recommendation letters

[72531]

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Hi everyone. I have a question about LORs. I'm not sure how I should go about this. I graduated from undergrad in 2007. I would use a letter from a non-science prof there MAYBE. For the past 2 years I have been in a hard science thesis-based graduate program. I have 2, possibly 3 letters I would use from there. I think I am going to apply to a SMP next cycle. I would like to collect these letters now and be able to use them multiple times for different SMPs or if I apply to medical school. I don't want to have to ask the recommenders several years later if they could write me a LOR. Whats the easiest way to do this?

 

[hwpo]

Many SMPs take care of LORs for you when you are applying to medical school, like BU, georgetown, (Upenn) etc. They write committee letters, deans letters, and your academic advisor will likely write you one, and also whatever relationships you form with professors from class or research. You don't have to worry too much about it.

 

[DrMidlife]

What you do have to worry about is how many letters your recommenders have to send: they should only have to send one, ever. There are letter services, like Interfolio, that act as an intermediary between letter writers and unknown future schools, and it's rare to find a school that doesn't accept Interfolio. I'd recommend starting a "file" at one of these services as soon as you can get going on collecting letters. When you're in an SMP, you'd have those letters sent to the letter service as well. And then you pick what gets sent to any future school from what's in your file. It costs something like $35 to start an account, and then something like $7 (nonrush) to send file contents to a school.

Also, as you're collecting recommendations, make sure that you're only collecting strong positives. If your question is "can you write me a strong positive recommendation letter" and the answer is anything other than a swift "of course" with eye contact, then that's a risky letter.

Best of luck to you.

 

[mocha blanca]

On that note, I have a similar question, and didn't think it was worth starting a new thread for...

I have three LORs lined up that I would consider "strong positives"... two are science and one is from my clinical experience. I've spent the last semester working my butt off in all science classes, so it's been a while since I've even interacted with my non-science profs, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't get an extremely strong one. There's also a little bit of bad luck mixed in there in that a couple of professors who may have been able to write a strong non-science letter for me recently retired or went to study some indigenous peoples in southeast Asia (yeah, I missed that boat).

I'll be at Tuft's SMP this coming year, and I know that they provide a committee letter. However, I've heard that some schools still appreciate good individual letters -- will not having a non-science LOR hurt me, or should I just rely on the committee LOR?

Thanks in advance!

 

[drizzt3117]

different schools have different requirements. Make sure you know what the requirements are for each school.

 

[mocha blanca]

different schools have different requirements. Make sure you know what the requirements are for each school.

I already have a list of all the LOR requirements for each school. My issue is more about whether or not it's a good idea for me to just rely on the committee letter and use the strong letters I currently have (minus a non-science prof) just to supplement my application. Most schools will take the committee letter anyway.

 

[meilideai]

I also have a question regarding letter of recs. Here is where I'm at:

I recently graduated and am now collecting letters for an SMP. I see DrMidLife's post about the SMP providing LORs for the students, that's nice to hear - one thing off my chest. I thought I had to revert back to LORs acquired from undergrad.

My question is - When I plan to apply to medical school, may I use the LORs I received from undergrad professors along with the SMPs? Would they mind the "date" of the letter (since it would be 1-2 years later)?

Similar to the poster above's concern, I haven't really visited my prof's OH for a non-science course, along with all the transferring I did, it was really hard for me to access them at this point. What do you advise in this case?

Thanks much in advance!