Question regarding letters of recc

[Halligan]

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Who handles the letters for me if my school has no pre-med committee?? It's a pressing question - I'll call my school for more info tomorrow, but is there an outside agency that can do that too?? I'm assuming someone takes them -but does this still work out - does it look bad to a med school?

 

[BengaliDocIsl]

Who handles the letters for me if my school has no pre-med committee?? It's a pressing question - I'll call my school for more info tomorrow, but is there an outside agency that can do that too?? I'm assuming someone takes them -but does this still work out - does it look bad to a med school?

if you're asking about someone who can store and distribute your LOR's, you can use interfolio.com (which i am using) or virutalevals.org, using these services does not look bad to med schools as far as I know because you still have to sign a waiver/non-waiver form and no school has told me they don't like it or that it looks bad. Interfolio.com is a great service that I would recommend everyone to use.

 

[Protease]

Who handles the letters for me if my school has no pre-med committee?? It's a pressing question - I'll call my school for more info tomorrow, but is there an outside agency that can do that too?? I'm assuming someone takes them -but does this still work out - does it look bad to a med school?

Besides using those websites mention in the post above, assuming you will be using individual LOR from professors; you can give them stamps and envelopes to mail to the schools directly. However, be aware that mailing multiple seperate LORs will slow the application process. If possible, you can do what I did, I had each of the professors sign the back of a sealed envelope, and mailed all 3 of them in a bigger envelope. You can get 9 x 11 USPS envelopes, they cost 50c or 1.00 for the heavy duty ones. Postage price is 67c for 0.5oz, which translates into about 10pages.

 

[Halligan]

Well, thanks for your help - I'm going to check out those two sites. Here's the issues I'm facing now:

I called my school, they're telling me to have a professor handle my letters of reccomendation for me...I laughed. I dont know about you guys/gals, but most of my professors have mounds of paper on their desk, and I could see my letters being lost in the pile.

Thus, I'll resort to using one of the external sources to send my letters of reccomendation.

However, say I don't get in anywhere this year - will these companies hold onto to the letters for a while...say, another year? Should I have my raters give me a sealed copy (and sign the back) just in case? I really don't want to be a Pain in the butt about getting these letters out . . .

If you've used some of these outside agencies before, please let me know your experiences....