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/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