Premed committee

[SU_PREMED_1994]

Hey guys... Just want to be clear on something's. So my school has a premed committee. What is that exactly? My advisor went into little detail. What is the committee comprised of? Professors? And what exactly do they do as a committee and LOR?

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[PlaqueBuster]

The committe is typically some faculty and your pre-health advisor. They sit down with all the pre-health applications and assess whether the students are good fit for medical school and may rank them. At my school, the applicant got ranked Outstanding, Very strong, Strong, Average, Below Average. Ultimately, they write a letter of recommendation that holds a lot of weight. My school sent letters of recommendation to AMCAS as a package/you will not be able to pick and choose. When you fill out the application, you include a personal statement, list of activities, coursework and grades, and LOR. Basically this is supposed to help you fill out the AMCAS.

This is how it looked at my school.

 

[SU_PREMED_1994]

And then ranking is a good thing? What if some faculty doesn't like me? Lol

 

[SU_PREMED_1994]

Nice username lol

 

[PlaqueBuster]

And then ranking is a good thing? What if some faculty doesn't like me? Lol

Ranking is not based on whether faculty like you or not. Many times they probably don't know even know you in person. They will rank you, if your school does it, based on your GPA, coursework, LOR, PS, and activities.

If you believe that going through the committee will be detrimental to your application then take a year off and apply

 

[PlaqueBuster]

The committee letter holds a lot of weight

 

[SU_PREMED_1994]

What is PS? So they basically get together and write and super LOR? By the way, thank you for your insight

 

[Awesome Sauceome]

Yea so with medical school you will need letters of recommendation. Most require either like 3 science letters or a committee letter (or some combo along those lines). The committee letter is comprised of all of your letters of recommendation with excerpts from each. It then has the final seal of approval from your school that in essence says "we have gotten loads of kids into medical school, we know how to pick good students that excel, and this kid is going to do well" (but obviously more flowery than that haha). Thats really all the committee is for - writing that letter and deciding who thy think can do good in med school. Your adviser obviously helps guide you on the process, but the committee letter is what the schools actually see as a summation of your college experience. As plague has suggested, their summation is of your grades, your extracurricular activities, your PS (personal statement), your MCAT, etc.

You can personal message me if you have any other questions, happy to help.

 

[PlaqueBuster]

What is PS? So they basically get together and write and super LOR? By the way, thank you for your insight

personal statement. And ya if you choose to go through them (I had no choice because all our letters were sent as a package) the letter fromt he committee is very important. So take the application seriously. I chose to work the last two years and apply to schools now so it didnt really matter for me at all.

 

[SU_PREMED_1994]

Yea so with medical school you will need letters of recommendation. Most require either like 3 science letters or a committee letter (or some combo along those lines). The committee letter is comprised of all of your letters of recommendation with excerpts from each. It then has the final seal of approval from your school that in essence says "we have gotten loads of kids into medical school, we know how to pick good students that excel, and this kid is going to do well" (but obviously more flowery than that haha). Thats really all the committee is for - writing that letter and deciding who thy think can do good in med school. Your adviser obviously helps guide you on the process, but the committee letter is what the schools actually see as a summation of your college experience. As plague has suggested, their summation is of your grades, your extracurricular activities, your PS (personal statement), your MCAT, etc.

You can personal message me if you have any other questions, happy to help.

Thank you for clearing that up! Yeah the college I go to is very small. I mean about <3000 students. So everyone knows each other. Will they look at retaken classes as a red flag and deem me not fit for med school?

 

[PlaqueBuster]

Thank you for clearing that up! Yeah the college I go to is very small. I mean about <3000 students. So everyone knows each other. Will they look at retaken classes as a red flag and deem me not fit for med school?

No but depends on how many you had to retake

 

[Awesome Sauceome]

Thank you for clearing that up! Yeah the college I go to is very small. I mean about <3000 students. So everyone knows each other. Will they look at retaken classes as a red flag and deem me not fit for med school?

As plague said, nah, as long as the total package is good.

I came from a school with I think 1500 students. My adviser had never actually gotten anyone into medical school (she was new), the committee though had been a part of getting like a dozen people into schools: University of North carolina, touro-NY, KCU (me), university of maryland. We all had drastically different backgrounds and routes to getting there. I mean even just those 4 I just mentioned, its crazy how different we were (grade and life wise). The point is to just get a solid overall package that they can sell to a med school. What year are you in?

 

[Goro]

Personal Statement.. This is on your primary application. It's basically your answer to the questions "Who am I?" and "Why Medicine?"

What is PS? So they basically get together and write and super LOR? By the way, thank you for your insight

 

[SU_PREMED_1994]

Awesome: I am a junior but I have two years left due to change of major. I have a semester I can retake classes
Plaque: I am retaking genetics, gen chem I and micro to get a Bette grade!

