Skipping Pre-Health Committee

[Orthopedics101]

A: Fair enough. But there are certainly a number of GPA comebacks/redemption folks that would never get recommended by a committee. For example, after GPA "redemption" or "repair" at best my cumulative GPA will be a 3.2. That will not be high enough to get me a letter from my committee, but I will apply anyway.
B: Didn't know this. This is helpful.
C: "(one calculus class is not going to kill you)" - I will disclose that I went to Cornell and yeah it might have ;-) Their anti-grade inflation policy is pretty brutal. And when you, as a humanities student, would be sitting in a calculus class that is not required for medical school (or your degree) but required for the brilliant engineering students sitting next to you, it is definitely something to be avoided. I would refrain from referring to anyone as "villainous" as it leads to the sort of thread-spiral we see too often on SDN and say that different advisers have different opinions and beliefs as to what they think is necessary to apply to medical school...we certainly see that diversity even in the advisers that regularly contribute here.

As someone who also graduated from Cornell and is using HCEC I don't think it came up that Calculus was required. Also you could've just taken Calc I or II the non engineering versions.

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[ChrisMack390]

You don't "just decide to" apply to medical school. You decide to apply, then you build your best application, then you apply. The year off may sound like a pain in the ass, but it is far preferably to applying multiple times.

 

[WGSgrad]

As someone who also graduated from Cornell and is using HCEC I don't think it came up that Calculus was required. Also you could've just taken Calc I or II the non engineering versions.

I think when you graduated from Cornell would important here; I am old, so there is a chance we didn't see the same adviser...but I will disclose I was in the College of Arts and Sciences (I can disclose the year in a PM).

Calc I and Calc II were still options for my friends who did BEE in CALS. Further, the point is not that "you just could have" the point is that, as in my experience, students are often suggested and recommended to take courses that are not required by medical schools as a result of adviser preferences/suggestions; I think the reason the adviser asked folks to take calculus was because it is explicitly recommended by Weil Cornell Medical School and because Cornell encourages its students to target elite medical schools.

ETA: I will finally go look for the thread where other student also recount this experience. Here.
ETA2: For the record, Ana Adinolfi was not the pre-health adviser when I was interested in applying.

 

[WGSgrad]

Hijacking this thread for a moment, kinda related Q. If my undergrad did not offer a committee letter would that keep me from applying to certain schools? Or is it more like, if your undergrad offers a committee letter then you should definitely get one, but if it doesn't then individual letters will suffice?


To OP: I would suggest doing the gap years. You just decided that you want to apply to medical school. There is a lot that goes into your application to show you're ready for it. Take the time and build a great app, you got the grades now get some clinical experience and shadow some doctors.

This question was addressed in the thread by Gonnif.

 

[Orthopedics101]

I think when you graduated from Cornell would important here; I am old, so there is a chance we didn't see the same adviser...but I will disclose I was in the College of Arts and Sciences (I can disclose the year in a PM).

Calc I and Calc II were still options for my friends who did BEE in CALS. Further, the point is not that "you just could have" the point is that, as in my experience, students are often suggested and recommended to take courses that are not required by medical schools as a result of adviser preferences/suggestions; I think the reason the adviser asked folks to take calculus was because it is explicitly recommended by Weil Cornell Medical School and because Cornell encourages its students to target elite medical schools.

ETA: I will finally go look for the thread where other student also recount this experience. Here.
ETA2: For the record, Ana Adinolfi was not the pre-health adviser when I was interested in applying.

I graduated last year and that's unfortunate sorry man didn't know you needed a 3.5 minimum for the letter. Kinda messed up considering the deflation in the hard sciences (I was a bio major). Also was in CALS not sure who the pre-health advisor was but my faculty advisor mainly helped me with the application. She never said Calc was a requirement although I took it freshman year anyway since it was required for my major.

