30 Minutes To Great Med School Recommendation Letters

A stellar letter of recommendation can make a good application into a great one, or get you into a school that you otherwise might not have been accepted to. So its important to plan ahead, identify the people who will write your letters early on, and build relationships with them over a long period of time. The last thing you want to do is walk into the office a professor who you hardly know and ask him for a letter two weeks before you need to send out your application.

Identify Advocates

Throughout your time in high school, university, and medical school, try to identify teachers and professors who can act as your advocates. Of course you’ll be advocating for yourself in your application, but it carries a lot more weight if someone who knows you in a professional or academic manner can also advocate for you.

It is going to be hit or miss sometimes. It's not just finding one teacher or counselor. You’re going to be developing relationships with a lot of your teachers, professors, bosses, all kinds of professionals. And then you’ll probably find one or two who click. Then you need to be proactive, and find times to meet with them outside of class.

Build Relationships

Its important to build relationships over a long period of time, and see them regularly outside of class. This can be done through sports, clubs, school activities, or research projects. There are limitless avenues to develop meaningful relationships with people who can write letters for you.

A lot of professors consider a part of their job to write the occasional letter of recommendation. However, it will be obvious to the admissions council if the letter was written and the recommender didn’t really know you too well. So in order to get a stellar letter, you need to build meaningful relationships over a long period of time.

For example, I was involved in the academic decathlon in high school, and the club coordinator was my history teacher. So I was able to get to know my history teacher, and get to work with her a bit in a setting outside the classroom. And through that, she was able to see personality, my goals, and ambitions. She was able to witness how hard I worked, and how proactive I was in terms of my education.

On a side note, its always good to ask a humanities teacher to write a letter for you, because you know it will be a good letter. As opposed to asking a math teacher, who may really like your work, but doesn’t have as strong of a background in writing.

Getting teachers, professors, and bosses to know you, and then getting them to support you, is the best way to ensure that you get great letters of recommendation.