Recommendations/Sponsership: I need some clarification

[Seashelley]

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Hey guys, I'm doing the Harvard Post-Bac program (over two years, plus probably glide year) and they say they'll "sponser" you to med schools for an additional amount of money. That sounds like they'll write recommendations for you, but someone told me that sponsership and letters of recommendation are different things and both are required seperately by med schools. Can folks clarify the difference between the two, and what generally will I need to submit to med schools?

 

[Pemulis]

Generally speaking, sponsorship means that the pre-med committee will write you what's known as a "composite" letter of rec. At most schools, this means they gather together all your LOR's, and write an uber letter of reccomendation for you out of it. The significance of this, aside from being a convenience, is that it signifies you have the official backing of your school for your app. Without this, it can be hard to get a fair hearing at a lot of med school's. This is one of the ways that universities "weed out" pre-meds in order to keep their reputations up. By refusing to sponsor students who they don't think will have a good shot at gaining acceptance, a lot of schools are able to artificially inflate their acceptance numbers (as in, "95% of our sponsored students get accepted to med school").

 

[Law2Doc]

Hey guys, I'm doing the Harvard Post-Bac program (over two years, plus probably glide year) and they say they'll "sponser" you to med schools for an additional amount of money. That sounds like they'll write recommendations for you, but someone told me that sponsership and letters of recommendation are different things and both are required seperately by med schools. Can folks clarify the difference between the two, and what generally will I need to submit to med schools?

Letters of rec are from your professors, employers, EC administrators, and are typically forwarded to your (undergrad or) postbacc premed committee and assembled into a packet. Sponsorship is a separate composite recommendation letter written by the postbacc program -- I assume it becomes the first page of your packet. Harvard Extension has some threshholds you must meet to get sponsorship -- at least a B or better in all of a certain number of science credits and a 30 or better on the MCAT. They will ask you to provide them with draft essays and resume info which they will use to compose the letter. While one can get into med school with a good set of LORs (and Harvard has a for-fee dossier service for those who don't get sponsorship but still want to apply), a sponsorship letter is important because if you apply to the same schools as other Harvard Extension students, I would think the med schools would find it glaringly obvious that some students from Harvard Ext. had such a cover letter while others didn't.