Will this be a problem?

[UCLAstudent]

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Hi... I'm currently a sophomore at UCLA. This quarter (winter quarter), I started asking people for LOR. I currently have 4 on the way. I thought since I have the time to get the letters now (rather than next year, when I'll be swamped with the MCAT), I should get as much done as possible. However, one of the people who agreed to write me a letter said that med schools won't regard any letters that were written before a certain date, and he said to come back in a year and he'll write me a letter then. Is this true? Will med schools care that some of my letters are from mid-sophomore year? If so... not good. 🙁 Please give me some advice! I wish I had known this in advance. I thought I was doing a good thing by getting my letters ahead of time so that I won't have to be bothered by them later.

 

[VienneseWaltz]

Presumably, you will have more accomplishments by next year, and your letters will better reflect them if you wait. I agree with your professor--later is better.

 

[LoneCoyote]

I can see why later could be better since you've done more stuff they can write about. But I really don't think there is anything wrong with getting the letter earlier. My pre-med advisor encouraged me to get a letter from my O-Chem professor at the end of last spring semester, over a year before when I will apply, because she thought it was better if he wrote the letter while he remembered me from class. I think it probably depends on the situation. I have been getting letters from some professors early and am going to get the ones from people who know me best, my research advisor, profs I am close to, right before I apply. Good luck.

 

[AlternateSome1]

It sounds like your professor might have his facts wrong. While it might look strange if you don't have ANY recent LOR's, having ones that are a year old can't hurt you. I am not positive, but I am doubtful that reapplicants always get all new LOR's, so they would automatically have at least a few over a year old. This is all just my speculation though, so please feel free to ignore it.

~AS1~

 

[tms]

i'm sure ucla has a pre-med office. they will most likely compile parts of all your letters into one and then attach some of the individual letters. it won't matter how old they are (since the composite letter will be recent). also, i'm sure that you will be able to get LORs next year...so wouldn't it be nice to have letters from several years noting how great of a student you are and suggesting you'll be the best damn doctor around....think about it.

 

[one love]

I am applying this year and had LORs from as far back as '96 with the majority written pre-2000. (I'm a non-trad applicant if you hadn't guessed already). None of the 15+ med schools that I applied to had any problem with them. You should visit the websites of each school you are planning on applying to to see if any of them will have this LOR cutoff since, in my experience, most of them do not. Perhaps none of the schools you will be applying to will have one either.

As I was told by my pre-med advisor, the best way to get LORs was to have them written soon after your class/extracirricular etc finishes. That way your work will still be fresh in the minds of the writer. And you should get a few more than the mimimun required so your pre-med committee can pick and choose from the best of them.

 

[UCLAstudent]

Thanks for the responses. I just wanted to get some LOR from certain profs before they have forgotten who I am (I believe someone already noted that).