Committee & Recomendation Letters

The final number of recommendation letters you attach to your health professional school application can vary. Most schools require 3 at a minimum - from two science faculty and 1 non-science faculty. The science faculty should be from the areas of biology, chemistry, physics, and math. The non-science faculty should be humanities, though engineering is sometimes acceptable.

Some dental schools will allow for 4 letters total, with the additional letter coming from a dentist. All optometry schools require a letter from an optometrist. Most medical schools will take over 10 letters but we don't recommend more than 6. The additional letters can come from doctors, PIs, supervisors, advisers, community service organizations, and the like. 

Feel free to send your references the Tandon Prehealth Committee Letter Recommendation Letter Request Form as a guide. It includes tips, guidelines, and requirements about submitting letters.

Letters of recommendation for Tandon students can now be requested in our Prehealth Application System (via airtable). Navigate to your personal Prehealth Portal in order to make these requests. Once there, login with your N number. If you don't have access, you must submit an interest form first.

• Once logged into your portal, navigate to "Recommendation Letters" link on the top menu bar.
• Once on this screen, click the "+" sign (bottom right corner of screen) to add in your reference information.
• Once you complete the form, the system will automatically send an email to the email address of your reference to upload the letter.
• Submit a separate form for each reference you're requesting a recommendation letter from.

Feel free to request more letters than you might plan on using. During the year in which you plan to apply to a health professional school, you will have to submit a final reference list indicating which letters you want us to attach to your committee letter so you do not have to use them all. You will have the final say on which ones to include.

A committee letter is a letter of evaluation that is written by the institution in which you completed your prehealth coursework, usually a students' undergraduate institution, but sometimes from a postbaccalaureate program institution or otherwise. They are not recommendation letters and highlight all parts of a students' application regarding students' preparedness for health professional schools, both academic and professional. Note that these letters are not recommendation letters and include both negative and positive aspects (ex. failed/withdrawn/repeated classes, lack of research or shadowing, quantifiable information like hours of community service, number of people lead in a group, publications, etc.). Letters of recommendation come from individual people and generally focus on students' characteristics and abilities in a specific area, shining them in a brighter light. Get an overall idea on how we frame committee letters here.

Name: Sara-Lee Ramsawak
Email Address: tandonprehealth@nyu.edu
Phone Number: 646-997-3986
Address: 6 Metrotech Center, LC230 Brooklyn NY 11201

Towards the end of the Tandon committee letter application process, students will have to submit a committee letter request form to the Tandon Prehealth committee so we can upload your committee letter packet to your chosen application system. The committee letter packet consists of both your committee letter and your letters of recommendation. After the submission of this form, we will upload your letter in ~2 weeks.

Contact us at tandonprehealth@nyu.edu to let us know!