own, but the committee just doesn't write you a letter...good or bad. The letters they do write are only for people they are going to recommend to at least some degree.

 

[blee]

Has anyone had success with discovering whether they got a positive, very positive, or negative letter from their committee? I wouldn't expect to actually see the letter, but I wonder whether they would be willing to at least throw a bone...

 

[prettygirl1908]

At my school you pick your own committee, so you end up getting recommendations from people you know will highly recommend you.

 

[DrBowtie]

I guess they have the right to put negative comments into the letter. They are asked to subjectively assess your potential for medical school and if they don't think you can hack it do they want to put their name on a risk of their credibility? If you are worried about a negative report then you probably should go it alone.

 

[hnbui]

At my undergrad, the purpose of the the pre health is to weed out the people it thinks won't get in before the admissions process, so that the university's %accepted stat is better. Thus my pre-health office refuses to write a commity letter for anyone without at least a 3.2 GPA. If they agree to write the letter, then they want you to get in, for the sake of the university's stats (not you, of course), so they sell you like crazy. I don't know how other university's work but this is how Tulane operates.

tulane... urghh.....
😡

lol

 

[grousek]

My school has 6 levels of the committee recommendation, ranging from most highly recommended to not recommended. Although they don't let you see the letter they wrote (or the letters from your profs used to write it), they WILL tell you what level of recommendation you received. This way, if the committee tells you that they gave you no recommendation or recommended with reservations, you can tell them to stuff their letter and just have the professors send LORs directly to the schools.

You should ask your school if they will at least tell you what level of recommendation you get.

In a way, I think it is good that committees write negative as well as positive letters. If they didn't, getting a fantastic, beaming, super positive committee letter won't mean as much to the adcoms. Of course, being the one who receives the nasty, negative letter would probably change my opinion on that slightly.

 

[izibo]

my school doesn't even do committee letters... they just have a service to mail out your letter's of rec in one envelope