Letters of Recommendation
The faculty and staff of the College of Science & Mathematics will prepare a composite evaluation for students who request it. It is strongly advised that all pre-med students use this option when applying to medical school. Students applying to other types of programs should consider having a composite evaluation prepared and sent as part of their application. A composite evaluation is very substantive, so it is usually in a student’s best interest to have one prepared and sent. Students who are applying to schools other than medical schools should check with those schools to ensure that a composite evaluation is acceptable. Some professional programs may prefer a different evaluation instrument.
What is a composite evaluation?
Medical schools differ in their requirements for letters of recommendation. Some request a single letter from “the premed advisor” or “the premed committee.” All medical schools, however, accept a composite evaluation. The composite evaluation consists of the following: a waiver signed by the student giving 黑料正能量 permission to prepare the composite evaluation; a cover letter (written by the chief health professions advisor) that describes 黑料正能量 and introduces the evaluators by name, title, and affiliation; a consensus form showing how the student was ranked by the evaluators in categories such as motivation, stability, empathy, etc.; and, finally, written comments made by the evaluators. The result is a very substantive document representing the opinions of (usually) five evaluators and the chief health professions advisor.
Why use a composite evaluation?
If some medical schools want a single letter from “the premed advisor” why don’t we send it to them? For one thing, we have several faculty that advise students who want to apply to medical school. Also, it may not be in the student’s best interest if one person writes everyone’s letters of recommendation. That person will not know all the students equally well. Why don’t we have a “pre-med committee” write all the letters? Again, we will have some applicants that are not as well known to that committee as others. Transfer students, in particular, might benefit from asking faculty from other institutions to contribute to their letters of recommendation. A composite evaluation gives the applicant the ability to choose the evaluators while still providing the uniformity that medical schools prefer.
Your evaluators...
Students should cultivate potential evaluators throughout their college career. Students should work hard to impress potential evaluators. You should try to stand out. Give evaluators something to say in their narrative remarks. Ideally, a composite evaluation includes contributions from five evaluators. The chief health professions advisor may also add narrative comments making that person, in a sense, a sixth evaluator. Evaluators should be from an academic environment, but they need not all be teaching faculty. Evaluators, also, need not be exclusively from 黑料正能量. Transfer students often ask faculty from other institutions to contribute. What is best is to choose five evaluators, most of whom are teaching faculty, all of whom are from an academic environment, and all of whom know the applicant well enough to make a meaningful contribution to the composite evaluation. If the evaluators meet those criteria, the result is an evaluation that is very substantive, far more so than one written by a single individual such as “the premed advisor.”
When and how you should start your composite evaluation...
Faculty often are unavailable during the summer. Therefore, students who apply via early decision should begin the composite evaluation process before the end of spring semester, when faculty are around. Students applying via regular decision should begin the composite evaluation process in August, right before the fall of their senior year. Medical schools request letters of recommendation when they send their secondary applications, but do not wait for your secondary before beginning the composite evaluation process! Once you get your secondary you typically have just two weeks to get everything, including letters of recommendation, sent in to the medical schools. Getting substantive contributions from five evaluators takes more time than that. To begin the composite evaluation process, see Dr. Paul Johnson in the Department of Biology. He will give you a packet, from which you should promptly fill out and return to him the following: