<p>I called up my pre med office regarding this and they said that it's a good idea. Anyone have any experience with asking your professors for LOR during your sophomore or freshman year? BTW the letters get sent to the pre med office and they send them out to the individual med schools. I'm doing this btw because I'm thinking of asking my bio professor, who I'm currently doing research with, and my orgo teacher. I won't be at this campus next year and the main campus has large classes where it might be difficult to get to know the professors.</p>
<p>* BTW the letters get sent to the pre med office and they send them out to the individual med schools*</p>
<p>Not likely… Your school likely puts the LORs together and creates a Committee Letter which gets sent to AMCAS (or Texas equivalent)…and then those entities forward the info to the SOMs. </p>
<p>Since you’re transferring, will the recommenders be sending the LORs to the pre-med office at your NEXT school? If so, find out what the process is at that school. Sometimes you have to give your recommender a form that the recommender will include when he/she sends the LOR to the pre-med office. </p>
<p>You need to find out if your next school does CL’s or not.</p>
<p>it’s fine to get some recommenders now. Just find out where the LORs need to be sent and how.</p>
<p>Columbia is currrently at a Penn State extension campus and will be moving to main campus next year.</p>
<p>Penn State does use a committee letter. The health professions office (whose link I posted for Columbia previously) has directions on how to contact the office and make arrangements for LORs.</p>
<p>Columbia, because you’re at one the extension campuses and those profs aren’t as well known/don’t have the reputation of U Park profs, you may want to consider making a special effort to get to know one of your U Park profs next year so you can get a LOR from one of them.</p>
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<p>I called up again they said that the LOR that get sent to the office are sent to the individual schools. Also I’m not transferring schools (already did that and won’t do it again), I’m going to a different Penn State campus. </p>
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<p>I don’t think being well known (unless I apply to Hersey) really matters. It’s all Penn State as long as the writer can write a strong letter about me, that’s all that matters.</p>
<p>Penn State specific stuff aside. I was originally gearing up to apply during one cycle and then decided after one letter writer had written his letter (but before I submitted AMCAS) to stop and apply the following year. I used his letter the following year with no updates since he was a PI for 1 summer and I didn’t work with him after that. I was never asked about why the letter was a year old so I assume if the relationship doesn’t have any significant difference between when the letter was written and when you apply it won’t matter.</p>
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<p>At med schools which get a number of Penn State applicants (including schools PA, NJ, OH, NY, WV), the adcomms are pretty familiar with the names of the profs who typically teach the intro level science classes and how well the candidates these profs have previously recommended have succeed at their med schools. </p>
<p>(Believe it nor not, med school do /u] track how well previously accepted students have fared at their school. When matriculants aren’t well prepared or perform weakly, then the med school is less likely to accept students from that undergrad in the future, or to consider a prof’s recs with less weight to someone whose recommended students have consistently done well.)</p>
<p>It’s simply human nature to weight letters from a person one is familiar with more than those from a complete stranger. </p>
<p>So, actually, reputation is important. It’s a currency that can make your LORs more or less valuable.</p>
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<p>Aside from physics, all my intro science classes will be done by the time I get there so there is no point.</p>
<p>Looks like PSU does send its CL’s to AMCAS and not directly to SOMs… You provide your PSU-specific AMCAS letter ID and your CL is sent to AMCAS and then distributed to your MD SOMs.</p>
<p>FOR MEDICAL SCHOOL APPLICANTS</p>
<p>For application to Allopathic Schools, each applicant will receive an AMCAS Letter ID specifically for the Penn State “Committee Letter” (a committee is a letter authored by a pre-health committee and intended to represent your institution’s evaluation of you. This committee letter does include additional letters written in support of your application).* This Letter ID from AMCAS is in addition to the AAMC ID number for the MCAT and the application process.* Applicants must provide their AAMC ID and AMCAS Letter ID in writing to the Premedicine office at Penn State, 213 Whitmore Laboratory (or e-mail items to Dr. Ronald A. Markle, Chairman of the Health Sciences Preprofessional Evaluation Committee), as these IDs must accompany the Penn State Committee Letter in order to be matched correctly with one’s application.** <a href=“http://www.aamc.org/students/amcas/faq/amcasletters.htm[/url]”>http://www.aamc.org/students/amcas/faq/amcasletters.htm</a></p>
<p>Information for to supply in AMCAS for your Committee Letter
Dr. Ronald A. Markle
Chairman, Health Science Preprofessional Evaluation Committee
(Professor of Biology / Director of Premedicine and Science Majors)
<a href=“mailto:ram29@psu.edu”>ram29@psu.edu</a>
814-865-7620
The Pennsylvania State University
213 Whitmore Laboratory
University Park, PA 16802</p>