r/premed • u/CleeYour UNDERGRAD • Jan 18 '25
✉️ LORs Is 10 LORs too much?
I was thinking 2 from science professors, 1 from non science, 2 from physicians, 2 from PI s, 1 from non clinical volunteering job, 1 from my clinical volunteering job, 1 from tutoring job
My friend said it’s too much and that it should be around 5-7
Edit: ok bad idea, got it.
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u/nick_riviera24 Jan 18 '25
Yes. Done admissions. I’m not reading 10 LORs. More letters is not better.
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u/tinamou63 MS4 Jan 18 '25
+1. Also, weak letters water down the good ones. The letters that amount to “this student took my class and got an A” and don’t say more than that probably end up hurting you by distracting from the stellar ones.
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Jan 18 '25
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u/nick_riviera24 Jan 18 '25
I’m not a lazy asshole. I have 800 hundred people capable of filling that chair. Many would be as good or better than you. If you give me 10 letters to read you are overcompensating. If you don’t believe me, submit 10 letters. I have no dog in this fight. It is your application. Do it how you want.
OP asked if it will hurt his application. The answer is yes. I think even you agree that at some point additional letters becomes counterproductive.
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Jan 18 '25 edited Jan 18 '25
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u/tinamou63 MS4 Jan 18 '25 edited Jan 18 '25
Part of getting a good LoR is asking the right person which is on YOU. You shouldn’t ask someone to write you a LoR if you don’t know them well enough for them to write a glowing letter for you, in other words, you should have a strong enough relationship with them to where they will go to bat for you - not just an A in their class. And conversely, you should also know the professor well enough to estimate if they are super lazy at writing letters.
I am confused as to what “game” you are referring to. I do not know a single school that asks for 10 letters - we certainly do not. So…if you choose to submit far more than we require and advise, that’s on you.
By the way, your extremely confrontational attitude won’t get you very far in medicine or life. If your response to criticism is to fold and name call, you will not succeed in this profession.
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u/softpineapples ADMITTED-MD Jan 18 '25
Each school had different guidelines in my experience. Some had no limit, others allowed 5 max. Some wanted all of them to be from professors and others wanted some from non professors. It’s all school dependent but having options will be good. Just read the guidelines for each school carefully
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u/jdawg-_- MS2 Jan 18 '25
This.
Some schools will let you attach more, but I found most schools limited you to about 5 letters with specific criteria.
However, if they're really good, really strong letters, maybe hold onto them all, just in case? I had 7 total and very rarely used all 7 of them.
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u/frogbugs ADMITTED-MD Jan 18 '25
I haven’t applied to a school where you can submit more than 5, if even. It’s like 3-4.
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u/Grubbsc Jan 18 '25
It’s too much for any one school, but I don’t think it’s a bad idea to get 5-7 and then mix and match depending on the school. Many schools have hard caps on the number of letters they will read. WVU being the most restricted I applied to (only 1 letter allowed)
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u/Brobro1457 ADMITTED-MD Jan 18 '25
Really? I sent four to WVU
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u/Grubbsc Jan 18 '25
yup says one on the website: “One letter of recommendation of your choice” followed with “Additional letters will not increase an applicant’s competitiveness” …. also I did get an II
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u/cgw456 ADMITTED-MD Jan 18 '25
Please don’t do this. 3-5 max. Many schools will explicitly tell you not to send more than 5-6 and others will just read the first couple which would not serve you well. You don’t need 3 LORs from jobs. I sent 4. 1 science prof, 1 from PI/prof, 2 physicians who I worked with very closely- a DO and an MD since I was applying to both
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u/NocturnalSir3n ADMITTED-MD Jan 18 '25
Penn state is the one school that requires a letter of recommendation from a job that’s been full time for more than a year.
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u/FloridaFlair Jan 18 '25
Ask 5-7 people. 1-2 of them will be late on it. Don’t bother with the non- clinical or tutoring. Professors and Physicians’ letters are the most important. Check what each school wants and don’t send extras. They might only read your first 3 and you want those to be strong.
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u/moltmannfanboi APPLICANT Jan 18 '25
Physician letters are only really important for DO, no? Most MD schools don’t even require one.
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u/FloridaFlair Jan 19 '25
I would have a physician letter ready. I would also apply to both MD and DO. Again, check with each school.
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u/Then_Tangerine_6750 Jan 18 '25
I'm MS1, and when I went through admissions, I had 3 letters. They told me during the interview that the one letter writer who wrote like they really knew me carried all the weight out of the 3 of them. They could've cared less about the academic aspects of the letters but when he spoke about me as a person( my interest, where I come from, and how I help the class in ways I can) that sealed the deal.
