question for those who got into Columbia

[Bruinlove]

I'm planning to send out 4 letter of rec ( 1 from sci prof, 1 from research (sci prof), 1 from dental school volunteer program, 1 from non-sci prof) to AADSAS in order to match many schools' requirement.

But, I know that Columbia requires 3 letters from sci professors.

What did you guys do? Did you send additional letters to Columbia directly?
And were you able to get an admission or an interview without these letters?

Thank you in advance.

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[SanOnofre2002]

As soon as I was sure Columbia had my application I sent them a personal letter explaining why I didn't have the 3 science letters. I was still granted an interview and acceptance. There's no way to know if that was necessary or if mattered how reasonable my explanation was, but it's worthwhile if you want to protect your chances. I recommend sending a real letter too, not an email.

 

[SHC1984]

Are you sending out a non-science professor's recommendation for Nova? You actually don't have to send a non-science rec for Nova b/c I called them and they told me 3 science professors is totally fine. So I would just send out 3 science professor's rec instead...

 

[TrogdeLorean]

I gave three letters of recommendation to my pre-health advisor. One was from my orgo 2 professor, one was from a PharmD that I worked with during my internship at a pharmaceutical company, and the third was from the head of the tutoring program that I worked for during school. As far as I know, my pre-health advisor used the information from those letters to write a letter himself, and Columbia accepted that "committee letter" in lieu of three individual letters from faculty.

The direct quote from CDM's website is that you must have "Three CONFIDENTIAL letters of recommendation from science professors or one composite letter from a pre-health committee." (http://dental.columbia.edu/education/app_proc.html)

 

[Andrew324]

As soon as I was sure Columbia had my application I sent them a personal letter explaining why I didn't have the 3 science letters. I was still granted an interview and acceptance. There's no way to know if that was necessary or if mattered how reasonable my explanation was, but it's worthwhile if you want to protect your chances. I recommend sending a real letter too, not an email.

Interesting, thats good to know as I currently do not have 3 sci prof recomendations. What did you say trying to explain? I wonder if that was needed, interesting....very interesting.

Makes me worry less about not having all those requirements. Although what were your scores? That could play a part.

 

[armorshell]

I had my pre-health advisor compile several recommendations (only 1 or 2 were from science professors). Even if there's not an established pre-health committee they might be willing to do this for you.