Five Tips for Requesting an AACOMAS Letter of Recommendation (Evaluation)

5 tips for requesting AACOMAS letters of reference

If you are planning to apply to osteopathic medical schools, the AACOMAS allows you to upload up to six letters of recommendation. You can’t upload different letters for different schools, so make sure that your recommenders know that they should write general letters of recommendation. You should request your letters through AACOMAS, which sends an email to your recommender with instructions on how to upload the letter or you could compile all letters in a dossier service, typically Interfolio, sending some letters to your AACOMAS application and others to your AMCAS application if you’re applying to both osteopathic and allopathic schools. You can add as many letters as you wish to a dossier service account and add letters to AACOMAS after you submit the application as long as the total number of letters in the AACOMAS application is no more than six.

A group letter from a committee is listed by the committee chair’s name. No letters from anyone contributing to and signing the committee letter may be included as recommenders elsewhere on your list.

As you begin to plan who will write your AACOMAS letters of recommendation, keep the following tips in mind:

    Make sure you have at least one recommender who is an osteopath with whom you’ve worked, studied, or shadowed, preferably someone who knows you professionally. DO schools want to ensure that applicants understand osteopathic medicine and have some exposure to it.

Some recommenders will agree to write a letter of recommendation, but it won’t be strong. You want to weed out people right away who won’t write the best letter for you. And, if someone waffles when you ask or seems ambivalent, that is not the recommender for you. Ask someone else.

Need more details?

Here’s a link to the AACOMAS site for other technical details. Others’ descriptions of you and their belief in you are very important parts of your application, so you should do everything you can to ensure that they are strong.

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