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U.S. Applicants: Track AACOMAS Letters With MedSchoolPilot (4–5 Strong)

Checklist for U.S. DO applicants to monitor AACOMAS letters. Aim for 4–5 strong evaluations and track requests with MedSchoolPilot.

MedSchoolPilot editorial team

AACOMAS lets you enter up to 10 evaluations, but most admissions advisors recommend submitting closer to 4–5 strong letters, not the maximum. A committee letter or packet counts as a single entry, and you can submit through Letters by Liaison, Interfolio, VirtualEvals, or U.S. Mail depending on what a program accepts.

TL;DR:

  • Submitting 4 to 5 strong evaluations is preferable over using all 10 AACOMAS slots, and most schools do not accept more than that.
  • Letters from clinical physicians and osteopathic doctors carry more weight, especially if they directly supervised you or can speak to your understanding of the DO philosophy.
  • Evaluators must be carefully chosen, and applicants should send a clear brag sheet to help them write specific and impactful letters.
  • Request evaluation letters well in advance, follow up politely, and verify each evaluator’s email to prevent delays or missed submissions.
  • Many osteopathic schools have additional, program-specific letter requirements beyond AACOMAS rules, so check each school’s policies before submitting.
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Table of Contents

What Are the AACOMAS Letters Requirements at a Glance?

Before you request a single letter, confirm you understand the numbers and mechanics. Getting this wrong doesn’t just cost you time. It can lock in a mistake you can’t undo.

  • Entry limit: You can create up to 10 evaluation entries in the AACOMAS Liaison portal, though most applicants never need that many.
  • Recommended count: Aim for 4–5 well documented letters rather than padding your file, per guidance from premed advisors.
  • Committee letters: A committee letter or packet from your school’s health professions office counts as one evaluation entry, even though multiple people contributed to it.
  • Submission channels: Letters by Liaison, Interfolio, VirtualEvals, and U.S. Mail are all accepted paths, though not every program takes every format.
  • Extra letters: Some programs allow supplemental letters sent directly outside AACOMAS if your evaluation entries are full.
  • School-specific rules: Every osteopathic school layers its own preferences on top of the AACOMAS baseline, so check each target program before you finalize your list. That last point trips up more applicants than any other part of this process. AACOMAS sets the floor. Individual colleges set the ceiling.

Who Should Write Your AACOMAS Letters?

The strongest letter packets follow a rough hierarchy, though the exact mix depends on your background. Science faculty who taught you in upper level courses carry weight because they can speak to your academic rigor under pressure. Clinical preceptors and attending physicians matter even more, since they’ve watched you function in a health care setting rather than a classroom.

Non-science faculty round out the picture by showing intellectual range, and employers or research supervisors can fill in when you’ve spent significant time outside the classroom. An osteopathic physician’s letter deserves special priority. It signals to admissions committees that you understand the DO philosophy firsthand, not just from a brochure, and competitive applicants generally treat it as close to required even though AACOMAS itself doesn’t mandate it.

Watch the writer’s role, too. Many schools want letters from attending physicians rather than residents or fellows, since a resident’s assessment carries less institutional authority. Check each program’s page directly, because these restrictions vary and AACOMAS won’t flag the mismatch for you.

  • Prioritize evaluators who supervised you directly, not ones who only know your transcript.
  • Send each writer a one-page brag sheet with specific projects, dates, and outcomes.
  • Ask directly whether they can write a strong letter. Hesitation is your answer.

Pro Tip: If a potential writer pauses before answering “can you write me a strong letter,” take the hint and find someone else. A lukewarm letter is worse than one fewer entry.

How Do You Submit Letters Through Liaison, Interfolio, and Other Channels?

The mechanics inside AACOMAS follow a fixed sequence, and skipping a step usually means a delayed or lost request.

  1. Open the Evaluations section of your AACOMAS application and select Create Evaluation Request.
  2. Enter your evaluator’s full name and email address exactly as they use it professionally.
  3. Set a suggested due date, ideally two months before your earliest program deadline.
  4. Choose your waiver status for that specific letter.
  5. Click Save, which automatically fires an email invitation to your evaluator.

