Thank you for providing a letter of recommendation for an applicant to health professional schools.

Please find important information and helpful tips below:

• Please sign and date the recommendation on institutional letterhead.
• Please include the applicant’s full name.
• Your letter will be shared with admissions committees at multiple schools, so the applicant will best be served if the letter is not specific for a particular school. The letter may refer to the specific type of program, e.g. medical schools, or dental schools.
• “Admissions Committee Members”, “To Whom it may Concern”, or similar are appropriate salutations for your letter.
• Because the applicant’s full application, including coursework, experiences, and biographical details, will accompany your letter to admissions committees, we recommend focusing on their interactions with you and those around you.  A strong letter will cover the applicant’s personality, strengths, and contributions, with specific examples of each, where possible.
• Please do not share any portion of your letter with the applicant, because they will most likely indicate to schools that they have waived their right to read it.
• You will receive a letter request email, either from PrivateFolio or from a common application service such as AMCAS or LiaisonCAS, that includes a message from the applicant and a unique link to upload your letter securely. The applicant will automatically be notified when your letter is received, but they will not have access to the letter contents. If you wish to submit a corrected or revised version of your letter, please do so by using the same link, so that your new letter will replace the old one.
• Letters which are submitted to PrivateFolio and included in the Cornell Letter Packet will be reviewed by the HPAC office for errors, including those mentioned above and faculty may be contacted by our office to submit a new LOR on behalf of the applicant.

The following are additional resources/guidelines:

• American Association of Medical Colleges Letter Writing Guidelines
• American Dental Education Association Tips
• Cornell Career Services also offers a guide for college faculty letter writers here.

Find an overview of applying and the general timeline next.