 

[WGSgrad]

I graduated last year and that's unfortunate sorry man didn't know you needed a 3.5 minimum for the letter. Kinda messed up considering the deflation in the hard sciences (I was a bio major). Also was in CALS not sure who the pre-health advisor was but my faculty advisor mainly helped me with the application. She never said Calc was a requirement although I took it freshman year anyway since it was required for my major.

Congratulations! I know its just expected, but getting out of Cornell, especially in the hard sciences, is no small feat. I had friends (engineers, architects, and others, struggle and not make it).

No, no...I was in Arts and Sciences (in the humanities); the adviser for pre-health at the time just asked us to take calculus. I think if I had pressed (had I been committed to medicine and decided to take all of my prerequisites at the time) I could probably have gotten the committee letter without taking calculus but my determination was low at the time and I didn't.

The 3.5 minimum was not a minimum from my adviser at Cornell but is a GPA floor quoted by other folks here on SDN; the point of my post was to point out why some folks might not get letters. I linked to the thread in my post above.

Best of luck with your cycle.

 

[Meeehai]

Your smugness is directly in this statement which has absolutely no support other than your belief and apparent ego.

-It flies in the face of reason with the preponderance evidence that 2/3 of schools say that require, recommend or prefer committee letters
-It flies in the face of the obvious and clear intent they want these letters because they prefer and value them more
-It flies in the face of the fact that many schools require that you explain why you dont have one
-Your lack of belief in these letters being important, flies in the face of the clear statement by AMCAS of why schools want these letters

It makes no sense, no sense whatsoever to conclude anything that not having these letters is an obvious and clear detriment to an application. You are simply factually incorrect, drawing conclusions that are directly opposite the preponderance of evidence simply because you want it to be so , perhaps like a flat-earth or our current president. Your apparent inability to want to see that does not matter to me. What does matter is your misleading and misdirecting other potential applicants over your asinine and idiotic thoughts that you simply choose to believe something it isnt true.

How am I factually incorrect? What evidence? Please provide me the evidence. Plenty of students purposely omit the letter and get accepted every year. You have not refuted any of my points and just keep spewing out the same thing in every post as if I'm painfully unaware that schools recommend the committee letter on their websites. A recommendation written on a school website or given by a member of the faculty is NOT evidence that supports the idea that non-letter applicants are significantly being rejected all else controlled. I don't know how much more I can dumb it down for you. Show me a statistic that shows that applicants without a committee letter are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to acceptance. That is evidence. You don't have any evidence against what I say because it doesn't exist - because most faculty don't really care that much if you lack a committee letter despite their big scary recommendation. I will take your recommendation more seriously the moment non-letter applicants are being mass rejected or a majority of schools in the country make the letter a strict requisite.

Also what's with all these fallacious statements? I never claimed to avoid the committee letter at all costs, just in certain circumstances. You even go on to post that you understand there are legitimate reasons to not use the letter. Have you actually been reading what I'm saying or are you just dropping in here to spam your usual rhetoric to clueless people that eat it all up?

 

[deleted781806]

Please provide me the evidence. Plenty of students purposely omit the letter and get accepted every year. [...] I will take your recommendation more seriously the moment non-letter applicants are being mass rejected or a majority of schools in the country make the letter a strict requisite.

Statistics please? That argument is a two-way street and you've not given much "evidence" either, according to your own standards.

 

[zyzzkhalifa]

My story is just one example, but my school requires you to meet with them freshman/sophmore year to get a commitee letter. I came to them summer after sophmore year, was informed that I needed to take a gap year despite very strong EC's and almost 80 LizzyM. I applied without their letter. However, I explained exactly what happened in secondaries and received 11 II's, 4 to top 20's, two of which were top 10s. Although I'm waitlisted at those 4 (lol), i did get accepted into the other 7.

 

[P0ke]

I skipped the committee letter because they said they would compare us to the other pre-meds at my school. Being an SMP candidate l, I was like "naw, I don't need a letter saying I'm a ****ty student". Got 5 MD interviews and 1 acceptance.