Health Careers Advising provides a letter packet for each Brown applicant to health professions school. The letter packet is a single PDF that combines your individual letters of recommendation and is topped with a cover letter that describes the unique aspects of the curriculum at Brown such as the lack of GPA, what S/NC means, our common chemistry sequence, mandatory S/NC course designations, etc. We will also proofread your individual letters of recommendation and reach out to the letter writer if any corrections are needed. More details about the letter packet process will be provided to applicants on the Google Classroom site that is created annually for each applicant cycle.

Each program may have its own requirements so it is important for you to research the programs to which you plan to apply. Once you know which types of letters you need, consider which individuals meet those criteria and can write the strongest letter for you. It is important to focus on who knows you well and with whom you have built a solid relationship. The title or prestige of the individual is not important if they do not know you well and cannot write a detailed letter. You also want to choose individuals who know you in different contexts and can highlight different aspects of your experiences (as much as possible while still meeting the school’s requirements). Below we have outlined some general recommendations of who to ask, but you must check with each school as they do not agree on what they are looking for. 

• Two letters from faculty/instructors who have taught or supervised you in teaching, research or another capacity. At least one of these should be from a professor who has taught you in a STEM class (BIOL, CHEM, PHYS).
• A third letter from another individual who knows you in a context other than in the classroom. This can be a supervisor, coach, or research mentor but not a relative or peer.
• Optional: A fourth letter from another individual may be beneficial if you have an area of your application that you would like to provide context for that is not covered by the other letter writers. 
• For MD/PhD applicants: You may provide up to six letters in total. A minimum of two should be from research mentors. If you are applying to both MD and MD/PhD programs, HCA will provide you with two separate letter packets so your letters should indicate the degree(s) for which they are supporting you. 

We typically recommend 3-4 letters but will accept up to 5 for our letter packet if you feel there is a very strong reason for including an additional letter. Many schools prefer a smaller number of letters and may even limit you to 3-4 letters. They have found that for many students, any additional letters have the same basic information and so are not very helpful. Also each school has thousands of applicants and if you each send 5 letters, this quickly becomes a huge amount of information for the schools to review.

Note: MD/PhD programs may have specific requirements for letters from each research supervisor, so students for those programs may need to include a large number of letters.

We recommend that you first ask potential letter writers informally if they are willing to write a strong letter of recommendation for you. This can be done in person or via email, depending on how often you see the recommender in person. If they agree to write the letter, you then send them a more formal request via email. We have created a document for potential letter writers that provides some suggestions on how to write a letter of recommendation for a health professions school. This document is posted in the Google Classroom site for applicants each year. 

Potential applicants are encouraged to begin identifying and connecting with potential recommenders between October and January of the year in which they plan to apply. Letters of recommendation are due to our office by May of the cycle you are applying. Recommenders will upload their letters directly into Brown's UFunds portal which will launch in early March of the application cycle. 

For those of you who are not concentrating in STEM fields, it can be challenging to get to know the science faculty well as many of the introductory science courses are quite large. It is important to be intentional about this and start early in the semester to build relationships with faculty. Attend office hours, ask questions in class, consider becoming a TA for the class, or take multiple classes with the faculty member to get to know them better. You will need at least one science faculty letter for many of the medical schools and quite a few require a second letter. If you cannot get the second letter, you may be able to cater your school list to schools that don’t require it. 

There is variation between schools about what is considered a science faculty member. Some schools explicitly define science as biology, chemistry, or physics, while others have a broader definition (or no definition at all). Schools also differ in their definition of faculty, with some defining this as an instructor who taught you in a course while others leaving it broadly defined as a faculty member at an institution of higher education. You will need to research the schools where you plan to apply to determine their specific definitions. 

If you have listed their name and email address in UFunds, they should receive periodic emails from UFunds to remind them to submit the letter. However, if the deadline is approaching and you gave them significant time to write the letter, you may want to reach out to ask if they are still able to write the letter. HCA will not contact individual writers to ask for your letters to be uploaded.

We will accept late letter submissions, but this will impact our ability to create and submit your letter packet to the application services. If the letter is very late, you may want to consider asking a different recommender so that you can have your letters sent in a timely manner. Alternatively, you may want to have HCA create and upload the packet without this one letter and have the letter writer send their letter directly to the application service instead. This will allow your application to be considered complete by the medical schools while you wait for the last letter. 

All letters of recommendation need to be confidential and so you will not be allowed to learn about the content of the letter. It is important that you choose individuals who you know well and who have agreed to write a strong letter in support of your application. 

It can be a good idea to ask for a letter when you are still working with the letter writer or have just finished taking their class. To do this, you have a few different options. You can ask the writer to write the letter and store it themselves so that they have it ready when you need it. Alternatively, you can ask them to write the letter now and send it to a letter collection service, such as Interfolio, that will collect and store the letter confidentially. This type of service will then deliver the letter either to HCA or to the application service when you need it. 

If you feel that you have a strong set of letters and your additional science faculty letter is supportive but not as strong, you may want to consider keeping it separate from the letter packet. In this instance, the letter writer would send the letter directly to the application service and not to HCA. When you are  applying, you will send only the letter packet to the schools that do not require a second science letter and you will send both the packet and this second letter to the schools with the extra letter requirement. 

Brown offers a letter packet, not a committee letter, to our students. A committee letter is an evaluative letter of an applicant written after gathering information and interviewing a candidate. Instead of an evaluative process, Brown offers a supportive advising process focused on working with applicants to create a strong application. We do this through the many types of applicant support (comprehensive advising appointments, writing specialists appointments, info sessions, mock interview and drop-in advising). We also offer a letter packet where we collect your individual letters, ensure they are in the correct format and then compile them with a cover letter that describes the unique aspects of the curriculum at Brown. 

If you have recommenders that submitted your letters in a previous cycle in UFunds, we can still access them. However, you may want to reach out to ask them to update the letter and add any new information about what you have done this year (if you are comfortable doing so and/or this makes sense for the letter writer). If you don't need them to add new information, you still may want to ask if they are willing to change the date on the letter for the new year.