DEAN’S LETTERS

1. Make an appointment with the secretary to the Assocaite Dean of Student Affairs for your Dean’s letter. Appointment begin in May of each year and end at the end of September, with military students and those entering early match specialties given priority for May appointments. A CV is required; a personal statement would be helpful.

2. After the interview, complete a “chit” sheet to activate the dictation of the Dean’s letter.

3. You will be notified when the Dean’s letter has been transcribed. The letter will be printed on yellow paper. You will be asked to come into the Office of Student Affairs to review the letter for accuracy. If you are out-of-town, you will be able to call the Office of Student Affairs (call collect), and the secretary will read the letter to you. If there are any questions about content, other than corrections of biographical data or grammatical changes, the letter must be referred back to the Associate Dean for permission to make changes. Sometimes this necessitates another appointment with the Associate Dean.

4. After you approve the accuracy of the letter, the letter will be corrected, if necessary, and will be then printed on either pink or blue paper (boy/girl—this helps with editing pronouns), and the letter will be given to the Assistant Director of Student Affairs for editing.

5. After corrections are made, the letter is printed once more, this time on green paper. The Associate Dean then reviews the letter.

6. Upon approval by the Associate Dean, the letter is formatted and printed on letterhead for submission to the Dean of the School of Medicine. If there are no corrections, the Dean signs the letter and returns it to the Office of Student Affairs.

7. The letter is then scanned into ERAS. Prior to Nov. 1, the letter is held in the ERAS post office and is not released to the programs until Nov. 1. Although the letter cannot be released until that date, it is imperative that these letters are scanned in on a regular basis. The scanning process is time-consuming, and the transmission time is even more time-consuming. Sometimes the scanning of a single day will be transmitting all night into the next morning. Remember that there are over 100 other medical schools transmitting data to the ERAS post office. Waiting until the last few weeks prior to Nov. 1 could mean that your letter will not be ready for downloading by the programs on Nov. 1.

TRANSCRIPTS

When the Dean’s letters are scanned, the student’s transcript and the school’s grading policy are also entered into ERAS. This is done automatically. However, if your program requires an early transcript, you must complete a “chit” sheet to request the transcript to be sent early.

LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION

When MyERAS becomes available on the web, there are forms for students to download and use to request letters of recommendation. These forms contain the waiver statement. You can request letters of recommendation before these forms are available; however, you may be required to sign the waiver before the letter is released.

The letters should be sent to the Office of Student Affairs. If you are entering an early match, these letters will NOT be sent to Student Affairs. The writers will send the letters directly to the programs you designate.

Letters of recommendation are scanned as soon as they are received in the Office of Student Affairs IF you have submitted your ERAS application. Until you pay your ERAS fees, designate the programs to receive your application, and submit your application, the Office of Student Affairs cannot access your file to submit any materials. The Office of Student Affairs does not see your application, nor does it see the programs designated. The screen simply shows us your name and lists the names of the people who will be sending letters of recommendation on your behalf.

Since programs can access your application and your letters of recommendation prior to Nov. 1, it is important to get this information into ERAS as soon as possible. Students can (and usually do) receive interviews based on information from ERAS without the Dean’s letters.