UserName Posted May 7, 2009 Report Share Posted May 7, 2009 Yes you can use interfolio. in fact you can also use interfolio to have your referees send the letters to AMCAS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a41 Posted May 8, 2009 Report Share Posted May 8, 2009 Yes you can use interfolio. in fact you can also use interfolio to have your referees send the letters to AMCAS. Lol I've always thought about using interfolio to send letters to myself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest viscous Posted May 8, 2009 Report Share Posted May 8, 2009 ok so for the individual letters which are being sent by my profs, do I still consider them as being "associated to an institution?" I have chosen "NO" because my prof is sending them independent of my "institution's permission or association" even though he will be using the letterpad with institution's name on it. Kind of lost here. Well, since the prof is a "prof" by virtue of his relation to the institution, it should be "yes." hmm ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UserName Posted May 8, 2009 Report Share Posted May 8, 2009 yeah i'm not sure about this question neither. it's the one when they ask if the letter is coming from a school after selecting an individual letter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest viscous Posted May 11, 2009 Report Share Posted May 11, 2009 seems Wash U in St. Louis is not participating in Amcas LOR service and so is Albany. Almost all of the schools that I am planning to apply are on the Amcas list, this means I dont need interfolio anymore .... our letter writers can directly upload the letters to AMCAS and we could forward them to our schools of choice...saves me $20, not that its a big amount compared to what I'd be spending on the applications. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UserName Posted May 13, 2009 Report Share Posted May 13, 2009 I'm still gonna use interfolio.. plus don't you wanna apply to Albany? I probably will. do we have to include our AMCAS ID into the letters? I saw that NYMC asks for this.. are they really strict about it? sounds silly since the letters will be coming directly from AMCAS this time. My grad supervisor already wrote me a letter and i had to ask for a correction on it already and i would hate to tell him to print another one now any formatting issues or pieces of information that need to be there that we should be aware of? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2ndTimesACharm Posted May 19, 2009 Report Share Posted May 19, 2009 theoretically, they do want to know something more than "this student got a 94 in my class". but it can be pretty hard for students at Canadian schools to get a great letter of reference from a science professor, and I guess that's also true at a large public American school. so a lot of students in that boat end up sending letters which are really just a confirmation of their academic abilities. the problem is that you're competing with applicants from smaller colleges who have more opportunity to get to know their professors and can therefore have those letters double as character references. in order to deal with that, you could do a couple things. one good option is sending additional letters of reference from employers, supervisors, and other people who know you well. that can help compensate for a drab academic reference. I've mentioned this in another thread, but I'll say it again here: I didn't send letters from BCPM professors, since they didn't know me as well as professors from my small program. since my program was still considered an applied science, all the schools I asked said this was fine. I then chose professors who I had small seminars with, or TA'd for to make sure they had something to say. sorry for the long post, but I think LORs are really important Mind if I ask what your program was? I did biomedical computing undergrad/a biotechy grad degree, and now that I've read this thread I am worried about getting an appropriate LOR. I am well removed from my undergrad science classes, and assumed I would use my grad supervisor who is basically a bioinformatics type. Is this a possibility for me, or do I need to go find my 4th year biochem prof and try to make him believe that I was indeed in his class? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UserName Posted May 19, 2009 Report Share Posted May 19, 2009 It's actually a problem and I don't know how to deal with it myself. some schools will tell you that you can't use professors who taught you graduate level science courses and u still need a letter from an undergraduate science course (i think it was NYMC?), yes some are more flexible. for example, I will be using my PI who is a faculty member.. and also the department head in my grad degree who actually taught me two courses in grad school and saw my presentations and such.. so I can use him as a science LOR for some schools but apparently not all of them. Gladly there are many US universities so perhaps we simply won't be able to make the requirement for all of them. this can help you narrow down your list of schools albeit in a not so pleasant way!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2ndTimesACharm Posted May 19, 2009 Report Share Posted May 19, 2009 It's actually a problem and I don't know how to deal with it myself. some schools will tell you that you can't use professors who taught you graduate level science courses and u still need a letter from an undergraduate science course (i think it was NYMC?), yes some are more flexible. for example, I will be using my PI who is a faculty member.. and also the department head in my grad degree who actually taught me two courses in grad school and saw my presentations and such.. so I can use him as a science LOR for some schools but apparently not all of them. Gladly there are many US universities so perhaps we simply won't be able to make the requirement for all of them. this can help you narrow down your list of schools albeit in a not so pleasant way!! So how did you go about finding out which schools would take letters from any prof and which required letters from Science profs? Is it on their websites, or did you email them to find out? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UserName Posted May 19, 2009 Report Share Posted May 19, 2009 basically it's on their website but when you select which schools you want to apply to on your AMCAS application, there will be a button next to each school that will take you to the specific page that talks about their reference letter requirement.. so that will save you a lot of manual searching Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joshto Posted May 20, 2009 Report Share Posted May 20, 2009 penn state requires 4 LOR; however, I only have 3. Is it worth applying? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AP_gooner Posted May 20, 2009 Report Share Posted May 20, 2009 penn state requires 4 LOR; however, I only have 3. Is it worth applying? 4 LOR is slightly excessive in my opinion, but the schools can choose whatever process they choose really. its up to you; if you have 3 great references and 1 that may not be great, but 'good' then go for it.... if its going to be a hassle to get a 4th LOR then it just depends if you want to go through the trouble of getting another prof/etc to write one for you! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
