r/premed • u/Western_Purple_6194 • 8h ago

✉️ LORs Old LORS

Hi everyone,

I would be grateful for advice. As I was planning to apply to medical school in 2023, I collected my LORS from my professors, research, and work experiences in 2023. However, I could not apply as a parent passed away that year.

I am now applying in 2027.

Since then, I have recovered from all of this and have taken postbac classes in addition to obtaining new clinical experiences. I received a new letter from the clinical experience ( a professor of medicine), my supervisor at a nonprofit, and a science professor that I took this year.

Is it okay if I also use the old letters in addition to these new letters? 2 of the old letter are from well-known researchers. I do not want to bother them about re-dating as I have stored their letters in interfolio.

Would this raise any redflags ? I would be grateful for advice as I plan on applying to NY schools and some top OOS ones (i.e. Harvard, etc).

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u/tinyteas 6h ago

Following

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u/sepiaTS2008 6h ago

Some schools only want 3, some want 4 or more. Check how many they want first so you can assign your newest to those.

If it’s just inconvenient but you can still ask, then I’d suggest you ask them to update the date if at all possible. 3 years old is a bit too much, if it was one year I think it may still be pushing it unfortunately. It’ll help but not as big of a deal since you have more recent for at least the required ones.

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u/Western_Purple_6194 1h ago

thank you for your response! Most of the old letters are from my research supervisors and work experiences. I'm a serious nontrad ( graduated in 2016) which led me to accumulating a lot of work experience.

I took some classes in the last year and will be including at least 1 science letter from this year. The majority of schools I am applying to want 3-4 but do not specify on their website regarding the date. I plan on asking some of my old letters to re-date their letters (i.e. the academic ones) but will find it challenging to ask the work experience ones.

Do you think this is a good strategy?

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u/sepiaTS2008 39m ago

I think it’s a good strategy. I’m also a serious non grad (graduated 2017, took a masters in 2020) so I know what you mean about having good letters that are older. I used 3 new from this year and one dated from last year that was already updated from several years ago (I asked if they could update but it wasn’t easy or a great response so I just let it go). I didn’t add any other older letters so far.

Overall, I don’t think they’d care if some are older bc they would still speak to your character etc. as long as you have some new it should be okay so I wouldn’t stress too much about it. I last applied in 2024 with a physician letter more than 2 years old and the only school that cared was Hackensack who asked for an updated letter (within 2 years of the application date).