recommendations

[esca007]

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Hi,
I was wondering if anyone can tell me if science professor letter of recommendation is a requirement for application b/c for me, I took the science classes 4 years back (I graduated) and have not kept in contact withe the professors so it's tough to get a letter from them. Any suggestions?

esca007

 

[relentless11]

If I recall...some schools might...but most schools that I am aware of don't. I think the best way to go at it would be to quote the thing on Stanford's website.

"We request at least three complete letters of evaluation from persons who know you well enough to evaluate your scholarly potential and promise as a physician."

So check med school websites to see if they do need one from a science professor...just in case. All in all, the key point is getting it from someone that knows you well as a person, and can evaluate your scholarly potential in addition to promise as a physician. Usually those that can speak of your scholarly potential would be a professor, and the most relevant to med school performance would be upper division science professors. Thus it would be good to include 1-2 from a upper division (or even graduate) science professor, but don't limit yourself to those.

 

[remo]

You might find a few schools that won't require it but you will be at a big disadvantage in not having science academic letters. Worst case scenario you might have to take a class or 2 in order to get a letter. If you haven't had any recent coursework you might have to do that anyway unless you had a high gpa when you graduated.

 

[stherling]

I didn't have a single letter from a science professor (my classes were all huge and it seemed ridiculous to get letters from people who didn't know me at all), and I got interviewed at Wash U (and accepted) and Columbia (will find out in march...). The caveat here of course is that those are both big research schools, and all my letters were from research PIs. That said, it does mean that those science LORs are not strictly necessary if you have other people who can vouch for you in some relevant fashion. I think the science LOR requirement (where it exists) is less rigorously enforced for non-trads for exactly the reason you mentioned -- we're a few years out of school and there is no way those profs will remember us!