Resources and FAQs

Letters of Evaluation (LOE) are not required to complete the ADEA AADSAS application, but most dental schools require LOEs to be complete before they can review the application. Letters of evaluation are traditional recommendation letters written by a person qualified to recommend a person to dental school.

Preparing for Evaluations

Determine what requirements, if any, dental schools have regarding evaluator’s roles or relationship to applicant before listing any evaluators on ADEA AADSAS. Many programs have guidelines for who should complete an evaluation on their Program Materials profile on the ADEA AADSAS application or on their website. Once a reference is completed on the ADEA AADSAS application, it cannot be removed or replaced, so it is important to define which evaluations each dental school has requested before submitting requests to your evaluators. Please note that references from family members are generally frowned upon by admissions offices.

Once evaluators are selected, be certain to inform them of the process and that they will be filling out the reference electronically. Obtain their preferred email address and make sure they are monitoring their email inbox for the request email.

Requesting Evaluations

Applicants can submit up to four letters of evaluations. Each letter should be written by one person. They can submit:

• Four individual evaluations or
• One committee letter/packet and one individual evaluation. A committee letter can either be one letter that is collaboratively written by a group of people or a collection of letters submitted on behalf of an institution or office.

In the application, the applicant must indicate these items for each letter: identification of an individual or committee letter/packet, name, contact information, due date and personal message/notes. The due date and personal message/notes are opportunities for the applicant to communicate with the evaluator when s/he receives the request. Indicate which date the evaluation needs to be submitted based on the earliest dental school deadline date; the deadline is not imposed by ADEA AADSAS and evaluators can still submit after the date. Write a message (only the evaluator will see it) to assist the evaluator. Example notes might include dates when the applicant was in a faculty member’s class or a reminder of when the applicant sent his/her resume to assist the evaluator.

For each evaluation, the applicant must select whether or not to waive their access to the evaluation. The Family Education Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA) provides applicants the right to access letters of evaluation written after January 1, 1975, unless they choose to waive their right of inspection and review. Prior to requesting an evaluation, ADEA AADSAS applicants are required to indicate if they wish to waive their rights to each evaluation. ADEA AADSAS does not release any letters of evaluation to applicants regardless of waiver status.

Evaluator Instructions

When an applicant saves an evaluation request, the evaluator will receive an email request to complete the evaluation. The email will include a link to an online portal where the evaluator can upload a letter up to 5 MB. ADEA AADSAS does not provide a prompt or set of characteristics to include in the letter; evaluators are encouraged to provide information about the applicant’s academic ability, character, time management skills, among other items deemed important. It is recommended that the letter be on letterhead and include a signature. Please check the “Program Materials” section for school specific requirements regarding letters of evaluation.

While ADEA AADSAS does not collect resumes, applicants are encouraged to use the Experience section to provide detailed information about academic enrichment, dental shadowing, employment, activities, research and volunteer positions. 

The definitions for these categories are as follows:

Academic Enrichment: Programs sponsored by colleges, universities or other not–for–profit organizations (e.g., Summer Medical and Dental Education Program/Summer Health Professions Education Program).

Dental Experiences: Time spent officially following and observing a health care professional at work, preferably a dentist. When listing a dental experience, please specify the type of dentist you shadowed in the description text box (e.g., general dentist, orthodontist, etc.).

Employment: Paid work done outside of the dental care field; for example, a non-dental healthcare experience, retail or restaurant job.

Extracurricular Activities: Any sports teams and other activities through a college or university.

Research: Research projects done in addition to classroom work; research should NOT appear as credit on a school transcript.

Volunteer: Volunteer work done outside of the health care field; for example, working for Habitat for Humanity, tutoring students, participating in or working for a fundraiser walk or blood drive, etc.

For each experience listed, applicants should include the name and address of the organization, supervisor, dates associated with the experience, title held by the applicant, average weekly hours, a description of key responsibilities, and a release for the dental schools if they chose to contact the organization. Applicants should only record experiences obtained during college and should limit their entries to the top six experiences in each category.

Provide information about relevant academic awards, honors, and scholarship achieved.

When adding achievements, applicants will be asked to detail the name of the presenting organization, issue date and a brief description. For honors, awards or scholarships received in multiple years or semesters, applicants may either enter them as multiple entries with the same name, or, if the honor or award was received consecutively, as one entry spanning multiple years.

Provide information about your licenses. Types include registered dental hygienist (RDH), certified dental assistant (CDA), certificated dental technician (CDT) and others. List only valid licenses.

The Applicant Summary sheet is not a unique section on the application, but an important summary of all the information included in the ADEA AADSAS application. It is a one-page document that appears at the beginning of the PDF application and is automatically generated after the application is submitted.

Items included on the coversheet are:

• Biographic Information,
• Selected GPAs,
• Official DAT scores, if they have been received, and Planned DAT date for future tests listed,
  • Self-Reported Canadian DATs, if applicable
• Up to four “most important achievements,” and
• Up to six “most important experiences.”

In your personal statement, you will explain why you want to pursue a dental career. The statement should not exceed 4,500 characters (including spaces, carriages, numbers, letters, etc.). Do not make the statement specific to each dental school, as ADEA AADSAS will provide the statement to all dental schools designated in the application.

I didn’t agree to the evaluation waiver by mistake. Can I change it?