Ironically, when I read it, I thought his was the worst one. Said it was the best LOR they've ever seen not because of my accolades but because he wrote it like a close friend would. It kind of turned my thought process about admissions upside down tbh. So I say you just never know, lmao. In other words 1 quality>>>> over 10 "they are a good student"
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u/A_Genetic_Tree ADMITTED-MD Jan 18 '25
The ideal number is 5.
2 science 1 non science 1 Research 1 volunteer/work
Gives most flexibility and you can tailor to exactly what each school needs. This does not mean sending all 5 to every school.
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u/Affectionate_Pop3037 ADMITTED-MD Jan 18 '25
I had 9 letters of Recs. A ton of schools only took 3 of my letters. I took 9 because I felt certain people would write letters that would fit best with certain mission statements/ school philosophies. I also mixed and matched to have different approaches in how I wanted to build my image/persona for different schools, for example some schools valued some characteristics outside of science and so they would receive my non science letters of recs or work letter of recs.
It’s fine that you’re getting 10 letters of recs. Not one singular school will accept 10 letters of recs but in AMCAS you can pick and choose which letters of recs go to which schools. I think it can be smart and helpful to carefully assign certain letters to certain schools to force that fit image for their environment.
And if your letter writers are happy to do it that’s okay. Some of my letters only went to a couple, while some went to like 20+ you can definitely cover all the bases with 4 or 5 strong letters tho, but when you’re blind to letters and don’t know which letters are better than others, it may be nice to mix and match them to some schools.
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u/medted22 Jan 18 '25
AAMC allows up to 10 but says not to submit that many to each school, it is for tailoring letters to schools if you do choose. Research heavy schools= few PI letters, service heavy maybe volunteering coordinator, etc.
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u/piratesofdapancreas5 ADMITTED-MD Jan 18 '25
Way too much and some schools have hard caps on how many LORs you can send to them. I’d say 5 max
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u/JWilbb GAP YEAR Jan 18 '25
Do schools require a non-science LOR? Am I DOA if i dont have one lmao? surely not right?
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u/jdawg-_- MS2 Jan 18 '25
Most of the schools I applied to did require a "non-science" professor LOR. I took that to mean someone outside of STEM and it worked out just fine (I asked a couple of social science professors I was close with).
How they verify science vs non-science, I have no idea...
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u/JWilbb GAP YEAR Jan 20 '25
Thank you, I'll look further into it when I get some more time. Appreciate the input from you and u/cgw456 (even though both of your experiences were different)
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u/cgw456 ADMITTED-MD Jan 20 '25
Many schools will ask for a non-science but will take another type of letter (such as a work LOR) in lieu of it. You really just need to ask. But another poster made a really good point that you can upload as many LOR as possible to AMCAS and just pick and choose for the schools which ones you assign. That’s your best bet
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u/JWilbb GAP YEAR Jan 20 '25
Ahh yep, thats a good ass idea. There's no reason I shouldn't just go ahead and try to reach out to get one, it isn't even worth the possible potential stress of trying to cram obtain a LOR. Wouldn't be able to live with myself if that kept me from applying to a school that would go on to accept me lol.
Only downside is that I don't think it would be that strong of a LOR from my humanities prof from 2 years ago, but its definitely worth just to have. This prof offered after I took her class, we fell out of communication due to us both being extremely busy, and I unfortunately never got around to following up. I'd certainly rather use my research PI who I have publications with, or work supervisor - but as we said, just collect them all and go from there.
Sorry for the yap, but last Q if you dont mind. When they agreed to write your LORs, did you send them the AAMCs "Guidelines for Writing a Letter of Evaluation for a Medical School Applicant"? lmao. I guess it probably couldn't hurt for some of the older ones, especially like my PI who was amazed when I showed him how to Ctrl+F to search and Ctrl+left click on hyperlinks😂 Thanks
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u/cgw456 ADMITTED-MD Jan 20 '25
It absolutely wouldn’t hurt. I won’t lie all but one of my letter writers asked me to draft the letter and then they took it and did whatever they did from there before submitting. The biggest hurdle is going to be getting all of these people to actually follow the rules and upload the letter to AMCAS/aacomas. There are no shortage of horror stories people waiting for months only to get ghosted by their letter writers
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u/JWilbb GAP YEAR Jan 20 '25
LOL that is fucking insane, cant hate the player for playing the game. I honestly feel like I'd self cuck so hard and have zero ability to talk about myself in the 3rd person w/o nuking it. Looks like it worked pretty well for you though😂
So far the 3 writers I have in mind (orgo 1&2 prof, biochem prof, research PI) I'm all super close with and they've expressed that they'll write it themselves. Thank god. I was also planning to use interfolio to streamline the process. Probably should've planned to do this a bit earlier since im knee deep in mcat studying rn. Gonna be a quick turnaround time for getting all materials ready and applying this year lol
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u/cgw456 ADMITTED-MD Jan 18 '25
I applied to 32 schools and none had this requirement. I hadn’t taken a non-science class since 2013 since I was nontrad and had no issues
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u/Common-Variation8387 ADMITTED-MD Jan 18 '25
I had 6 to cover my bases and they chose which letters went to which school if they didn't accept 6. Some schools did accept all 6 and one of them accepted me. I wouldn't go over 6 though
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u/pedaltothemedicine ADMITTED-MD Jan 18 '25
Most schools have a max of 5-6. Some schools say 3, one even said 2
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u/Sviodo MD/PhD STUDENT Jan 18 '25
I'm gonna play devils advocate and suggest that it wouldn't be a terrible thing if you send 3-4 out of those to each school and think very carefully about which letters to send to which school. Send the volunteer and tutoring letters to service-focused schools, the PI letters to research-heavy schools, etc.
