Help! *currently Outstanding* Reference Letter On Omsas?

[Med_Pack]

Mine sent September 29th has been received.. but the two actually sent out at a reasonable date still say outstanding. I think there is no method to their madness

Called OMSAS just now and a whole lot of help that was. She wouldn't even use my reference or IT number to check if it had at least been received but not updated on my actual account. Going through older years posters where this has happened, it seems they used to check on the phone and sometimes it was received but not put in. She literally just told me to have them resend the letters. I sincerely hope I can even get in touch with one of my references, he's a surgeon and he's insanely hard to get a hold of. Getting a hold of his receptionist won't help when it's his signatures that are needed. This is my LIFE we are talking about and OMSAS is like hmmm, let's twiddle our thumbs some more- right, because I am going to believe that Canada Post "lost" my letters (1 I could believe but 2?!)- that's a 66 percent fail rate from Canada Post right there with my application.

 

This is my analysis of the situation:

 

-OMSAS is full of useless bureaucrats who take our money and then just wait until the next application cycle hoping to get a bunch more from the same people plus new recruits

- they say things are lost in the mail to cover up their own ineptitude, barring the very few situations when legitly, maybe it hapepned

- this is the biggest take-away: after spending hours last night sifting through just about every thread on "lost" letters, my advice is- if I had to reapply next year, I would not be sending my letters in so early. This seems to have happened to a lot of applicants with "early" letters sent it. My partner who sent his letters in third week of September-everything shows as received. Me on the other hand, not so much. And one of mine was sent in August. I'm sure this doesn't solve the situation, there are ways for them to mess up receipts, like my other letter that was sent in Sept but shows as not received, but maybe they just aren't as top of it during the summer and then we can only guess if it's sitting at the bottom of a pile somewhere.

 

Hang in there guys. I don't know if it will all be OK but I'm just going to say it will because it seems like the proper thing to do.

 

Will let you know when this ride of mine with OMSAS comes to an end- at least for the actual submitting the application part. We haven't even gotten to the fun stuff yet.

[majinpatrick]

My letters were sent in the past week or so and it was just changed to received
So, just hang tight. As long as you know it was sent before the deadline, you know you are good and they are just processing it
MCAT still pending though

[bellejolie]

It seems as though they are processing from most recently received to oldest (my 2nd one is still outstanding and was sent out at the end of August). The other 2 were sent in 2 weeks ago and were received. I'm sure by next week everything will be updated. They have 5000 x 3 letters to process = 15,000 letters. 

[hopefuldreamer]

It seems as though they are processing from most recently received to oldest (my 2nd one is still outstanding and was sent out at the end of August). The other 2 were sent in 2 weeks ago and were received. I'm sure by next week everything will be updated. They have 5000 x 3 letters to process = 15,000 letters. 

Hoping this is the case! Still on edge though as to if I should get my referees to resend or not. Like Med_Pack I am also applying to NOSM and I am mostly concerned as they have a rather concrete deadline for Oct. 1 receipt of all LORs. 

[hopefuldreamer]

Just an update for anyone else concerned about NOSM - this is the email reply I just received when I contacted them about this LOR issue:

 

"The stated deadline for reference letters to be received for NOSM is October

1st,  2015.  At this time we have extended the deadline to receive reference

letters directly to OMSAS to November 2nd, 2015."

 

That is a bit of a relief at least!

[Med_Pack]

OK guys, I called NOSM and the admin assistant mentioned that ref letters deadline are extended to Nov. 2nd. Looks like hopefuldreamer just added a post regarding this too as I was typing mine. So hopefully, it won't be a disadvantage to us if it looks like our letters were late. It still really irks me that if they can't find the original letter, it will look like I am the one who sent the letter in late rather than OMSAS royally screwing up.

[RicardoKaká]

I too was worried that one of my letters wasn't sent or was misplaced, but that status just changed today so just sit tight guys/gals I am sure they are just sifting through all that paper-work!

 

Best of luck to all!

[Med_Pack]

Another update- I have asked the 2 refs whose references weren't received to re-send their letters. Thanks, davisfenos, for the advice. I am just covering my bases here because these are the scenarios as I see it:

 

1) They've received my LORs but have no idea where it is and it won't be updated to "received"

2) They've received my LORs and they'll get it to it eventually, so it will eventually show as "received"- let's hope by Oct. 16th, which I believe is the deadline on their site for being updated

3) They haven't received my LORs, ie CP actually lost 2/3 of my letters which would really be an embarrassment for our postal system. In that case, on Oct. 16th, it will still show "outstanding."

