Letter Writer Toolbox

WVU Pre-Health Committee Letter: Individual letter requests

The Pre-Health Committee prepares a comprehensive letter of recommendation for students applying to medical, dental, and other graduate level health professional programs. We submit the committee letter along with individuals letters of recommendation collected on the student's behalf to the appropriate application service managing their graduate health professional school application (e.g. AMCAS, AADSAS, AACOMAS, etc.).

The Pre-Health Committee has created a committee letter portal to manage all aspects of the committee letter process. Applicants request confidential individual letters of recommendation through the committee letter portal. Letter writers are automatically sent an email with information on how to login and complete the letter request. Applicants can view when letters have been submitted, but they cannot view the letter itself. Once all individual letters have been received, students submit the full packet of letters to the Pre-Health Committee through the committee letter portal for inclusion in their committee letter packet.

Deadline to submit individual letters: May 31st

Tips for writing a letter of evaluation

• Typically, admissions committees require the letter be dated, signed, and on official letterhead.

• Since the letter is sent on to all the schools the student applies to, we suggest addressing letters more generally to admissions committees (e.g. “To admissions committees at Schools of Medicine,…” )

• Faint praise can be harmful to the applicant. Therefore, if you are not comfortable writing the letter, respectfully decline.

• Please be certain to spell the student's name correctly and provide the student's full name within the first paragraph of the letter. Use the appropriate gender pronoun throughout the letter for the student.

• Please note for which health professional school (e.g. medical, dental, optometry, etc.) that the student is applying and make sure you have indicated it correctly within the letter.

• Check out the document below for guidance on writing letters. The document is written specifically for medical students. However, the same general principles can be applied to all health professions. https://www.aamc.org/download/349990/data/lettersguidelinesbrochure.pdf

Questions?

Please direct any additional questions to the Pre-Health Office, prehealth@mail.wvu.edu