Question about letter of recommendation

[Prospective Doctor]

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Hello Everyone,

If you are applying to many schools (say, 10-12) then how is it possible to have your professor write letters that many time? I am assuming that you cannot ask your professors to make multiple copies perhaps b/c schools won't accept copies?

Any info. will be greatly appreciated.

 

[SMW]

Welcome to SDN!! 🙂 First of all, 10-12 schools is not that many. Many SDNers applied to upwards of 20 schools last year (I applied to 23). See the thread about numbers of applications, interviews, acceptances, rejections... to see results (we were trying to determine whether there was a correlation between numbers of applications and acceptances -- so far no one has done the correlation 🙁 ). Most schools have a letter service that your professors can send their letter to. Then when the med schools request LOR's (which is at the secondary application stage), you just ask the letter service to forward copies of the letters. These services also give you the option of keeping the letter confidential (i.e. you don't see it), which is generally regarded as being the way to go. My school sent the first 20 batches out free of charge. Some schools have a pre-med committee which collects the letters and then writes a composite letter to send to medschools (I think sometimes they send the individual letters as well). If your school has a committee, most schools require that you use it, or give an explanation for why you're not using it. Believe me, you don't want to be bothering professors every time schools request a LOR -- it's hard enough to get them to do it once!! 😀

 

[naya]

Some schools will also include in your packet LOR's from individuals outside the university. This elimanates the burden of those writing letters to have to personally send them to the medical schools to which you have applied. And one less hassle for you-verifying that the particular LOR had arrived and been placed in your file.