Once saved, your evaluator receives login instructions to upload the letter directly through Liaison. If they’re using Interfolio instead, they’ll need the unique email address Interfolio assigns to that confidential letter, pasted into the evaluator email field rather than their personal address. VirtualEvals works similarly, routing the request through that platform’s own portal.

U.S. Mail still exists as an option, mostly for older letters already on file at a prehealth office, but you need to confirm with each program that it accepts mailed evaluations before relying on it. The most common failure points are typos in the evaluator’s email, spam filters swallowing the automated request, and applicants pasting incorrect email addresses.

When Should You Request Letters and How Do You Follow Up?

Timing determines whether your letters arrive as an asset or a liability. Request evaluations well in advance of your earliest program deadline, and set the suggested due date inside AACOMAS with a comfortable buffer to give your writer time to craft a strong letter. That buffer gives your writer room to draft something thoughtful instead of dashing off a form letter the night before it’s due.

Stagger your follow ups instead of nagging constantly:

  • Initial request with your brag sheet attached.
  • A polite check in around the two week mark if nothing’s moved.
  • A final reminder one week before the due date, framed as helpful rather than anxious.

One detail catches applicants off guard: AACOMAS processes and verifies the rest of your application even before all letters arrive, then forwards each evaluation to schools as it comes in. Missing letters won’t stall your file’s initial verification, but they will hold up a complete review at individual programs. Track each evaluator’s name, request date, due date, and last follow up in a spreadsheet or a dedicated planner like MedSchoolPilot’s tracker, and escalate to a phone call if a writer goes silent past their due date.

What Does Waiving Your Right to View a Letter Actually Mean?

Waiving access means you agree never to read the finished evaluation, and admissions committees generally read waived letters as more candid, since the writer knows you’ll never see the wording. Most advisors treat a waived letter as the stronger default choice for exactly that reason.

If you decline to waive, nothing stops your evaluator from writing an honest letter, but some committees quietly weigh non-waived letters as slightly less trustworthy since the writer may have softened language knowing you’d read it. If you skip the waiver and want to see what was actually submitted, you’ll need to ask your evaluator directly for a copy. AACOMAS won’t provide it, and the choice you make applies separately to each evaluation entry, not to your whole application.

What Mistakes Sink an Otherwise Good Letter?

Most weak letter packets fail for reasons that have nothing to do with the writer’s opinion of the applicant. A mistyped email address sends the request into the void. A last-minute ask forces a rushed, generic response. And relying on a well-known name who barely remembers you produces a letter that reads like a form template.

What admissions committees actually respond to is specificity: a preceptor describing the time you handled a difficult patient interaction solo, a professor citing your performance on a specific project, concrete numbers or outcomes rather than adjectives like “hardworking” and “dedicated.”

  • Send a one-page brag sheet or resume before your writer starts drafting.
  • Remind them of two or three specific moments worth mentioning.
  • Ask outright whether they feel comfortable writing a genuinely strong letter, not just a polite one.

Pro Tip: A preceptor letter describing one specific shift where you managed a difficult patient conversation will outperform a generic “excellent student” letter every time. Specificity is what admissions readers remember.

How Do You Read Evaluation Statuses and Fix Delivery Problems?

Inside AACOMAS, each evaluation shows a status of Requested, Accepted, or Complete, and checking this dashboard weekly beats hoping your writer remembers on their own.

If a writer says they never received your request, check your entered email for typos first, then have them search their spam or junk folder for messages from addresses like support@aacomas.myliaison.com or aacomasinfo@liaisoncas.com. Resending only helps if the original address was wrong. Otherwise, ask them to whitelist the sender.

  • The single most important rule: once an evaluation is marked Complete, it cannot be removed or edited. Double check the evaluator’s name, email, and your waiver choice before you hit Save.
  • If you’ve maxed out your AACOMAS entries but a program wants an additional letter, send it directly to that school through its own admissions portal or by mail, outside the Liaison system entirely.