 

[SU_PREMED_1994]

Goro: yeah I have some strong answers for that lol

 

[SU_PREMED_1994]

Awesome: I am a junior but I have two years left due to change of major. I have a semester I can retake classes
Plaque: I am retaking genetics, gen chem I and micro to get a Bette grade!

As plague said, nah, as long as the total package is good.

I came from a school with I think 1500 students. My adviser had never actually gotten anyone into medical school (she was new), the committee though had been a part of getting like a dozen people into schools: University of North carolina, touro-NY, KCU (me), university of maryland. We all had drastically different backgrounds and routes to getting there. I mean even just those 4 I just mentioned, its crazy how different we were (grade and life wise). The point is to just get a solid overall package that they can sell to a med school. What year are you in?

No but depends on how many you had to retake

Awesome: I am a junior but I have two years left due to change of major. I have a semester I can retake classes
Plaque: I am retaking genetics, gen chem I and micro to get a Bette grade!

 

[Awesome Sauceome]

Awesome: I am a junior but I have two years left due to change of major. I have a semester I can retake classes
Plaque: I am retaking genetics, gen chem I and micro to get a Bette grade!

You should be fine then, plenty of people have taken way more courses. As long as your GPA is good and your MCAT will be solid, there is no reason a committee should not support you.

 

[AM508]

At my school, the pre-med committee was 12 people, it consisted of roughly equal representation from Science (2 Bio professors, 1 physics, 1 chemistry), Arts , and Business. They got your grades each year, if you GPA dropped below a certain threshold by the end of junior year, you were dropped from consideration. During senior year, you submitted LOR's and a personal statement. Then you had an interview with the committee. They basically set up in a board room and had you sit at the head of the table and then each committee member asked you questions. After the interview, they each gave rating, then a committee letter was drafted by the head of the committee.

 

[Awesome Sauceome]

Whew, yall's committees were hardcore lol. I basically just talked to my adviser and if you were good they gave the thumbs up and started working on stuff, if your grades sucked they told you to find something else. We would just meet one on one in their office, it was very casual; but such is the benefits of going to a small school eh?

 

[AM508]

Whew, yall's committees were hardcore lol. I basically just talked to my adviser and if you were good they gave the thumbs up and started working on stuff, if your grades sucked they told you to find something else. We would just meet one on one in their office, it was very casual; but such is the benefits of going to a small school eh?

My school was actually rather small, they just had a really robust pre-health committee. One thing is for sure, once you do a 10 or 12 on 1 interview, the actual 1,2, or 3 on 1 med school interviews weren't that bad at all.

 

[SU_PREMED_1994]

My school was actually rather small, they just had a really robust pre-health committee. One thing is for sure, once you do a 10 or 12 on 1 interview, the actual 1,2, or 3 on 1 med school interviews weren't that bad at all.

Whew, yall's committees were hardcore lol. I basically just talked to my adviser and if you were good they gave the thumbs up and started working on stuff, if your grades sucked they told you to find something else. We would just meet one on one in their office, it was very casual; but such is the benefits of going to a small school eh?

At my school, the pre-med committee was 12 people, it consisted of roughly equal representation from Science (2 Bio professors, 1 physics, 1 chemistry), Arts , and Business. They got your grades each year, if you GPA dropped below a certain threshold by the end of junior year, you were dropped from consideration. During senior year, you submitted LOR's and a personal statement. Then you had an interview with the committee. They basically set up in a board room and had you sit at the head of the table and then each committee member asked you questions. After the interview, they each gave rating, then a committee letter was drafted by the head of the committee.

You should be fine then, plenty of people have taken way more courses. As long as your GPA is good and your MCAT will be solid, there is no reason a committee should not support you.

Am: dang! Lol your committee is no joke! And thank you everyone for the beneficial info. So the committee is bad and good. What if I do not want a commuter letter? Can I deny it?

 

[Awesome Sauceome]

Well if you don't want a committee letter you simply don't need a committee. Like you can technically apply to school without it, nothing is stopping you. And lots of people for sure do go around their committees, heck some don't even have one. But if you can get a good recommendation from them then it certainly doesn't hurt your app, it likely helps a bit, you might as well go for it.

I would say the committee is only good, not bad and good. You only benefit from having a committee letter, it gives you a deal of approval from those wiser than you and it's also convenient to schools to get one single beast letter of rec rather than like 3 or 4 random letters.

 

[samac]

It really depends on the school. Our committee letters consisted of professors we had had: 3 bio, 1 physics, organic chemistry, and out advisor. We would say who was going to be apart of the letter and distribute packets to them.