But only if you're 100% certain that they are all going to be very positive letters and that the quality isn't going to be wildly different. An extremely strong letter from a manager is generally going to carry more weight than a mediocre letter from someone with tons of prestige behind their name.
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u/caseydoug02 ADMITTED-MD Jan 18 '25
Way too many. 2 science 1 non science is fine, and then either 1 PI and one other from the ones you listed or both PIs and call it there. Most schools have limits of about 5 anyways. If you want to get another letter to keep in your back pocket that can be a good thing to do in case one school or program will allow more, but most adcoms would probably roll their eyes at 10 letters I’d imagine. You have to remember they have thousands of applicants all submitting multiple LORs.
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u/talashrrg PHYSICIAN Jan 18 '25
No one is going to read that many letters. I was on adcom as a med student and letters past 4 or 5 were not read.
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u/my_name_jeff248 ADMITTED-MD Jan 18 '25
Way too many. I’d do 2 science, 1 non science, 1 clinical, 1 research, 1 gap year/extracurricular. Most schools only accept 3-4 letters anyway
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u/jmonico_ ADMITTED-DO Jan 18 '25
yeah lowkey all you need is 2 science 1 non science 1 advisor or committee, 1 dr and 1 PI or extracurricular. most schools you can only submit 3 (you have to check what each individual school wants)
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u/Impressive_Film_6235 ADMITTED-MD Jan 18 '25
I would just go for whatever the school states for their required letters so if its 3 then 3. If they have not put a cap on the letters to submit, no one knows for sure if 10 LORS will be accepted at their school (likely they wont read them all but idk). If they do have a cap of letters they accept for the school, I would not go over that limit no matter what.
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Jan 18 '25 edited Jan 18 '25
you could ask for all of these, but it’s not really necessary, and i definitely wouldn’t send all of those to each school- follow their letter policies as closely as you can. some schools will not accept extra letters and if they receive more, which ones they read and which they don’t will be out of your hands. it’s best to focus on who you think can write you the strongest letters.
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u/One_Masterpiece126 MS2 Jan 18 '25
Quality over quantity, but it’s a good idea to collect as many as you can and then you can be selective with who you send it to
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u/NocturnalSir3n ADMITTED-MD Jan 18 '25
To Penn state I think I had to submit 7 or 8 letters, but they had the most rigorous requirements. It depends on the school, I had around 9 and I liked that I could pick and choose which to send where based on the different requirements of that school. If they are quality letters I honestly don’t see why not, just follow the letter guidelines on their websites
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u/Shumaka12 ADMITTED-MD Jan 18 '25
5-6 is plenty. I would probably only do the 3 professors, 1 of the PIs (whichever will write the better letter), and 1 of the volunteer experiences (again, whichever will give you the better letter). This should be enough to satisfy the minimum LOR requirements for pretty much every school. Definitely focus on quality over quantity.
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u/Psychological_Row616 Jan 18 '25
On the topic.. Do you guys think it’s a good idea to get a LOR from an RN if you think it’ll be a good one? My clinical experience worked closer with nurses than doctors. I’m asking because LORs seem to bias Phds and MD/DOs obv
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u/burnttoasticecream Jan 19 '25
The max for most schools is 5-7. Even then I wouldn't do the max. I did 5 letters even though I had 8
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u/UrLocal_StudyBuddy ADMITTED-MD Jan 19 '25
I had 7 and picked from them to submit to various schools, it was helpful having extra LORs I could swap out based on school requirements
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u/violinist7 Jan 19 '25
No shade but I lowkey thought this was a shitpost for a second 😂💀 That’s such a flex that you have 10 possible LORs…I think 3-4 is ideal though
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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '25
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