Will letters from med school professors boost your application?

[gabby123]

Let's say I have 2 people at my dream med school to write LORs: one is a new associate professor and one is a department chair. Would that help my odds at all?

I also did not go to their undergraduate school. Just have the connections through work.

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[Forever Geebs]

No, but they certainly won't hurt you.

 

[gyngyn]

How do they know you (supervisor, PI...)?

 

[PrincetonReviewPreMed]

Let's say I have 2 people at my dream med school to write LORs: one is a new associate professor and one is a department chair. Would that help my odds at all?

I also did not go to their undergraduate school. Just have the connections through work.

I would say that it's not going to drastically move the needle for you. I was on our school admissions committee for a year and I remember there were several applicants who had letters from PIs with whom they had done research for a year or two. If the applicants did not have the minimum expected GPA and MCAT (that year it was ~3.7 GPA and ~508 MCAT), it didn't matter.

I think of rec letter a lot like extracurriculars and the personal statement. They are just a check box. If you have a good letter -- you get a check. If you have some extracurriculars -- you get a check. If you have a well written personal statement -- you get a check. Everyone gets these checks more or less, so the people that stand out are the ones that are missing a check.

The key to getting your foot in the door is the GPA and MCAT. The people doing application screenings will rarely see your application if you don't meet the threshold that has been set by the school for those numbers for that application year.

I hope that helps!

-David
======================
David Savage, MD, PhD

 

[ginsengreset]

I would say that it's not going to drastically move the needle for you. I was on our school admissions committee for a year and I remember there were several applicants who had letters from PIs with whom they had done research for a year or two. If the applicants did not have the minimum expected GPA and MCAT (that year it was ~3.7 GPA and ~508 MCAT), it didn't matter.

...

The key to getting your foot in the door is the GPA and MCAT. The people doing application screenings will rarely see your application if you don't meet the threshold that has been set by the school for those numbers for that application year.

So does this mean that someone with, say, a 3.5, massive upward trend, and 528 would get pushed to the bottom of the pile / screened out?

 

[Goro]

So does this mean that someone with, say, a 3.5, massive upward trend, and 528 would get pushed to the bottom of the pile / screened out?

You've been hanging around Walt too much. Your hypothetical applicant would get tons of IIs. I know of cases where someone with a 2.9 cGPA got into Vandy, and someone with a 14 on the old MCAT also got into med school. Apparently my colleague above is unaware that there are MD schools (and all DO) that reward reinvention. Examples include Columbia, UCSF, BU, Wake and Case.

 

[LizzyM]

We know some faculty members who hire (or have as volunteers) a half dozen new grads every year as worker bees in their research enterprises. Almost all of them get letters. Almost none of them get interviews (the bar for an interview is set very high and a LOR from a faculty member won't propel you over it). Furthermore, if the reader of the LOR thinks that the faculty member is a bit of a jerk, the letter is not going to hurt you but it certainly won't help at all. Knowing someone (or two) on the faculty does not make you qualified to be admitted.

 

[Med Ed]

Let's say I have 2 people at my dream med school to write LORs: one is a new associate professor and one is a department chair. Would that help my odds at all?

What do these people have to say about you?

 

[RNthenDoc]

So the tl;dr here is that you need to have checkmarks, and the actual quality/writer of the letter doesn’t matter as long as it’s positive?

So much for looking at applicants holistically.

 

[DameJulie]

Apparently my colleague above is unaware that there are MD schools (and all DO) that reward reinvention. Examples include Columbia, UCSF, BU, Wake and Case.

My daily dose of hope. Thank you.

 

[MedicineN'Jazz]

So the tl;dr here is that you need to have checkmarks, and the actual quality/writer of the letter doesn’t matter as long as it’s positive?

So much for looking at applicants holistically.

I freaking despise the application process And it’s only going to get worse from here on out smh

 

[Med Ed]

So the tl;dr here is that you need to have checkmarks, and the actual quality/writer of the letter doesn’t matter as long as it’s positive?

So much for looking at applicants holistically.

No, that's not it at all. Virtually all letters are positive, and many are superficial, but that does not preclude some from being more impactful. But to pull that off you need a genuine relationship between the writer and applicant, and a writer who is skilled at crafting a compelling narrative.

 

[Tenk]

I don’t think it would help unless you have everything else on your application in order. Having someone on faculty saying you are a great applicant with mediocre stats doesn’t add much. Having someone on faculty saying you are a great applicant when you already have great stats adds a lot.

 

[gabby123]

I just want to clarify that I worked closely with the associate prof on his recent research and probs published in the next couple months. For the department chair, he's the director of this research group I'm in and I'm the only med school applicant in that group. It's a small group but we do have strong ties with the school.

 

[LizzyM]

I just want to clarify that I worked closely with the associate prof on his recent research and probs published in the next couple months. For the department chair, he's the director of this research group I'm in and I'm the only med school applicant in that group. It's a small group but we do have strong ties with the school.

But the school may have 10 or 20 groups like that and these letters are, really, a dime a dozen.