The Latest on AMCAS and your Letters of Recommendation

AMCAS recently announced that 115 of 130 US medical schools have signed up for AMCAS Letters. Under this program, you submit your letters to AMCAS (either directly from your letter writers or from the Career Center Letter Service), and it distributes them to all of the participating schools to which you apply.  If you have questions after reading the information below, attend one of our special AMCAS Letter Info Sessions scheduled in Callisto and on our calendar starting Monday, May 18.

 

If you are only applying to participating medical schools you need 
not use the Career Center Letter Service. Your letter writers
can send their recommendations to AMCAS directly by mail (surface or FedEx), 
or can electronically upload them as a PDF to their secure site
(for further details and instructions, go to the AMCAS Letter FAQ section).

If you want to apply to any of the 15 medical schools who are 
NOT participating in AMCAS Letter 
(or potentially other graduate programs), you will need to 
have either a Career Center Letter Service account, or have your
 individual letter writers forward your letters of recommendation 
to each institution when you are invited to complete a secondary application.

 What should you do?

If you already have an active Letter Service account (current student or Alumni Advantage member) and it contains all your letters and AMCAS matching forms, you only need to submit a single, online request and have them sent to AMCAS.  AMCAS will then distribute your letters to all participating schools to which you have applied.

If you have an active Letter Service account and are applying to any non-participating medical schools, you will need to submit an online request for each school to which you have applied.

If you are an alum, have an inactive Letter Service account, and are not interested in the other services offered through Alumni Advantage (e.g., counseling, statement review), you can submit an online request to send your letters to AMCAS by utilizing our One-Time-Send option.

If you do not have a Letter Service account, you can ask your letter writers to submit their letters directly to AMCAS. AMCAS charges no fees for this service.

If you send your letters to AMCAS via the Career Center Letter Service, you may want to do so using our Express or Rush service. For an additional fee, these requests are sent via FedEx and you can confirm their arrival via the tracking number posted to your Letter Service account’s request history.