*~*~* Official Letters of Recommendation Questions Thread 2013-2014 *~*~*

Getting into Med School is Hard? Not with BeMo.
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Hi, when schools say that they accept Interfolio does that mean we can send it electronically?
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I will try my best to get one obvious,y but i might not get one.
is it worth applying? I have 3.8 and 30..

serious question.../...
 
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Yeah I am not sure as well so thanks for bringing it up. If so, I'll have to have him re-submit as a confidential letter. He did note in his first line of the letter that I have waived my right to see this letter.
 
Haven't you done any shadowing? if so, hit up that doctor. If not, you need to, as you need to show us that you know what a doctor's day is like. Ask your family doctor for help. If s/he can't write you one, then maybe s/he can connect you to someone who can.

Also, if there's a DO school within driving distance, go visit them and chat up the OMM dep't Faculty.

TalinAagam said:
I will try my best to get one obvious,y but i might not get one.
is it worth applying? I have 3.8 and 30..

serious question.../...
Click to expand...
 
Lecom gives you a letter on their interview date if you don't have one.
 
Touro-CA is the exception to that in that they require them to be mailed, which Interfolio will do as well.
 
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The physician letter I was planning on submitting to DO schools is from a family member’s boss who I’ve known for about 15 years. I haven’t shadowed him, but I have worked with him in arranging for him to speak at my schools pre-med association, and he’s been a mentor for me over the past several years in pursuing med school. I logged into the DMU-COM secondary app today and saw this:

“Letter writers should be as objective as possible, therefore, the following letters will not count toward completion of your admission file:
•letters from relatives, spouses or family friends
•coaches or personal trainers
•chiropractors, veterinarians or dentists
•your family physician or pediatrician (unless you have shadowed or worked with the doctor)

•Medical exposure letter must be written by a physician (D.O. or M.D.), who can document your clinical experience. This letter must describe your exposure to patients, ability to perform in a clinical setting, interpersonal skills and experience with healthcare situations. Medical experience is required of all applicants and may be obtained through shadowing, volunteer, or paid work experience.”

Does anyone think submitting this LOR will be an issue with DMU-COM? Its an awesome letter and imo covers a lot of what they are looking for in the medical exposure letter.
 
Hey all,

Not sure if this has been answered or not but I have a question about how application reviewing goes. I've had my secondary applications in for multiple MD and DO schools for a while now, but my committee letter has only just been sent in for both centralized applications. Will I be complete (and reviewed for an II) based on my secondary completion date or based on the date my LORs were received? Thanks!
 
Email all doctors in local area. Find one. Shadow 2-3 times. Buy him lunch. Ask for letter.
 
Just e-mailed a DO I shadowed almost 2 years ago, whose both a DMU grad and faculty asking for a LOR. Keeping my fingers crossed.
 
NontradCA said:
He means that they will provide the letter for their requirement.
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Is that really true? When I called LECOM today to tell them I couldn't find a DO to shadow, they just suggested that I keep trying. They never told me that they would be able to provide a letter.
 
hockey40 said:
Hey all,

Not sure if this has been answered or not but I have a question about how application reviewing goes. I've had my secondary applications in for multiple MD and DO schools for a while now, but my committee letter has only just been sent in for both centralized applications. Will I be complete (and reviewed for an II) based on my secondary completion date or based on the date my LORs were received? Thanks!
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As far as I know, it depends on the school.

Some schools will complete you but the LOR must be in by the day of the interview. Others say they require it before the application can be finalized.
 
Don't forget about committee letters!!! Most will have a doc on the panel interviewing you, and most schools prefer it over individual letters anyway.
 
Most schools I applied to:

You aren't on their interview radar until your file is complete. One exception I am aware of, LECOM will consider without a DO Letter from what I here, but it's still necessary before the committee makes a decision.
 
Also, as far as DO schools go, the turnaround time from letter being sent to Interfolio > Interfolio receiving it > Order Interfolio to send LOR to schools > Schools receiving it is pretty fast.

You're still setting pretty for DO schools in terms of timeframe. They aren't going to fill all of their seats right now with low quality applicants. They will still be accepting people from their Feb interviews. At least I know LECOM, DMU, and Western do
 
bionerd89 said:
Hi, when schools say that they accept Interfolio does that mean we can send it electronically?
Click to expand...

