Those Tricky Letters of Rec!

[madrigail]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Hey guys,

Question that is puzzling me a bit and I can see handling in a few ways:

I have three excellent letter writers on hand (besides premed committee) to send letters in support of my applications. The question is, how do you handle having your letter writers send the recs to all of the various schools that you are getting secondaries from?

Do you give them an address list and stamps and tell them (as they come in) which places to send rec to?

Do you have them seal your rec in envelopes and then you mail them as needed?

What is the "accepted method" for doing this? I don't want to peeve any of my letter writers by having to call every few days and say, "okay now send cornell" and then two days letter "okay now send drexell" etc.

Thanks for the input!!! 😍

 

[LP1CW]

Use a LOR service that will collect all your letters. Your writers will only have to send them to one place and then you can mail them out as you need to without bothering your letter writers.

Some of my friends have used www.interfolio.com


They charge a nominal fee for each packet of letters that you send out, but you can see when and where they were sent to. It's a good way to keep track of your letters also. And you can continually add to the list of letters and choose which ones you want sent out.

 

[no-see-um]

Use a LOR service that will collect all your letters. Your writers will only have to send them to one place and then you can mail them out as you need to without bothering your letter writers.

Some of my friends have used www.interfolio.com


They charge a nominal fee for each packet of letters that you send out, but you can see when and where they were sent to. It's a good way to keep track of your letters also. And you can continually add to the list of letters and choose which ones you want sent out.

Is interfolio a good service? LORs for med school is not a problem here since I have a committee, but for jobs, PHD programs, etc., LOR are a pain in the (*)@#.

How does it work in terms of confidentiality? For instance, could a student submit a LOR that he or she has gotten via email from a professor? Can you submit a letter? Scan it? or what...

I truly believe that if a school has an office called "Career Services", that this would be the greatest serivce that they could do for their students- by keeping LORs on file.

 

[gaf]

Hey guys,

I have three excellent letter writers on hand (besides premed committee) to send letters in support of my applications. The question is, how do you handle having your letter writers send the recs to all of the various schools that you are getting secondaries from?

:

Does your premed committee not collect, store, and send the letters on your behalf?

 

[dnelsen]

Does your premed committee not collect, store, and send the letters on your behalf?

[rant]I'm sick of people talking about these stupid premed committees...what about students like myself who did their undergrad at one college (not premed) and then did post bac work at another college to complete their prerequisites?! I don't know which institution's premed committee I would use and they don't know me from Adam so why would I want to use them or why should I be forced to use them [/rant]

 

[lorelei]

I hear you about the premed committee thing. They barely know me.

The plus side is, my undergrad institution's Career Center has a LOR file service. You have the recommenders send the LORs to them (even if they're profs at other schools or whatever), then they send them out as a bunch for $5 a pop. It's incredibly convenient. It's worth asking even if you've already graduated - when I went as an alum to ask if I could use the service, they were like "duh, of course!"

 

[madrigail]

My pre-med committee only send out letters from professors at that school. Apparently they used to also compile all of your other recs too...but the secretary started complaining and now nada.

Good idea to check career center, try to do that tomorrow 🙂

Thanks!

 

[arierty]

I go to a really small school and they are excited about me applying to med school. I don't want to get them bogged down though with a new letter to send every few days... However, we (my advisor and I) had planned on personalizing them for each school. Do you think this is practical or am I expecting too much. How does everyone handle the addressed stamped envelope when it has to be an institutions letter head envelope (did that make sense?). Also, with schools that don't have anything about waiving your rights to see it do I just have my LOR sent out however they want. This stuff is so technical and confusing! Thanks for any help!