Dear all,
To all a happy new year. May this be a healthy, productive and happy year for you all. 

Here is the answer to a couple of questions a few students have asked since the Cmte letter/ letter packet application has gone live on January 10th.

QUESTION:  I am still waiting on my recommendation letters. They will not be ready until February, March, … fill in the blank. Should I still submit my Cmte letter application?
Answer:  If you read the instructions carefully, after we (the pre-health office) receive your request, we will need to determine your eligibility to receive a Cmte. letter (GPA and credits) or advise you on receiving a letter packet instead.  Depending on what you have put in your request form, we might need to provide you with additional advising before moving forward. We have allowed about 4 weeks for this verification. This can be completed during the time you are waiting for your recommenders to submit their letters. I would strongly suggest that you do your part as early as possible. That way,  as we are waiting on the parts for which we depend on your recommenders, we will have done our part on verifying and approving your request.  The sooner you do this the better. You will not receive a faculty interview until all your letters are in. it makes sense, because the faculty will need to have access to ALL your information before interviewing you. on the other hand, if we have completed the parts that are YOUR responsibility early enough, we will be able to set up your faculty interview just as soon as your letters become available rather than having to wait for everything to come together later in the cycle. In summary: submit the parts that are your responsibility as early as you possibly can (while not compromising the content of your request form).

Question:  What is the letter of good academic standing? I am a post-bac student and my undergraduate institution does not know what that means or they only give it to the undergrads… 
Answer:  to start let me rationalize this request for you: 1) Application services will have a question that you must answer:  the language varies from one application to the next, but the gist is:  “have you ever been subjected to intuitional action?” aka:  put on academic probation (any semester with a below 2.0 (C average) GPA), or written up for misconduct or violated campus policy, or plagiarized papers, or…. You MUST answer this question honestly.  As such, we put it in the new application as well. If such a thing has happened to you, we must address this in your letters of recommendation  to provide a context for what happened and how you recovered from it/ redeemed yourself. If you have never experience any of the above, you are in the clear and the office of the registrar’s should be able to complete a typical from letter testifying that you are/were in good academic standing.  2) for premedical students:  some NYC medical schools did not consider your application complete until they received a letter of good academic standing (if there was no mention of it in your cmte letter). Though we trust you implicitly, we must have proof of your good academic standing before committing to such a claim in your committee letter.If you have approached a different person than the registrar’s office to request this letter, they might have not known what to do with the request. the registrar’s office should be able to facilitate this. if you are a post-bac, and you are told that such a letter is only available for undergrads, let them know that some medical students in New York are asking for a letter of good standing from your alma mater and see if they can help you with anything. If nothing can be done(which is probably but for a handful  of students), I will try to contact those NYC schools on your behalf to find out what we can do to address this issue.  

We are not trying to create more work for you, we are just trying to make your future application more efficient by thinking of potential problems ahead (which we have seen happen over and over again, but you are yet to experience).  

Thanks and feel free to ask for clarification or ask additional questions.
Happy Wednesday!
Cathy

P.s. only five people have submitted their applications to date. Remember that your requests will be processed on a rolling basis. Don’t wait to submit later in the cycle.  Let’s use the following analogy:   you are trying to get to a destination (your letter in this case).  do you want to start your journey in the middle of rush hour? (not knowing what will happen to the weather, your car, or train)-- Or do you want to leave a little earlier, allow time for potential problems and still get to your destination in/ on time?  The sooner you complete your request (assuming you did an adequate job with the request form), the faster we will be able to accommodate you (and goes without saying with greater ease and efficiency). So, let’s plan to beat the pre-health office rush hour 