If the school is on Interfolio's drop-down menu list of schools for electronic, then they are hooked up to do so. Otherwise Interfolio can send a hard copy to any address. Heck, you could probably send a copy to yourself if you wanted.
 
bionerd89 said:
Is that really true? When I called LECOM today to tell them I couldn't find a DO to shadow, they just suggested that I keep trying. They never told me that they would be able to provide a letter.
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Yes, it's really true and literally they give you a letter. What LECOM are you applying to? If you're applying to the Florida campus, write to the assistant dean Dr. Ron Berezniak and he'll give you more information.
 
TriagePreMed said:
Yes, it's really true and literally they give you a letter. What LECOM are you applying to? If you're applying to the Florida campus, write to the assistant dean Dr. Ron Berezniak and he'll give you more information.
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Hey I'm planning to apply to LECOM Erie. Do they offer that there too?
 
I have a different question but related to DMU's letter requirements. My committee letter packet includes 2 science faculty letters, 1 non-science faculty letter, 1 extracurricular letter, and 1 physician letter (from scribing). Since I have my physician letter included in my committee packet is it necessary to submit a separate one as a "medical exposure letter"?
 
Does Nova absolutely require the non-science LOR? I have 3 LORs from science profs and can't find a writer for the non-science professor letter?
 
I did not realize that this was the case with Nova until now...which sucks because I'm a non-trad, out of undergrad for the past seven years and I have no non-science professors to write me a letter of rec. hell, I barely even remember who any of them were.
Can anyone help out with this? Is it possible to get an exemption and provide another letter from. the organization that I've been volunteering at? If not, it looks like I'll have to drop Nova from my list



UPDATE: I was looking this up and I came across this from a 2012 Nova sdn thread. Someone had written to the school asking about the non-science letter of recommendation and the email response was:

"Good Afternoon ********,

The liberal arts letter can be any letter that is not science related. If
you cannot obtain a letter from anyone in English, physiology, community
service/volunteer, etc. then that kinesiology letter would be ok.



Sincerely,


Anastasia P. Leveille
Admissions Counselor"

That's assuming there has been no policy change since 2012.
 
Last edited:
I had 2 letters from science professors and 1 from an MD. I received my interview invitation on the first day they went out.

Hope that helps
 
Maeby Funke said:
I have a different question but related to DMU's letter requirements. My committee letter packet includes 2 science faculty letters, 1 non-science faculty letter, 1 extracurricular letter, and 1 physician letter (from scribing). Since I have my physician letter included in my committee packet is it necessary to submit a separate one as a "medical exposure letter"?
Click to expand...

Your physician letter will be fine.

touchpause13 said:
That seems like a much better lor
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Yeah, I definitely feel like having a LOR from him would be a huge benefit, hopefully he gets back to me. My biggest concern over the other LOR is that they'll consider it a letter from a family friend even though that's not really the case. Its a really amazing letter and addresses "[my] exposure to patients, ability to perform in a clinical setting, interpersonal skills and experience with healthcare situations” as required.
 
thanks for the replies guys,

so msu com for sure doesn't require a md/do letter? I checked their online document and I got that from there..can someone confirm that?
 
bionerd89 said:
Hey I'm planning to apply to LECOM Erie. Do they offer that there too?
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When I met with Dr. Ron he said it was a policy of all LECOM campuses, but I don't know who to contact for Erie or Seton Hill.
 
I've only submitted 1 DO letter and 2 science professors and got an ii.
 
Bill Brasky said:
I've only submitted 1 DO letter and 2 science professors and got an ii.
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I received ii without the LORs. I was sweating when I see the non-science letter, but now it seems they don't strictly enforce it. Thanks guys for the replies:)
 
TriagePreMed said:
Yes, it's really true and literally they give you a letter. What LECOM are you applying to? If you're applying to the Florida campus, write to the assistant dean Dr. Ron Berezniak and he'll give you more information.
Click to expand...

I personally don't think that's fair to the people who actually shadowed and had to look for a D.O. Then again depending where you are in the country it might be very hard to find a D.O. But still if you have a very personalized LOR from a D.O will that hold more "weight" ?
 
