<p>A friend of mine mentioned to me that medical schools prefer letters of recommendation from sophomore and junior teachers. And as you may have experienced, its not easy making a lasting relationship with a professor. I am concerned because I am a freshman and have had a professor for chemistry for two semesters now. He knows me well, and has even been a reference for me, and wrote me a letter for a summer program.</p>
<p>Is it really advisable not to ask a freshman year professor for a recommendation?</p>
<p>No - that professor would be an excellent source for a LOR for all the reasons you listed - he knows you well, you have taken more than one semester of classes with him, etc. The year of instruction doesn’t matter much.</p>
<p>Icarus is right. All else being equal, it would be better to use a sophomore or junior year teacher. They’re a year closer, the courses are usually more advanced, etc. But all else is never equal, and this professor sounds like the other advantages outweigh.</p>
<p>Just don’t use ALL freshman professors. I used one each from my junior, sophomore, and freshman years. The most important one was my sophomore professor.</p>
<p>Yeah, he’s the only freshman professor I really got to know well. I took regular chem with him first sem then engineering chem 2 second sem, so I hope it doesn’t look elementary compared to soph and junior year. </p>
<p>Also, our premed adviser told us we need 3 science, and 2 nonscience letters. That’s a lot of letters, so, does a letter from clinical work count as science or nonscience, and are 5 letters the actual requirement?</p>