Pre-Health Professions Advising:
Securing a Committee Letter of Recommendation (LOR)
The committee letter of recommendation is an important part of your application to medical/allied health school
(hereafter referred to as “medical school”). At Messiah College this letter is written by, and mailed from, the Office
of Pre-Health Professions Advising. In order to have the best possible letter written on your behalf, you will need
to make sure that your PHPA portfolio is up to date and that you have completed the following LOR requirements:

Your completed PIF should have been turned in by February 15th.

Your recommendation letters should have been submitted by
April 15th. Check to make sure that all of them have been received. If you have an experience during
summer, 2012, that you would like to be described in your LOR, ask your supervisor to write a
recommendation using the standard protocol and let me know that one is coming. I will plan to refer to it
in the text of your committee letter and append it if appropriate.

You must schedule a committee LOR appointment prior to leaving campus this year to review your portfolio
and discuss your motivation for medicine. Committee interviews are generally scheduled the first couple of
weeks of May. A mock interview at Career Services should be either completed or scheduled prior to this
LOR meeting.

Send/email me a copy of your most recent transcript that includes your spring, 2012 grades as soon as it
becomes available.

Have an official copy of your admission test scores sent directly to me, and follow up by sending me a
photocopy of your official score report as soon as you receive it.

Send me a copy of your application, ideally the first week of June. The AMCAS help line contact
information is AMCAS@aamc.org or (202)828-0600. Failure to submit your AMCAS, AACOMAS,
AADSAS, etc. by the end of July, 2012 may result in a letter packet instead of a committee LOR being
sent.

LORs will be written only after all of the required materials have been submitted. You are responsible for
getting them to me in a timely manner; I will not issue personal reminders. I plan to write most of the
LORs by June so that they can be reviewed by the committee and typed by late summer. This process is
a long one, especially in light of vacation schedules and the need for multiple drafts and revisions for
dozens of letters. You must contact me if you will not be able to submit the required documents by June,
but are still planning to request a committee LOR. Failure to do so will likely result in a letter packet,
rather than a committee letter with an attached letter packet, being sent.

Contact me as soon as you receive a request for a committee letter from a medical school. You need to
electronically submit the complete and accurate address to which your LOR is to be sent as soon as you
have completed the secondary application. You should copy Cindi Tomes on your request. (She is the
PHPA Faculty Service administrative assistant who is responsible for the production of the LORs.)
make every effort to have your committee LOR sent within three weeks of your request.

I will
You are responsible for keeping track of participating and non-participating AMCAS schools and furnishing
Cindi Tomes with the appropriate letter request forms.

Feel free to contact me over the summer via email with questions/concerns/confirmations.

You are required to inform the PHPA office of your acceptances and the name of the program that you are
planning to attend. The PHPAC is permitted to withdraw your LORs for non-compliance.

Note: Failure to follow these procedures, or to do so in a timely manner, may result in a committee
decision to not furnish you with a LOR. In this case, a generic cover sheet will be sent with your
recommendation letters, and this may serve as a red flag to the programs to which you apply.
Updated 8/2011