 

In none of these scenarios would it be a bad idea to have them re-send, as OMSAS confirmed they will only include the oldest letter in there anyway if they receive duplicates. So if scenario 2 happens, oldest letter gets included, re-sent one is discarded/not included. If scenario 1 or 3 happens, my LORs will look like they are late as only the ones sent from today will be in the file (and stamped with date of receipt, obviously after Oct. 1st). But at least they will be in there and hopefully my file will get considered like everyone else's. The issue with waiting until Oct. 16th is that if your refs aren't received, you need to really hussle to contact them immediately and assuming they can get this done right away, have them send it, hoping it's all in there before your school's deadline (in my case, with NOSM's extension, that means Nov 2). If you are thinking of doing this, do yourself a favour and make sure none of your referees are planning to be away/unavailable in the next few weeks. Because one of the reasons one of my referees sent in August was because I gave them plenty of heads up and they told me they would be away from mid Aug-mid Sept. That reference may not have been able to come through for me if I had waited until Sept to touch base.

 

I hated bugging my references again but other than this and the time spent making calls this morning, there is more benefit to having things re-sent than drawbacks. Actually, I can't see a foreseeable drawback to having LORs re-sent other than this. I just profusely apologized to both for the inconvenience because basically it's like can you drop everything you're doing and take care of this one detail because my app might crash and burn before my eyes if you don't. Not quite that dramatic, but you know what I mean. They both were great about getting on it right away too. One of my refs as I mentioned before was an ortho surgeon and he was not in the office today but his receptionist was able to stamp his signature and while I would have preferred the original signature, I really can't see that being a reason for any disqualification. If anyone knows otherwise, let me know and I'll get her to re-send (yet again) when he's in clinic tomorrow.

 

It's a wonderfully supportive community here at premed101. I am only a few days old to this forum and very grateful to have the support.

 

One another thing, I did actually speak to someone in processing and she mentioned my letter from earlier in Sept may not be in the system yet although they are *supposed* to be caught up to the 30th I believe now. She was more concerned about the letter from August.

[Med_Pack]

Sorry for another post but just wanted to update everyone that I just got a call from a NOSM admissions officer. I had left a message for a NOSM admissions officer to call me regarding whether the extension to Nov. 2 deadline means that everyone's file is treated equally whether LORs get received between Oct 1st-Nov 2nd vs by Oct. 1st and she confirmed that there is absolutely no disadvantage. Another point she mentioned was that they have had a number of panicked students calling in this year and that they recognize how there are many points in the process where LORs can get lost in the ether so they will have an online system to be submitting letters next cycle  so no extensions. Hope this helps.

[Sesshomaru]

This happens every year. Either the post office workers are malicious med wannabes who sabotage competitors applications by throwing away letters addressed to OMSAS or OMSAS is just incompetent.

 

Anything is possible.

[Med_Pack]

lol. I'd say the latter is more likely than the former although that was a pretty funny image.

[FeministKilljoy]

They updated my profile today and only 1 letter is outstanding at this point (I decided to apply at the last minute so most things arrived to OMSAS at the last minute...). They're working hard over there sorting through the letters. Have faith 

[Med_Pack]

No updates on mine yet but still hoping.

[hopefuldreamer]

Update - 

 

My letter that was sent in on Sept 8th now says "received".

Still waiting on one more letter that was sent in early September as well.

 

....there is hope my friends 

[sjc2]

Not totally unrelated... Is it strange that my MCAT scores are still pending even though I released them in August?

[Harvestpro]

Not totally unrelated... Is it strange that my MCAT scores are still pending even though I released them in August?

Omsas says it will change on Oct 7th.

[Med_Pack]

I really wish we could apply directly to our schools of choice without all this intermediary stuff with OMSAS like every other province. We'd find out about interviews faster, we wouldn't need to pay them an extra fee and there's less room for things to get lost since it's exchanging less hands.

[sjc2]

Omsas says it will change on Oct 7th.

Thank you! Of course now OMSAS is down until 1pm...

[Med_Pack]

Says 3pm EST on my end. Terrific. Haven't checked my letters yet today.

[amichel]

I really wish we could apply directly to our schools of choice without all this intermediary stuff with OMSAS like every other province. We'd find out about interviews faster, we wouldn't need to pay them an extra fee and there's less room for things to get lost since it's exchanging less hands.

