What to give letter-writers?

[mkeve]

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I have a humanities teacher who is willing to write me a letter for medical school, but I don't think she has ever written a LOR for a student applying to med school.

I'm going to send her the AAMC guidelines and offer to send my CV/transcript/personal statement. Is there anything else I should send her or tell her?

 

[Deleted member 737595]

I'm curious as well

 

[Catalystik]

I have a humanities teacher who is willing to write me a letter for medical school, but I don't think she has ever written a LOR for a student applying to med school.

I'm going to send her the AAMC guidelines and offer to send my CV/transcript/personal statement. Is there anything else I should send her or tell her?

Include a photo. And maybe a list that highlights your contributions/achievements in the class, as you recall them

 

[shapley]

As you have said, the AAMC guidelines and your CV/PS/transcript and someone else mentioned contributions and achievements in class are good.

Also helpful I find is to outline in your e-mail a bunch of bulletpoints you would want them to focus on or emphasize in your letters. A good tip I got from some people was to tell my letter writers to write why they would think I would make a good doctor, or qualities that would make me be a good medical student and physician, as well as any notable achievements and positive performance in the class.

 

[LizzyM]

I would not recommend giving the CV, PS or transcript. Those are going to be crutches that the writer will use to regurgitate information that the adcom already has. What's the point of that?? Also, the LOR is not supposed to be vetting your information and offering an assessment based on your record of your suitability for medical school but offering a recollection of what the writer has observed. For this reason, I think that it is most valuable to send the AAMC instructions, a picture, and copies of essays, papers, tests, lab reports or anything else that you produced for the class you took with that person.

 

[knope321]

Our pre-med advising office made us put together a packet with a personal statement (this wasn't the one I ended up using) and a "portfolio" which was like an expanded resume with each entry have about a paragraph of stuff. My letter writers said they really appreciated it because it made it easier on them.

But I can totally see what others have said about this. Best of luck!