What happens if your college’s premed committee refuses to write a recommendation? Can you still apply anyway? What happens if you supposedly have one, but you know the head of the committee personally dislikes you, and you are afraid what’s in the letter? Can you simply not submit it, or does it look so bad not to submit it, that you really have to and hope for the best? Thanks!
If you search SDN you will get your answer: Yes, you can apply med school without committee letter, there are success stories, but it will be harder.
Just think this through logically. If you were a medical school and an applicant’s university refused to endorse them or the applicant was unwilling to let the university speak to you - how would that make you view the applicant relative to the ones whose school is more than willing to recommend them?
I agree with you @i wanna be brown (iPads don’t have underscores). I had dinner last night with a friend whose daughter is applying to med school and received a committee letter, but said that a number of her classmates did not. She was surprised at how many didn’t, even kids with good stats who were not washed out of the premed program. I’m at a loss as to why the school won’t write a committee letter for a number of kids who are otherwise in good standing. No one should be blind-sided in this process. In any event, my D is a rising HS senior who may want to go on to med school, so now I’m thinking that we need to do a lot more research into this aspect of potential schools’ programs. I expect a lot of kids to get washed out of premed freshman and sophomore year, but not after that except in unusual cases. Any recommendations as to what statistics My D should be looking at, or what questions she should ask?
Why don’t pre-med committees write recs for every student in good standing?
Stats aren’t everything when it comes to medical school admission.
Pre-med committees are also checking to see if their students applicants have had appropriate exposure to the medical profession, have received strong endorsements of their individual teachers and medical/professional mentors, are able to articulate cogent & compelling reasons why they want to attend medical school and can conduct themselves with the maturity and professionalism required of medical students.
Pre-med committees are acting as gate-keepers and pre-screeners for medical schools in a way, helping med school cut down on the number of long shot, perfunctory, and ill-conceived applications they have to process and read every year. (Some medical schools receive 100+ applications for every available seat they have. Processing all those applications is expensive, time-consuming and personnel intensive. It costs the med schools money which in turn helps drive up tuition.)
The committees are also protecting their school’s reputation so that when the committee give their endorsement to an applicant it hold weight for adcomms reading it.
Kids change their minds all along the way. Academics are far from the sole reason why kids fall off the pre-med path.
Some discover other careers they are better suited for. Some get turned off by the very long and very expensive training process future physicians undergo. (Delayed gratification thy name is physician.) Some get fed-up with all the hoops they have to jump through. Some lose their 'starry eyed idealism" when faced with the realities of dealing with patients who are not nice, clean, compliant and grateful. Some find it’s too depressing/bleak spending all their time in hospitals/clinics and around the sick & dying. Some find they just don’t have the right temperament for clinical medicine. Some decide to prioritize other things in their life–like a starting a family or the desire to start earning an income.
Any statistics produced by an individual school are fairly meaningless because there is no uniform way used to calculate those. A college/university can cook their numbers any way they want.
85% of their student get into med school?
Is that 85% of freshman pre-meds? 85% of students who sit for the MCAT? 85% if student who receive the endorsement of the pre-med committee? Does that 85% include alumni applicants who may be applying as much as 5-8 years post-graduation or just current students?
Also, how does the school define “medical school”? US MD programs only? US MD and DO programs only? Any medical school, including off-shore and international medical schools? I’ve even seen some schools “count” graduate programs in nursing, physical or occupational therapy, clinical psych, podiatry, even chiropractic and naturopathic schools as “medical school”.
If your D wants to ask questions–ask about opportunities for local clinical volunteering. Ask if the pre-med office helps students find shadowing opportunities. Ask about campus research opportunities in any areas/topics your D has a specific interest in. Ask about what kind of support and information the health profession office offers to students, including if the advisors will help her tailor her list of schools to apply to. Ask about the availability of on-campus support services available to students, including tutoring and mental health services.
@WayOutWestMom thank you for your answer and suggestions. I really appreciate it. I think what is bothering me the most is that according to this mom, her D said the kids who didn’t get recommendations were shocked and didn’t know there was any issue, and that this was more than just a few kids. I don’t know if the kids didn’t have some of these requirements you mentioned, but it seems like the pre-med advisor should have been meeting with the kids all along and letting them know if they are on track or not. Or am I wrong? My friend was really upset on their behalf that they’d spent so much money and time going for a particular program, had no heads up that there was an issue, and now are adversely impacted by the committee’s decision to not give them a recommendation. I’m not familiar with this process at all, so as an outsider it seems almost unconscionable that they weren’t better advised about their standing throughout the process so they could have made other choices earlier. Her comments make me realize how important it is to network with folks who’ve been through the process at these schools and can give honest feedback if it’s a supportive program or not.
