The USC Pre-Health office coordinates the receipt, maintenance, and submission of Letters of Recommendations to Medical and Dentals schools.

Students must establish a Letter of Recommendation (LOR) file before utilizing the Letter of Recommendation services. The following steps ensure the establishment of a letter of recommendation file:

Step I. Establish a letter of recommendation account

Students who wish to utilize the USC Pre-Health office Letter of Recommendation (LOR) service need to sign up and create an LOR login account and complete the LOR Application.  Creating this login will allow you to make payments, check on the status of letters received, and submit request once your letter packet is complete.

Apply here.

Step II.  Request letters of recommendation of evaluators

Request a letter of recommendation from at least three academic faculty with whom you had instruction or conducted research.  These letters of recommendation typically satisfy the letter of recommendation requirement for all Medical and Dental schools.  Specialized programs such as MD/Ph.D. or Osteopathic medical schools may require specific types of letters.  Please check with individual schools for further information.

  Letters of recommendation should include:

•   2-Academic Science letters
•   1-Academic Non-science letter

Additional letters of recommendation are acceptable from health-related Work, volunteer and community work, research experience, etc.

• Letters should not exceed  (6) letters in total

Step III. Submit letters of recommendation

Letters of recommendations can be mailed or walked-in by Faculty and/or evaluators to:

University of Southern California
Office of College Advising
ATTN: Pre-Health Service
3454 Trousdale Parkway -CAS 120
Los Angeles , CA 90089-0151

*FAXED Letters of Recommendation will NOT be accepted.
All letters must be received by August 1, 2009 in order to ensure timely handling and processing.

Step IV. Letter of recommendation request form

Requests for letters of recommendation accompany secondary applications for Medical and Dental schools. Secondary applications are sent to students as early as the beginning of July through the end of the calendar year. When you receive a secondary application and are prompted for letters of recommendation simply login to your LOR account, complete and submit the LOR request form provided through your LOR account. USC Pre-health services will send your letters of recommendation on file to the Medical or Dental schools you indicate on the form.

Please note: Do not submit letter of recommendation request forms until letters are requested of you by Medical or Dental schools. The preemptive submission of letters of recommendation may delay or even hinder your medical or dental school applications. Verify that all of your letters of recommendation are in your file prior to completing this form.

Dental School

Dental school applicants can use the USC Pre-Health services to coordinate the submission of letters of recommendation to the Associated American Dental Schools Application Service (AADSAS). AADSAS is now accepting LORs electronically and paper. In the spirit of "going green" we encourage Dental school applicants to submit LORs electronically. In order to submit LORs electronically, applicants are to provide Nathalie Zuletta's email address (nzuletta@usc.edu) to AADSAS. If the Dental school applicant chooses to use the standard paper LOR service, he/she will have to provide the USC Pre-health office with signed LOE Matching Forms, which AADSAS provides you with, for each Letter of recommendation received by our office. Both services offer options and flexibility for Dental applicants. Consider using the service that best suits your needs.

NOTE: Electronic LOR submission is strongly encouraged.

Costs

The cost of using our services is a one-time fee of $10 per student.  The $10 fee entitles students to send letters of recommendations electronically to participating Medical and Osteopathic schools on an unlimited basis. Currently, there are a few Medical school programs who do not accept LORs electronically. We use the U.S. Postal Service to send LOR packets to Medical schools that do not accept LORs electronically.  Those hard copy packets are mailed using Certified Mail with Return Receipt ($7/school) or FedEx Priority Overnight ($12/school).

Verification

It is the students' responsibility to verify the receipt of letters of recommendation with respective Medical and Dental schools. Medical and Dental schools provide students the opportunity to check on the status and completeness of their application by either issuing an "on-line" access account for the student or allowing the student to call the Health professional school and inquire about the status of their application.

Please allow a minimum of (3-6) weeks from the time you submit a Letter of Recommendation request form with Pre-Health services before you inquire about the receipt of letters with respective Medical or Dental schools.

If letters are not received after the (3-6) week processing period, contact the Pre-Health Office. We can work with you to determine when your request was processed.