Do Individual DO Schools Have Different Letter Rules?

AACOMAS sets a baseline, but plenty of osteopathic schools layer stricter or different requirements on top of it. Some explicitly request a DO letter and won’t waive that preference for applicants without physician shadowing experience. Others restrict letters from residents or fellows, insisting on attending-level physicians only.

Check each target school’s admissions page directly, since these details rarely surface anywhere else. A school’s own admissions and requirements page is usually the clearest source, alongside AACOM’s official listings. If a program accepts letters beyond what AACOMAS allows you to enter, you can typically mail or directly upload the extra evaluation once you’ve confirmed the school’s own submission address.

How MedSchoolPilot Helps You Track Every Letter Request

A missed evaluation rarely happens because an applicant forgot to ask. It happens because nobody tracked the follow-up. Building a simple workflow prevents that.

  • Log each evaluator with their contact info, request date, suggested due date, and a follow-up reminder two weeks out.
  • Store your one-page brag sheet in one place and attach it every time you send a request.
  • Keep a running list of each target school’s specific letter rules next to your evaluation tracker, so you’re not re-checking policies at the last minute.
  • Use a readiness dashboard to see at a glance which schools have received your evaluations and which are still pending.

MedSchoolPilot’s readiness tracker was built for exactly this kind of multi-deadline juggling, and applicants managing both AMCAS and AACOMAS timelines at once find the consolidated view saves real time.

Quality Beats Quantity in Letter Packets

Six mediocre letters won’t outscore five that each tell a specific, memorable story about who you are under pressure. The temptation to max out your entries is understandable, but every additional generic letter dilutes the strong ones sitting next to it. If you’re choosing which letters to cut, keep the ones with the most concrete detail and drop the ones that read like a form.

— MedSchoolPilot

A Simpler Way to Manage Your Letter Requests

Spreadsheets work until you’re juggling six evaluators, two application cycles, and a dozen school-specific deadlines at once. Medschoolpilot gives premed applicants one workspace to track letter requests, due dates, and school requirements alongside every other moving part of the application, from clinical hours to school selection.

Medschoolpilot

Instead of digging through old emails to remember who you asked and when, you get a running dashboard that flags evaluators who haven’t responded and shows which schools still need a completed evaluation. That matters most in the final weeks before deadlines, when a forgotten follow-up can cost you weeks of processing time at a program you actually want. The platform also pairs your letter tracker with readiness scoring across the rest of your application, so you’re not managing letters in isolation from your GPA trends, test scores, and clinical hours.

If you’re heading into an application cycle with multiple evaluators and multiple deadlines, start with MedSchoolPilot and set up your tracker before you send your first request. Applicants who also plan to use MedSchoolPilot on the go can grab the iOS app to log reminders and check statuses from a phone between clinical shifts.

A Simpler Way to Manage Your Letter Requests — overview diagram

Where to Verify Official AACOMAS Letter Policies

Procedures shift slightly year to year, so confirm anything time-sensitive directly with these sources before you submit.

Sources

FAQ

How Many Letters Can You Submit to AACOMAS?

You can create up to 10 evaluation entries in AACOMAS, but most advisors recommend submitting only 4 to 5 strong letters rather than filling every slot.

Is Six Letters of Recommendation Too Many for Medical School?

Six can work if every letter adds distinct value, but stacking your file with generic or repetitive letters usually dilutes your strongest ones. Quality and variety across evaluators matter more than hitting a specific number.

Can You Submit AACOMAS Without Letters?

AACOMAS will process your application without completed evaluations, but every college of osteopathic medicine requires letters of evaluation before it can complete a full review of your file.

Do DO Schools Require a DO Letter of Recommendation?

AACOMAS itself doesn’t mandate a DO letter, but many individual osteopathic schools strongly prefer or effectively require one, and advisors recommend prioritizing an osteopathic physician’s letter for competitive applicants.

Does a Committee Letter Count as Multiple Evaluations?

No. A committee letter or packet counts as a single evaluation entry, even when several people contributed content to it.