I interviewed there and wasn't "given" a letter. Not sure what you mean by this, unless it has changed in the last year. What the policy was when I interviewed was that a letter wasn't required to get an interview but was required by the time of interview so when your app was reviewed by the admission committee reviews your app it is complete. That being said, you should probably get a letter from a physician if you want to go to med school. It probably is an issue is you "can't get one.
 
felix2929 said:
I interviewed there and wasn't "given" a letter. Not sure what you mean by this, unless it has changed in the last year. What the policy was when I interviewed was that a letter wasn't required to get an interview but was required by the time of interview so when your app was reviewed by the admission committee reviews your app it is complete. That being said, you should probably get a letter from a physician if you want to go to med school. It probably is an issue is you "can't get one.
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Yeah I'm not sure what is true anymore.. I keep hearing different things about it...I'm don't know if its worth it to try to get a DO letter just for LECOM. I found a doctor that will let me shadow them but they are 2 hrs away from my house, and I don't even have a drivers licence.
 
How do you plan to survive in the real world without a drivers license?
 
Columbia09 said:
I personally don't think that's fair to the people who actually shadowed and had to look for a D.O. Then again depending where you are in the country it might be very hard to find a D.O. But still if you have a very personalized LOR from a D.O will that hold more "weight" ?
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Yes, obviously. You'll have the direct experience of shadowing a DO and be able to talk about that during the interview and likely the letter will be personalized with a better description of your character/work ethic/etc., whereas the other applicant will simply be given the opportunity to fill the requirement with a generic letter and have no shadowing experience to talk about.

felix2929 said:
I interviewed there and wasn't "given" a letter. Not sure what you mean by this, unless it has changed in the last year. What the policy was when I interviewed was that a letter wasn't required to get an interview but was required by the time of interview so when your app was reviewed by the admission committee reviews your app it is complete. That being said, you should probably get a letter from a physician if you want to go to med school. It probably is an issue is you "can't get one.
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I met with Dr. Ron in 2011, so could there have been a change? Yes, but I personally doubt it. Perhaps this is something given to people who request it.

bionerd89 said:
Yeah I'm not sure what is true anymore.. I keep hearing different things about it...I'm don't know if its worth it to try to get a DO letter just for LECOM. I found a doctor that will let me shadow them but they are 2 hrs away from my house, and I don't even have a drivers licence.
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Contact Dr. Ron regardless. He will give you the information you need. From what he told me, they will take you aside earlier before the interview to have lunch/talk to a DO staff member that will write you the letter.

Believe me, I'm not about to share a LECOM dean name if this weren't something that I spoke about with him personally.
 
buctuong said:
I received ii without the LORs. I was sweating when I see the non-science letter, but now it seems they don't strictly enforce it. Thanks guys for the replies:)
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You need a non-science letter before you register and receive financial aid. Nova will give IIs and even accept you (provisionally) after your interview, but you will not be officially accepted until all requirements are met. The types of letters listed before in Anastasia's message are accepted. I was accepted without all LORs, but still had to turn everything in before school started. If you're accepted the email you get will list the requirements you still need to meet.
 
"three letters of recommendation are needed (two from a science professors and one non-science letter).

Examples of a non-science letter include but are not limited to English, Psychology, Mathematics, etc

It is recommend that letters are signed and or on letterhead.
Any Variations of the admissions requirements can be approved by the admissions counselor."

This is directly from NSU COM website. Psychology letters are accepted as non-science, not physiology as previously stated. But the point really is that non-science letters can come from just about anybody that knows you well enough to form a professional opinion of you, bosses, counselors, etc. Mine was from an Economics professor. If you have any doubts contact admissions.
 
I have an uncle who I have shadowed and is a DO, but he has a different last name than I do. Do you guys think it would matter if I had him write me a letter?
 
Kahuku Monkey said:
"three letters of recommendation are needed (two from a science professors and one non-science letter).

Examples of a non-science letter include but are not limited to English, Psychology, Mathematics, etc

It is recommend that letters are signed and or on letterhead.
Any Variations of the admissions requirements can be approved by the admissions counselor."

This is directly from NSU COM website. Psychology letters are accepted as non-science, not physiology as previously stated. But the point really is that non-science letters can come from just about anybody that knows you well enough to form a professional opinion of you, bosses, counselors, etc. Mine was from an Economics professor. If you have any doubts contact admissions.
Click to expand...

Call nova. They accepted my letter from my boss at best buy as my non science LOR.
 
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