The premed committee letter is supposed to help you with your application to med school. Personally, I think it does the opposite, but what is it? Do you need to use it if the school offers it? How important is it? Should this be something to consider when you’re applying to an undergraduate school?
By the way, the episodes in this podcast are recordings of our Facebook Live that we do at 3 pm Eastern on most weekdays. Check out our Facebook page and like the page to be notified. Also, listen to our other podcasts on MedEd Media. If you’re a non traditional premed, check out The OldPreMeds Podcast.
If you’re an undergrad that has a pre-health office, they may or may not offer you a chance of a committee letter.
If they don’t offer you one then great. If you’re thinking of transferring to an undergrad institution, if you’re a high school student thinking where to go to for undergrad don’t think of going to a school based on whether or not they give a committee letter, then it shouldn’t be a part of your decision algorithm.
If a school offers a committee letter, they will typically collect letters of recommendation that you’ve submitted based on what they tell you to collect. So you go out and ask for letters of recommendation and you will have them sent to the pre-health office.
Once the letters are received, most pre-health offices will have some hoops that you have to jump through to get a committee letter. They might want to see your MCAT score or your application. Sometimes it could be their own format. Or it could be the real application you get printed out to see if you’ve done your work. They do this because they don’t want to take the time to write a committee letter for a student who isn’t serious about getting into medical school.
“They want to make sure you’re serious and you application is ready to go and that you’re going to use committee letter that they write.”Click To TweetSome schools will also have these barriers of entry, like the GPA or MCAT score, whether or not they write one. So the prehealth office then reads those letters and they take different pieces of information which they think is important for them to convey to the medical schools.
Schools do this differently. The University of Colorado, for instance, includes the original letters to the committee letter. And they will try to refer the reader back to the original letter they wrote. Other schools won’t include the individual letters and they will write everything in their committee letter.
The biggest thing with committee letters is they’re all watered down. If I were reading these, I would want to read straight from the horse’s mouth what a teacher, physician, or supervisor is saying about the student. I wouldn’t want to read what the advisor is telling me what the physicians said.
“It’s a big giant game of telephone. We play this game as elementary students to see how screwed up the message gets from one person to the next.”Click To TweetLike the telephone game we used to play in elementary school where the message gets screwed up as it gets from one person to another, this is the same thing we do with committee letters.
That is how committee letters work. The schools offer them and then you follow their instructions. You need to turn in the committee letters early. You need to find out how early you need to submit them and figure out what to do to get to the front of the line to get them early.
“Some schools aren’t submitting them until August or September and your application is just sitting there.”Click To TweetIt’s annoying how you are relying on the pre-health office to make sure that your application is complete. That hurts a lot. So make sure that you figure out what those timelines are for your specific pre-health office.
No, you don’t have to. Should you? Probably. You don’t want to run into any situation where a medical school, however unlikely it is, that an interviewer will question why you don’t have a committee letter when the applicant who came before you who comes from the same school as yours has a committee letter. In this case, you might as well just use that committee letter.
'If your school offers it, go ahead and use it.'Click To Tweet
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit
I just received my admission to XXXXX! This is unreal and almost feels like I am dreaming. I want to thank you for all of your help with my application. I cannot overstate how influential your guidance and insight have been with this result and I am eternally grateful for your support!
IM SO HAPPY!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL YOUR HELP, IM INDEBTED TO YOU! Truly, thank you so much for all your help. Thank you doesnt do enough.
I want to take a few moments and thank you for all of your very instructive, kind and consistent feedback and support through my applications and it is your wishes, feedback, and most importantly your blessings that have landed me the acceptance!
I got into XXXXX this morning!!!! It still has not hit me that I will be a doctor now!! Thank you for all your help, your words and motivation have brought me to this point.
I wanted to once again express my heartfelt gratitude for your help in providing feedback during my secondary applications. Your guidance has been instrumental in my journey.
Just wanted to share my wonderful news! I received my first medical school acceptance! Thank you for all that you do for us Application Academy!!!
I am excited to tell you that I just got my third interview invite from XXXXX today! I can’t believe it. I didn’t even know if I was good enough to get one, let alone three – by mid-September. Thank you so much for all of your help and support up to this point; I would not be in this position without it!!
I wanted to thank you for helping me prepare for my XXXXX interview. Even in a 30-minute advising session, I learned so much from you. Thank you for believing in me, and here’s to another potential success story from one of your advisees!
I just received an acceptance with XXXXX! This is so exciting and such a huge relief and so nice to have one of our top choice schools! I also received an interview with XXXXX which brings the total up to 20 interviews! Thank so much, none of this would have been possible without you!
Join our newsletter to stay up to date
* By subscribing you agree to with our Privacy Policy and provide consent to receive updates from our company.
Resources
Advising Services
Podcasts & Youtube
Books
About
Deal Lasts for