musicaldna Posted May 31, 2009 Report Share Posted May 31, 2009 Hi folks I am a graduate student in Biomedical Engineering (Research based) at UofT. In terms of LORs, I have a few options: 1) 4th Year Electrochemistry professor (kind of confirmed) 2) One of my two master's supervisors who taught me a course in 4th year (will be confirmed) 3) Summer research supervisor from two years ago who is quite familiar with my interest in medicine (confirmed) 4) Departmental Chief in Radiology at Toronto General Hospital whom I am shadowing (confirmed) I have not asked the following people but will need to for the "non-science" requirement. 5) Data Mining instructor from last semester 6) Bioengineering instructor from last semester What do you guys think? Will I meet the requirements for LORs? IMO, a summer research supervisor would know you better than a professor who taught you along with like 50 other students. Also, are LORs considered before the interview or after? Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
premed11 Posted June 1, 2009 Report Share Posted June 1, 2009 Hey, I had a question about the LORs. Can I use my honours thesis supervisor as one of my science profs? Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest viscous Posted June 8, 2009 Report Share Posted June 8, 2009 so when they ask for science professors, does that mean I can use a "lecturer" who taught me a course? He is not a "professor" in the sense that he has his own lab. He used to but not anymore. He teaches the courses however. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UserName Posted June 8, 2009 Report Share Posted June 8, 2009 yeah you can do that viscous Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UserName Posted June 8, 2009 Report Share Posted June 8, 2009 Well what I'm concerned about is that in secondaries they ask to have the AMCAS ID with the letters, but I did not ask my letter writers to reference the AMCAS ID but rather there was this interfolio document and the AMCAS letter form.. will AMCAS attach our IDs since it's them now who will forward the letters to schools? I think that as long as the letter made it to AMCAS it should be fine.. unlike in the previous year when obviously you had to tell interfolio to attach the numbers. Interfolio will allow you to add numbers to your documents whether student numbers or AMCAS IDs or whatever.. so i think it should be fine for secondaries.. but i'm not sure! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
premed11 Posted June 8, 2009 Report Share Posted June 8, 2009 does anyone know if a reference letter from a thesis supervisor can count as one science letter? Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UserName Posted June 8, 2009 Report Share Posted June 8, 2009 He has to be part of a science faculty i.e associated with the university and not from a research institute. I heard he doesn't have to actually teach a course but since he was your thesis supervisor then he might count as he technically was responsible for you for the thesis course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
premed11 Posted June 8, 2009 Report Share Posted June 8, 2009 He has to be part of a science faculty i.e associated with the university and not from a research institute. I heard he doesn't have to actually teach a course but since he was your thesis supervisor then he might count as he technically was responsible for you for the thesis course. The supervisor is from the science faculty. Thanks. I think it varies a bit school by school. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest viscous Posted June 11, 2009 Report Share Posted June 11, 2009 so any updates on "is this letter from a school?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest viscous Posted June 11, 2009 Report Share Posted June 11, 2009 ^^ anyone? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
token Posted June 11, 2009 Report Share Posted June 11, 2009 Is it AMCAS or interfolio asking this? My sense is that they're trying to distinguish the pre-med committee letters...and if you're Canadian you probably don't have a pre-med committee, so it's coming from an individual not an institution. Might as well call/e-mail AMCAS/interfolio to be sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest viscous Posted June 12, 2009 Report Share Posted June 12, 2009 what are you asking exactly? when you choose the individual letter for LOR, it asks that is this letter writer from university or something to that extent. Sure, my professor works at a university but the university administration is not writing my letter. So I was unclear on whether to choose "yes" or "no." How important is for the the professors to write letters on official letter heads? the doctor with whom I volunteer does not really have any letter head booklet. Should he take the effort of getting one made for him? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tree999 Posted June 13, 2009 Report Share Posted June 13, 2009 when you choose the individual letter for LOR, it asks that is this letter writer from university or something to that extent. Sure, my professor works at a university but the university administration is not writing my letter. So I was unclear on whether to choose "yes" or "no." How important is for the the professors to write letters on official letter heads? the doctor with whom I volunteer does not really have any letter head booklet. Should he take the effort of getting one made for him? I don't know if this is the "correct" thing to do, but last year I chose "yes" for my two letters from professors which I used as undergraduate "academic" references. For all my other references, I chose "no", even if they had a faculty appointment -- because the references weren't in an academic capacity. That's what I'd suggest, but don't worry too much about it though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.