Electronically Signing Medical School Letter of Recommendation Made Easy

Electronic signature medical school letter of recommendation

[Music] [Music] hi friends if this is your first time on my channel you are most definitely welcome if you're a returning subscriber thank you so much for sticking with your I appreciate it so so much if you are new please go ahead and subscribe and be sure to give this video a huge thumbs up and please please please watch this video to the end it really really helps me out when you do that and when you give me a thumbs up today I'm going to be talking about how it's actually is a recommendation for medical school I think that's something that can be very very intimidating not quite sure who to ask how to ask what to do so I'm here to kind of ease all those fears and just talk you guys through my process how I did it and things to consider when figuring out who direct your recommendations and how to ask for them so let's get into the video there's no denying the fact that recommendations are a huge part of your application like medical schools really do look to see what other people think of you when they're evaluating you and your candidacy for a slot you know in their medical incoming medical class right they want to see do people like this person like do people have good things to say about this person what does this person really feel you know the recommendations are really the time for you to shine but from the perspective of someone else so you want to make sure that you have the best writers writing your letters of recommendation so I guess the first question is how many recommendations do you need I think it depends on who you are where you're applying to what school you're coming from but I say 3 to 6 is a good amount to have 3 being the minimum and 6 being on the higher end of kind of how many you should send I personally had 7 letters but I only sent out six because one of the letters I was just kind of like we can do without you so I only sent out six some schools will have limitations on what you can send but it's important to check that out when looking at the schools to apply it to and if you go to a school that offers a committee letter usually medical schools will accept the committee letter in substitution of your three to six letters I mean you would have to access score or check to see if they will allow you to submit additional letters outside of your committee letter because if your school offers a committee letter that's when you should be going through and if you don't go through them that high raise is a question now why didn't you go through this committee to get the letter so I just want to put that out there if your school provides company letter probably have to use that service unless you have some other kind of like good explanation for not using it next thing you're probably wondering is who should write my letters of recommendation so again you have to go on each school's website to make sure you are following their guidelines because every Medical School can and is different in terms of their requirements for medical school some schools will say they want to science professors and one non science professor some schools will say we don't have we don't care who you who you ask the wretch Eliza recommendation we just want three some schools will say we want one professor from where you're like prerequisite classes one professor from my non prerequisite class and then like somebody else right so it's really important to look at the school's website but I think in general as a general rule of thumb you definitely want to have one to two science professors write you a recommendation once or two people outside of the classroom who know you and that could be either in the capacity of your job extracurricular leadership experience whatever the cases in order to get a well-rounded application you want people from different spheres of your life writing your recommendations right if you have all people who you took a class but they're only going to talk about you from like an academic standpoint or if you only pick all people who know you outside the classroom who can speak to your work ethic inside of the classroom which is still important it's for example these are the people I had write my letter recommendation I had my organic chemistry professor my biochemistry professor my human physiology professor and all three of these people knew me in varying degrees i had my major advisor who was also my advisor on my senior synthesis which was the documentary about black walnut medicine i made he was my advisor for that project i had him write me letter recommendation I had my applause at the job I was working all through college write me a letter recommendation and I had the doctor that I scribed for write me a letter of recommendation so I think I had a decent amount of people write I had a lot of people write mother's recommendation but I think they all had something new and fresh to contribute less so maybe the science professors they probably could have also the same thing to be age but I feel like all of them knew me in different capacities right like my biochem professor I had asked him to read me letter recommendation because I remember after getting my first midterm back from biochem I got like that D or D or F or something like that it probably D I was like really weak rushed about it cuz I was certain person migrating I'm so so sad and I was just like crying in front of him when I was like what am I gonna do I needed a this class I like I like literally my life is over if I don't get an A in this class and you know white men and black tears they don't know what to do with it you know I have to talk with him I really turned it around not that I wasn't doing well but like I really was so much more focused on doing well in the class I make sure I left with the a so he saw my growth he saw my resilience how I was able to turn it around from like getting one of the lowest grades on an exam to getting the highest grade on the next exam so he was able to speak in terms of my resilience which was really important that I wanted to show that like I can bounce back from things and that like even when I don't do well the first time I'm always like you know fighting it to make sure I do well the next time my human physiology professor he just knew how bad I want to be a doctor right everyone who wrote me about a recommendation knew that I was pursuing medicine and you how much it's meant to me so you definitely want to think about that you want to make sure people who are writing a recommendation have known you for a decent amount of time I say at least a year it'll be cases where that's not possible for example like actually by the time all my recommendations were in these people had at least only for a year at least what classes it's a bit it's a bit harder because you know one class move you on a quarter or two quarters and that's the end of that most of them had known me for at least a year if not multiple years which was really really helpful in terms of like seeing my growth as a person so you want to make sure the person who really knows you well not someone who you think knows you not someone who you've had an encounter with like once and then you magically expect them to like want to write a whole bunch of good things about you asking you one time so you want to be mindful that people who know you well and I think a great way to navigate that is if you know that let's say organic chemistry swept into two quarters at your school and you know that one professor is going to teach those two quarters try to take the class with the same professor so that's some things we do in terms of like longevity getting them to know you for life let me fresh air mine now how do you ask for letter recommendation so I think in an ideal world the people you would acts for the recommendation should already oh that you had planned to pursue medicine so you shouldn't have to say oh by the way guess what I'm interested in medicine hahaha you know they should already know so they should expect you they should be waiting for you to ask them for a lot of recommendation I think a lot of the people that I work with the people who ultimately wrote my brother's a recommendation most of them were anticipating me for me to ask because they already knew that at some point I was applying to medical school that this was a