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Letter of Recommendation Service
Letters of recommendation are usually required of all applicants by professional school admissions committees. All letters of evaluation are carefully read by the admission committee, but they have a varying influence depending upon the realism and depth of insight into the candidate provided by the letters. Many letters are superficial and are only frustrating to the admissions committee. In general, the longer the writer has been acquainted with preprofessional students in general and with the applicant in particular, the greater the depth and the validity of the evaluation, thus the letter would have greater influence on the admissions committee's deliberations. The most meaningful letters are from those professionals who have known the applicant well as a student, or those who have supervised the applicant and have a basis of comparison to other preprofessional students.
The Office of Health and Legal Professions Advising (OHLPA) Letter of Recommendation Service acts as a central agency to:
- Give you information that will help you solicit letters of evaluation.
- Develop a confidential file to collect letters of evaluation.
- Transmit copies of the collected letters to the professional schools designated by you.
This process saves you and the letter writers from duplicating their efforts for each school to which you apply. What is more, the directions to evaluators should generally result in letters containing more information of the type considered significant by professional schools.
Where to obtain letters and who should write them
Anytime after your first term at the University of Florida, and prior to applying to professional school, ask at least three faculty members if they would be willing to write detailed and favorable letters of evaluation on your behalf. Although you may ask faculty members for letters as early as your first year, you will want to wait to provide the evaluation forms until the end of your junior year so that the letters will be dated close to the time of your application. Keep in touch with such faculty members until you are getting ready to apply. Some of your letters should be from professors you have taken courses with recently.
In the fall or by the beginning of the spring term of the year in which you apply, you should download the application and instructions and bring the completed copy into the OHLPA Office to establish a file for the collection of letters. Your file should be complete no later than August 1st. If you wait any longer, the delay in the receipt of the evaluations may delay consideration of your application, seriously reducing your chances of admission. Request your letters early, as some have arrived in our office months after being requested.
You should choose faculty who know you well, have had you in their courses, and are favorably impressed by you. Many students are uncertain as to how to get to know faculty members. The easiest way is to ask your instructors (in or after class, or during office hours) about topics in the course you do not understand. Not only will you become known to your faculty, which may help you obtain better letters of recommendation, but you may improve your understanding of and performance in the class. You could even develop a mentor relationship with a faculty member. Keep in touch with the faculty with whom you feel you have made a connection. When you ask a faculty member to write you a letter, ask if the letter will be a favorable one. In addition, offer as much information about yourself as possible - copies of your transcript, a resume, a statement describing your motivation for medicine, and a personal meeting to answer the faculty members' questions.
Most schools will ask for letters from both science and non-science professors. It is to your advantage to contact the schools you wish to apply to in order to determine who they want letters of evaluation from, since this varies from school to school. The rank of the professor writing the letter of evaluation generally does not affect how the letter is received. What is important is the experience and familiarity of the writer with many other preprofessional students with whom the applicant may be compared. If the writer has established credibility through previous letters sent to professional schools, then the significance of a letter from that person is enhanced. Although faculty are preferred as evaluators by admissions committees, if you have had graduate teaching assistants in some laboratory or discussion sections, you may ask one of them for a letter and have the instructor in charge of the course endorse the letter in the space provided. Do this for at most one recommendation. In large university classes this procedure is fairly common. Junior college and other transfer students may wish to ask for letters from at most one or two professors at the schools in which they were previously enrolled. Applicants at the University of Florida typically submit 3-5 letters of evaluation, depending on to which schools they apply. No more than five letters may be sent by OHLPA for any one applicant in one year.
Most applicants also request one or two personal letters of recommendation. These may come from employers, a volunteer coordinator, a physician that you shadowed, a research supervisor etc. These personal letters are to be written on letterhead, but they may be included in your file. It is best if they come from those who can impartially evaluate your qualities, not indiscriminately praise you. Employers, research supervisors, and faculty advisors to organizations you have been involved with can be helpful because they have had the opportunity to assess characteristics such as your ability to work with others cooperatively better than a family friend. Political letters are not looked upon favorably by most medical schools. Keep in mind that schools will ask for different sets of letters so you may need to get one or two specific letters for specific schools in addition to those in your file.
NOTE: All letters gathered at your request in your active file will be sent to the admissions committees of the schools which you designate. Therefore, if someone is planning to write a letter in support of your application to a specific school, it would be best to have that letter sent directly to that school.
You need to establish a new file for every year in which you apply. If your file is more than one year old, you should solicit at least 2 new letters or request updates of old letters in your file. It is far better to have a few knowledgeable and detailed letters than to try and collect the maximum number allowed with the intention of overwhelming admissions committees. Remember the phrase, "Quality, not quantity." No number of letters will compensate for mediocre academic performance or low admission test scores.
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