Some medical schools like, Creighton University School of Medicine, require a committee letter if your undergraduate pre-professional health advising office provides them. In my experience managing a program that was initially connected to the Office of Admissions, it’s a small number of medical schools that prefer the committee letter. In reviewing applications, I found the committee letter as helpful as translating English to English. Personally, I preferred to read the original letters written by the professors, supervisors, mentors, or other recommenders.
What is a committee letter?
Essentially, the committee letter is just a summary of the letters in the packet and at some schools that conduct an interview, an evaluation of the applicant based on that one interview. How detailed can a recommendation be based on one interview or interaction with a person? Mostly, the committee letter relies on the individual letters for content, and those individual letters are written by people who have a deeper knowledge and more long-term relationship with the student than the author of the committee letter.
The pros and cons of committee letters
Pros of applying without the letter:
- You can customize your letter packet to each school.
- You can skip the step and process of obtaining a committee letter, which may include an application, interview and take a little more time to collect as the “committee” writes it based on your other letters of recommendation.
- The absence of a committee letter is not going to have any impact on your application at most medical schools.
Pros of applying with the letter:
- It can serve as an official endorsement from your campus, if your school provides committee letters only to students who meet specific criteria. Consequently, schools that require committee letters may view their presence or absence as an additional screening tool and a positive reflection on the quality of applicants who have them.
Cons of applying without the letter:
- At schools like Creighton University School of Medicine, if you are not applying with a committee letter and your campus offers it, you may need to explain why you don’t have one.
- Other schools that require it may have a process that you may need to complete before you can apply without one, like completing a waiver to request permission to apply without it- though it is a small percentage of schools.
Cons of applying with the letter:
- If you send the committee letter to the AMCAS letter service as one packet, you will not be able to customize your letter packet for each school. Many schools have specific requests in terms of what types of letters they prefer to see and how many letters you can submit.
Bottom Line
To be as strategic as possible, I recommend to my clients that they cover all their bases by collecting a committee letter as well as each individual letter. This way, when secondaries and letters of recommendation are due (usually at the same time), they will be able to submit the combination of letters that best meets each school’s requirements. If you are applying without a committee letter, don’t fret, simply research which schools you would need to submit a waiver to or don’t apply to them. It’s a small number of schools.
Check out our Letters of Recommendation Services for more information on how we can help you secure a strong committee letter or LOR and get ACCEPTED. Learn more here.
Alicia McNease Nimonkar worked for 5 years as the Student Advisor & Director at the UC Davis School of Medicine's postbac program where she both evaluated applications and advised students applying successfully to med school and other health professional programs. She has served Accepted's clients since 2012 with roughly a 90% success rate. She has a Master of Arts in Composition and Rhetoric as well as Literature. Want Alicia to help you get Accepted? Click here to get in touch!
Related Resources:
• Navigate the Med School Maze, a free guide
• Which Allopathic U.S. Medical Schools Require Pre-Health Committee Letters?
• How to Secure Excellent Letters of Recommendation