Specifics on Recs

[mtritt2]

So I received my secondary thing from the Medical College of Wisconson and I was noticing something disturbing. For letters of rec they require two from professors who have formally taught me (research classes don't count). My research professor is the only professor I know well enough to write me a good rec. If I can't use her i'm basically forced to get two from profs I barely know. I was assuming you could normally get recs from people you volunteered for or doctors, stuff like that. I'm considering not applying to this school because of this. I don't even remotely know another science prof. In classes of 200 where I'm easily getting an A I found no reason to go meet them. Anyway, how many apps are going to be identical to this? Are more of them allowing other recs? Any input?

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[Smoke This]

A lot of schools have internal evaluation committees that will give you a composite letter of recommendation, and for many medical schools, this is preferable to the three individual letters from profs or whatever.

Personally, I would suspect that UNL has such a committee, but maybe if you're posting here for advice you have already investigated this and found that they do not.

Otherwise, I suppose all you can do is go to the profs you hardly know. If you did well in their classes, I'm sure they would be open to the idea. Why don't you set up a time to talk with them? Bring your AMCAS app printout or something and have a discussion about your motivations for medicine, goals, extracurriculars, etc. This way they could say more about you than just talking about your academic record.

 

[Jacky]

Forgive my ignorance, but would this infer that your (entire) primary has been processed and sent to Wisconsin? How is this possible, if amcas (just recently) told me they wouldn't be ready to submit until a few more weeks. ????????? Maybe they just sent your name and address? (Who knows) I guess I'm just irritated that I haven't received anything.

 

[mtritt2]

I think this is actually what happened. They just sent out my name, address and that I was interested. I also got something from UNL's med school. They did specify that it was only my name + address that they received.