Health profession offices seldom have the time to provide that kind of step-bystep handholding. The office is busy preparing committee letters (which can run up to 25 pages) not just for pre-med students, but for any health profession student (dental, vet, cliical psych, OT, SLP, etc). And it’s not just for current students, for alumni also.
Advisors also have other counseling & administrative duties, not just acting as advisor for the health professions students.
Plus a student has to actually ask for meeting to assess their progress–something students don’t do and often don’t even think of until its application season.
Additionally the advisor doesn’t actually see most of a student’s application (LORs, test scores, personal statements, ECs lists /w descriptions & references, any IAs, full transcripts–which may include grades from other colleges) until the student actually submits it to the committee in April of the year they plan to apply.
Hang around CC or SDN and you’ll see the phrase “too soon to tell” or “come back when you have MCAT score” when students ask about their competitiveness. You have to be able to see the whole picture to assess a student’s competitiveness.
Students aren’t privy to contents of the LORs sent by their recommenders to the committee. Only committee members see those so student have no idea of the contents and advisors cannot divulge contents of those LORs to students since they are confidential. Also students are the absolute worst judge of their own competitiveness and how their ECs or PS is perceived by objective eyes. Lots of room to have slip-ups. Then there is the required interview for a committee letter during which a student’s professionalism, maturity and other personal subjective qualities are assessed. Again students are terrible judges of their performance during interviews. It could be another area where a decent stat student gets dinged.
Get enough dings, and the committee will decline to recommend.
Also many committees will not endorse a student unless the committee can award one of the top 2 categories of endorsements (outstanding/very highly recommended, or recommended without reservations). Committees will often decline to provide a neutral or negative letter because it could doom a student chances. Those students would be 1000X better off applying without a committee letter and taking a chance on providing individual LORs to support their application.
Plus there are other issues. Committees usually have strict deadline for applying for a letter and for the submission of materials. Turn stuff in late, and the committee may decline to supply a letter, or only provide a letter only if there is time left after everyone else who was on-time is taken care of, or the committee will provide a letter but ding the student for “lack of professionalism”. And it has happened that in some years, at some schools, there are more students requesting letters than the committee has time to process so interview slots and letters are awarded on first-come, first-served basis, with everyone else being denied a committee letter.
@WayOutWestMom thank you so much for taking the time to clarify things for me. As an outsider to this whole process, my expectations are evidently a little off from reality. I really expected, for a private school all in cost of attendance rate of $70k/year, that a college would provide a premed kid with at least an annual meeting where they reviewed class schedules and ECs and other things to make sure the student is on track. The way you’re presenting this, this is a secondary administrative function and they have limited time for advising, whereas I think of it as a primary function. Thank you for your explanation. It’s important to understand the process and have reasonable expectations.
Oh, and I definitely understand that you don’t really have a clear picture until the MCAT scores are in, but I would have thought you would know in advance how everything else is shaping up for you.
One more comment–
Not all health profession advisors, even at pricey private colleges with strong pre-med programs, are knowledgable about medical school admission. Some give terrible advice to students because they aren’t up-to-date with current admission trends and policies. Others are knowledgable but are only familiar with a limited number of med schools–typically only those which the undergrad sends a large number of applicants year after year or those in the nearby geographic region. Many HP offices are not versed in DO admissions at all. HP offices are better at advising strong applicants who are likely to get accepted anyway than they are with more marginal applicants whose records have blemishes and oopsies. Most have no idea at all how to deal with non-traditional applicants.
You’re really expecting way too much from the HP office. It’s a resource, but one that needs to be used in conjunction with other resources. There is no substitute for a student doing their research about the med school application process and the expectations & requirements of that process.
Thanks @WayOutWestMom . I appreciate your candor and perspective. It’s now clear that my expectations and reality are different, and it’s really important to learn reality as early in the process as possible.
Do you mind me complaining for another minute? From my perspective, if I’m paying crazy money for college, I think that it is the HP offices JOB to know admissions trends and policies. If I’m paying significantly less for a state school, though, I understand that the resources are different; the difference in tuition has to come from somewhere. I really think it’s stupid to make all the students do all this research themselves and re-create the wheel. It’s a huge waste of time that could be spent doing other things (like studying or doing ECs) and their wheels will all be different, depending on the home resources they have.
Thank you so much for your time advising me. I’ve learned a lot and you’ve been really helpful.
The way you assess this is to ask schools what the pre-med office actually does for kids and talk to students about their own experiences with the office at the school.
Your expectation can be found in the money-milling SMP/Postbac programs where you pay tons of money to have their office to hand-hold you, but not in undergrad.