Letters of Evaluation

Letters of Recommendation/Evaluation are an important part of the med school process. They can really bulk where you may be lacking and tip you over the edge for an interview. The majority of med schools ask for at least two science professors and one non-science professor. Then you can add your choice of letters ranging from volunteer experience to doctor shadowing.

The number one thing we learned is to start early with building relationships with professors and any others you would like a letter from. So often, you are a semester before the application and realize you need one more letter and you end up asking someone that hardly knows you. One thing that really helped Danny was the year before we made a list of everyone he knew he would ask, the areas he needed to find someone, and then the best candidates for the upcoming school year. At the beginning of each semester he would then ask for a meeting with professors and explain he would like to get a recommendation at the end of the semester for medical school. This was HUGE! The professors liked his initiative, offered him advice, told him how to stand out and what their expectations were and even offered him really great opportunities for research or other great things for his resume. This approach allowed the professors to get to know him, watch his progress and then write about D setting goals and accomplishing them throughout the semester - which makes for a really great recommendation.

The second piece of advice is the same thing Syd wrote about: give your letter writers plenty of time for writing! I would say the absolute minimum is two weeks, but even that is pushing it. AMCAS gives you instructions to print out for each letter writer. Take/email that with a personal letter/email to each person you are going to ask and see what help they need or answer questions they may have about the process or you personally. Danny also took a resume with his so his letter writers had something to jump from.

Lastly, make sure you know what each school you apply to is looking for. I was surprised as I read all the different school pages the different kinds of letters they wanted. Some wanted the traditional 2+1, but others wanted a letter from a current employer, some specifically said no volunteer letters, some request physicians, etc. We then had to create different packets to send to different schools, so that is definitely something to be aware of.

Some schools have a Pre-med Committee that will write a composite letter, BYU didn't have that so we never had to deal with that. But I would for sure talk to your pre-med department and find out what they do offer because BYU was huge help in this department and Syd already explained.

Links:
committee letter/letter packet/individual letter
5 Tips to get a Superb Letter
Getting Letters of Recommendation

Letters of Recommendation

A good set of letters of recommendation can really boost your application.
First steps in getting a good set of letters is starting a list of all those you can think of who will write you letters. We made a good list of professors, employers, volunteer organizations, dr.s and who ever else we could think of. Now keep in mind we started this list a good year before we were going to apply. It was important to us to give each person plenty of time to accept the invitation to write a letter as well as write a good letter in plenty of time.

BYU where Spencer went to school offered a program where your letter writers could turn in their letters to them. Then when it was time for us to turn in that part of our application BYU did all the work. This made it really easy to ask for letters early and not worry them later. See if your pre-med department offers something like this. It was a great help for us!

Also remember that professors will most likely be writing letters for a lot of other students as well. If you want your letter to stand out ask early and give them plenty of time to write a good letter. Also know that with professors you want a letter from a professor that knows you well. There were a few professors that we would have loved to ask for a letter  but Spence didn't feel they really knew him. He was just a student in a class of 400. So we went for professors where Spencer had a personal relationship with them.

While you are preparing for Medical School (way before applications) it is a good idea to get to know your professors, make friends with those you do research for, work hard as a volunteer. Not only are these things good for hours/service but you will also make a good impression for when you ask for a letter of recommendation later on.

Another thought....a couple of times Spencer was asked to write a letter of recommendation for himself. Then he would send that to the individual writing his letter. This gave the letter writer a chance to see what Spencer thought of himself and also what he wanted those reading the letters to see. It gave the letter writer a good starting point for Spencer. Just a thought!

Good luck with your letters. Like everything I've said before...start early so you don't have to worry about it later on!

Links:
AMCAS has a special letter writer application.  You can find info here
Here is a site with some other suggestions
BYU has a great document to get your mind on what kind of letters you want and what info you would like. Read it here.

Med School Journey: The Barfuss Family

our med school journey started way back in 2010. even before we were mr. and mrs.

i knew spence wanted to go to med school.  by the time we were engaged he had 1 class left to take. i pushed him to take the mcat that summer so we would be entering fall of 2012. as much as i pushed spencer didn't feel he was ready to take the mcat. considering we were getting married that summer he also felt that applications would be too stressful. he was right.

i was worried about him having a "break year". which is basically one year between undergrad and post-grad. he assured me he would be alright. so it was decided. he would take the mcat spring of 2011 and apply that summer.

we didn't wait that long to start the process though. after lots of research we found we needed to track his hours. service/work/leadership/research etc...so we started a google doc and started tracking. it was long and stressful but we were able to sit down and really remember all that he had done. we also compared what spencers activities looked like to the requirements of the university of utah. we were told that if he reached what they were requiring we'd be more than good to go. so we compared that to spence and got to work.

he started extra volunteer hours that fall. also did a lot of dr. shadowing. another thing we took care of in the fall was his letters of recommendation. it's never to early to request those. byu where spence went to school has a great pre-med program that allows for people to turn letters into them. they keep them all until the application opens and then at that point they will import them to the amcas letter program. (easy peasy).

i'll go more into this later...

fast forward. spence took a great mcat prep course and really did awesome on the test. (again the prep-course was the bomb.com). we started working on his application may of 2011 and turned it in early july 2011. we applied to about 30 md schools, 6 texas schools and 3 do schools.

started in late july he got requests for secondaries. at that point we narrowed our list to 25 md schools and 3 texas schools. spence decided that do wasn't the route he wanted to take so we veto'd those secondaries. interviews started in the fall. spence got invited for 10 interviews. lucky some of the longer trips we could bundle to save money. he decided to go to 8 of the interviews. a little more than average but we felt like it was worth it. finally in december we got our first acceptance. northwestern university in chicago. we were beyond thrilled.

1 acceptance, 1 rejection and 6 waitlists later here we are. we decided that northwestern was above 4 of the schools that waitlisted him. so we nicely dropped ourselves from those lists. so that leads us to now....still accepted and planning on northwestern but still on 2 waitlists.

we are still holding out hope that one of these two schools will come through. mainly because of $$ and location. northwestern is an incredible school and we're excited for chicago so if we don't hear good news from these other two schools we're still really excited.

so 3 years ago this time we had just started planning for where we are now. honestly we're still waiting and planning. we've decided to go full force on our own (no military though we considered it) and no government aid. these were both very personal decisions. i will continue to work full time and we'll see where we go from here.

we've learned a lot along the way and i'm excited to share a bit of what we've learned. for now here are a few sights...

fyi sites:
university of utah med school requirements
amc prep for med school site (awesome!)
student doc (great of a good overview)