Most schools find out about interviews in late January anyways. And I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be much cheaper since the individual school application prices are much higher than the "add a school" charges for OMSAS. Also, I don't think things really get lost between OMSAS and the schools since it's all electronic. So really, there are less opportunities for things to get lost since it's centralized. Plus all the applications would be different, you'd have to enter grades separately for all the schools, and it would generally just be way more work.

 

Moral of the story, OMSAS isn't that bad. Hahah.

[Med_Pack]

I can't claim to know how it is for every school but I had thought it was less because of the schools I am aware of, like for UBC it's 170 for in province applicants, whereas OMSAS before even adding schools on here is 200+, I can't remember the exact number but with 1 transcript I know it comes to total $312 for applying only to NOSM. So that's quite a bit more. Entering grades is true, although I never got why they want us to enter grades when they get our transcript and have to verify that anyway.The getting lost part has more to do with how since they get all the applicants for all schools, not all the applicants for just one school (so for example, 5000 apps for all Ontario schools vs the 2000 apps for just NOSM), they have a lot more paperwork to sift through. So just for letters, that's 15000 letters instead of 6000. Way more room for error and letters to get misplaced, lost etc. I don't know if it's all electronic, wondered myself about that, I'm glad they're switching to online next year so there's none of this letter mailing business. The plus sides are though that I don't need to ask for copies of from my letter writers or order multiple transcripts, one for each school. There's multiple sides I guess. I would have loved to just walk down to NOSM and drop off my application package though lol and know it actually got there with letters. Since I live in town.

[amichel]

I can't claim to know how it is for every school but I had thought it was less because of the schools I am aware of, like for UBC it's 170 for in province applicants, whereas OMSAS before even adding schools on here is 200+, I can't remember the exact number but with 1 transcript I know it comes to total $312 for applying only to NOSM. So that's quite a bit more. Entering grades is true, although I never got why they want us to enter grades when they get our transcript and have to verify that anyway.The getting lost part has more to do with how since they get all the applicants for all schools, not all the applicants for just one school (so for example, 5000 apps for all Ontario schools vs the 2000 apps for just NOSM), they have a lot more paperwork to sift through. So just for letters, that's 15000 letters instead of 6000. Way more room for error and letters to get misplaced, lost etc. I don't know if it's all electronic, wondered myself about that, I'm glad they're switching to online next year so there's none of this letter mailing business. The plus sides are though that I don't need to ask for copies of from my letter writers or order multiple transcripts, one for each school. There's multiple sides I guess. I would have loved to just walk down to NOSM and drop off my application package though lol and know it actually got there with letters. Since I live in town.

I guess that's true if you apply to only 1 school. But when I applied to 4, it definitely would have been more expensive to apply to all of them individually.

[bellk]

Common Questions My MCAT scores show as “Pending”. What does this mean?

MCAT scores are not loaded into the application until October 7. Prior to this date, all scores will show as “pending”. If, after October 7, your scores show “Not Received”, you will need to do one, or both, of the following:

• Log on to the Secure Applicant Messaging tool (SAM) and provide OMSAS with your AAMC ID number
• Go to the MCAT Request site and release all scores to OMSAS 

http://www.ouac.on.ca/faq/mcat-scores-pending/ 

 

I'm assuming this is why it is down today as well...

[Med_Pack]

Common Questions My MCAT scores show as “Pending”. What does this mean?

MCAT scores are not loaded into the application until October 7. Prior to this date, all scores will show as “pending”. If, after October 7, your scores show “Not Received”, you will need to do one, or both, of the following:

• Log on to the Secure Applicant Messaging tool (SAM) and provide OMSAS with your AAMC ID number
• Go to the MCAT Request site and release all scores to OMSAS 

http://www.ouac.on.ca/faq/mcat-scores-pending/ 

 

I'm assuming this is why it is down today as well...

Thanks for posting this! That is probably why it's down. Hopefully in a little while then I'll be able to check on my letters again.

[Med_Pack]

OMSAS site is back up. The 2 letters that were still outstanding last week are still outstanding today, but maybe they are busy getting MCAT marks in and not working on ref updates today? Not sure, oh well, will keep an eye on it. Does anyone else have letters sent early Sept/Aug that are still outstanding? What about anyone whose refs might have changed something on the CAS form?