Medical What should I do about Letters of Recommendation conundrum

[GoSpursGo]

Hi.

I am a nontraditional premed and plan on applying to MD/DO in (hopefully) 2 years. I will be doing a GPA repair/pre req completion path. I currently have a DO that seems quite excited to write me a LOR (she’s brought it up a couple of times in the last few weeks). Should I go ahead and ask her to write it and then keep in contact with her so I can let her know where to submit it in a couple of years or reach out to her closer to the time where I would be applying and ask her to write it then?it may also be worth mentioning that in the next few months we will both be leaving our current jobs and will possibly not see each other afterwards. My understanding of how LOR’s are submitted may be limited so I welcome any corrective insight.

Some suggestions have been to have the writer post-date the letter and upload it confidentially to Interfolio and then submit it whenever I apply. Is this normal/feasible/the right thing to do? Will it show a discrepancy when it’s submitted? (Date letter uploaded versus when the letter was dated)

Also, this particular writer has a really unfortunate Google search result. When you search their name the first thing that comes up is that they were involved in a car vs pedestrian accident that resulted in death a few years ago. Are letter writers googled (or whatever other search system)?

I plan to still take her up on the letter but may not use it if their history may damage my application.

Have her write it now. Whether they upload now vs later probably doesn’t matter but either way you want the letter written while she remembers you well. The upload vs submission date is the kind of minutiae that premeds obsess about but nobody is going to really pay close enough attention to your app to notice.

re your letter writer’s history, ultimately the adcom is reviewing you not her. So you want to pick the set of letters that will be most positive, and it sounds like this letter would be very positive. If you happen to have a surplus of strong letters then you could consider leaving her off, but that is not usually the case

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[TheBoneDoctah]

One thing here is that some schools (KCU for example when I applied) would only accept LOR that were dated within one year of application. Make sure the schools you are applying to don't have this wacky rule