relationship I'd fostered ideally you want that kind of situation where these people are excited to support you so you definitely want to go to them in person so whether it's like office hours or you say hey I'd love to meet you for a coffee date or something you say as you probably already know you know I'm pursuing medicine here's my plan I'm thinking of applying next year I'm applying this upcoming summer I really really love for you to support my application with a strong letter of recommendation as you know you've kind of seen me through X Y & Z and I believe you can speak to X Y & Z so I'd really love for you to support my my application with your letter and in that moment will be the moment of truth you'll know who's loyal and who's not - right assuming they do like you and they do support your endeavors they will agree to write the letter recommendation if they say no don't be sad about it count it as a blessing because someone who says know what that means one they don't have the capacity like maybe they're just really really busy or the lots going on which you know it sucks but it's like I rather have someone who's gonna put in the attention love and energy into my recommendation and someone's just gonna write like two sentences and call it a day right so if they say no counting is a blessing because that means a they recognize they don't have the capacity to write you a letter or two they don't feel like they have good things to say about you know those reasons are good reasons to have someone saying no you don't want someone to write something bad about you in a letter recommendation and you don't want someone who's not gonna write you a lengthy letter recommendation either right ideally they should be excited and have so much to share about you I know someone who when they were applying to post back they acts when the professors and the professor only wrote like two sentences on their letter of recommendation and it's like it's mind-blowing that someone would say yes knowing you're not gonna write them a good letter like why would you just do that and be happy if they say no because they're if they are not blocking your blessing they're trying to save your blessing but ideally these people you talk to they should say yes and then after you ask them to talk to them a person I would follow up with the email say you know it was great talking with you in person thank you so much for thing to write me a strong letter of recommendation here are the things you need to know so you in that email you would include deadlines of like I need this letter in by this date ideally I'm the kind of person I say definitely get your recommendations earlier rather than later you don't want a situation where your application is ready to go but like you and like everything has done everything submitted but like there's a still pending recommendation that hasn't come in and you can apply to medical school without having all your recommendation thing I had to do that because one of my recommenders bless his soul he didn't send my recommendation until like July and I was just like it's okay and like but I like I couldn't wait on him to submit the letter before I applied to medical school so I applied so you can apply without having all your letters in I just think it's safe and it gives you peace of mind when you have in all the letters of recommendation before it's time to submit in addition to deadlines do you may want to share any piece of any important stuff you may want them to mention the letter so you may want to attach your personal statements we have a better understanding of your reasons for pursuit of Medicine you can attach a resume I say that with an asterisk because you don't want to encourage them to regurgitate what's already on your resume because medical school gonna see that it's another part of your application but you send these documentation just to support them and to assist in like whatever it is they want to write about you but you shouldn't encourage them to read educate what's on your resume so I'd focus on some of the personal statement share with them like I'd really love for you to highlight these experiences we've had together you know something even you could do all sorts of stuff but ideally people who've written recommendations for people in the past especially people to medical school having a general understanding of what's required in that letter of recommendation so a part of it is just trusting that your recommenders know what to do which is like removing control from your hands it will all work out the last thing I want to share with you guys and some people have been confused about this because I've mentioned this before but I've used inter folio and into folio is basically you make an account and they can like store letters of recommendation for you for me I was the kind of person that like I super anxious if I don't have control over everything and I want to get my letters of recommendation as soon as possible so I had asked some of my recommenders for letters of recommendations the summer before I was applying so a whole year in advance and so I had collected some recommendation to a year in advance and I had them stored into folio and basically they said the recommendation to enter folio interflow will hold on to it and when you're ready to apply you have to upgrade because it's a subscription you have to upgrade and once you upgrade your account you can have any or all of those letters and recommendations sent to your MCATs medical school application electronically so that way you didn't have to worry about anything and the good thing I love about inter folio is that once you upgrade once you have the upgraded version they read and check all the recommendations to make sure that your name is spelled correctly make sure that the recommender has a letterhead make sure they hand signed a letter of recommendation so it's really really important those things are really important because some medical schools will not acknowledge or accept a lot of recommendation that doesn't have like a hand signature or a letterhead or you know any of those kind of things so they check all that for you just to make sure that everything is good to go and then if there's any mistake they will inform the record they will send that email to the recommender saying hey like you need to correct this mistake but he's gone corrected like I had two issues with I had issues with two my recommendations one recommender forgot to hand sign in at the end and interflour also notifies you to they say oh this is missing from this recommendation so I was able to email her saying hey like you know I just got a notification that there's a hand sandwich I'm missing could you please read upload your letter recommendation another recommender had spelled my name incorrectly so she was notified to to reupload that and i don't know if it was spelled incorrectly because she's my my nickname or my full name I don't know or chef just misspelled it but whatever the case they notified her and she reapplied it so I love interval it's a great it's a great tool especially if you're trying to collect letters of recommendation ahead of time what actually made me do that is there was a story that one of my mentors told me of like he had a mentee he was applying to medical school and when he asked her like Oh who's gonna write your letters of recommendation she had given the name of one of this like professor faculty and he emailed her back saying oh I'm so sorry to let you know this person has actually passed away and she was like oh but I actually already got their letter of recommendation and I was like wow you need to get your letter of recommendation today because you don't know who's gonna die tomorrow and that sounds so crazy to say but like literally because she had already collected a letter of recommendation before this person passed you know she was able to have it so it doesn't hurt to collect what letters especially no you're gonna take some gap ears and then you could always just ask them to update the letter closer to the date that you're applying anyways I hope this video was helpful please be sure to give this video a like thumbs up comment below subscribe if you're not subscribed already and share this video with a friend pre-med group the group chat anything and thank you so so much for watching and I will see you guys in another video [Music] [Applause]