If the applicant has indicated the wrong waiver status, the applicant must delete the evaluator, correctly re-enter the evaluator's name and other information and save. A new email requesting a letter of evaluation will be sent by ADEA AADSAS to the evaluator. This cannot be changed after the evaluation or application is submitted.

Who should I invite to write my evaluations?

ADEA AADSAS does not require evaluations from specific individuals. Dental schools, on the other hand, do request letters from specific individuals like science professors or pre-health professional advisors. Check with each dental school for more information.

What should I tell my evaluators to write?

ADEA AADSAS does not provide a prompt or set of characteristics to include in the letter; evaluators are encouraged to provide information about the applicant’s academic ability, character, time management skills, among other items deemed important. It is recommended that the letter be on letterhead and include a signature.

How do I use Interfolio to complete my evaluations?

Please visit the Interfolio website for step-by-step instructions on how to attach your letters to your ADEA AADSAS application. Please continue to monitor the status of your application to view the date your letters are posted.

What is a committee letter/packet/report?

Many colleges and universities offer a service of compiling letters of support on behalf of their applicants into a single Predental Committee Letter/Packet/Report that is submitted to ADEA AADSAS instead of individual letters of evaluation. Committee Letters/Packet/Reports are composed by members of a predental advisory and may or may not include individual letters of support attached. A health professions advisor collects letters of evaluation on behalf of applicant and submits them under a cover letter from the advising office.

I have a pre-college committee that wrote my committee letter together. Whom should I list as the evaluator for my committee letter?

When submitting a Committee Letter/Packet/Report to ADEA AADSAS, typically the committee chairperson is listed on your application. The committee chair would then upload their composite letter, along with the other letters as one packet to ADEA AADSAS. This packet will count as one letter. You will then have the option of submitting ONE more individual letter of evaluation.

My evaluator lost the email invitation. How do I resend a LOE request to my evaluator?

To change the e-mail address of an evaluator, please log in to your ADEA AADSAS application and find the evaluator in question in your Evaluations section. Click the Edit (pencil) button and scroll to the bottom. Select the blue “Resend This Evaluation Request” button. The email will be instantly resent.

How do I change the email address for my evaluator?

To change the email address of an evaluator, please log in to your ADEA AADSAS application and delete the evaluator in question. Even if your application has already been submitted, you still have access to LOEs which are listed as "New" or "In-Progress." Then, add the evaluator back in with the correct email address. This will automatically generate a new request to the evaluator.

Why does my evaluator’s name look wrong?

Once an evaluation is entered into the system, the information is bound to their e-mail address. Evaluators are able to edit their information when they create their account to upload your letter. When the evaluation is saved, the information entered by the evaluator will automatically populate.

May I add more LOEs after I have submitted my application?

You may add or change your evaluators at any time during the application cycle as long as the evaluator has not reached “Completed” status. You may log in to the application and go the “Evaluators” section of your application. Delete the names of the evaluator(s) who will not be writing on your behalf.

What does a LOE status of “Requested” mean? What about “Accepted”?

A “Requested” status means that no information has been saved in the evaluator website, nor has that information been submitted electronically to ADEA AADSAS. Please confirm with your evaluator that they received the email request; then, inform your evaluator to log in to the evaluator website, complete and save the information, then click submit to complete their letter of evaluation. If your evaluator saves any information, including their name, the status will immediately update to "Accepted," so you will be able to see the letter of evaluation is proceeding correctly.

An "Accepted" status on an evaluation means that the evaluator has accepted your evaluation request and may have saved information into the evaluation form, but has NOT yet submitted that information to ADEA AADSAS. Sometimes the evaluator mistakenly believes that by pressing "Save" they have completed the reference, when they are in fact required to click "Submit." If your evaluator believes they have completed the letter of evaluation, please ask them to go back to the form and click “submit.” When they log back in, they will see your name listed under “My Applicants.” After clicking on your name, they can review their evaluation and click on the "Submit" button.

When this is done correctly, the evaluator’s status will immediately update to “Complete," which you can see in your application. If your evaluator experiences any difficulty, they can contact ADEA AADSAS at aadsasinfo@aadsasweb.org or (617) 612-2045.

I didn’t waive my rights to view my LOEs. Can you forward me a copy?

Although you did not waive the right to view your evaluations, this waiver is a general legal procedure which goes with any recommendation letter and is not specific to ADEA AADSAS. Therefore, you still cannot access the evaluation via ADEA AADSAS, but you may ask your evaluator for a copy; or, once you matriculate into a dental program, you may view the evaluation as part of your application.

Why won’t the formatting in my Personal Statement save in the text box?

Since the personal statement section is composed of a text box, formatting such as tabs, italics or multiple spaces cannot be saved. In order to delineate paragraphs, you should type a double return between paragraphs. This delineation does not always show in the print preview version, but it will separate your paragraphs in the version submitted to your schools.

I made a mistake in my Personal Statement, but I already submitted! Can I go back and make a change?

Unfortunately, no. It is the applicant's responsibility to ensure that their personal statement is entered completely and correctly prior to submitting the application. Once you submit your application, you may not re-enter, update or otherwise edit your personal statement. If there are corrections which need to be made to your essay, you should submit those corrections directly to the programs to which you are applying.

How many experiences may I flag for the Applicant Summary? May I change my selections after I submit?

The Applicant Summary is a one-page document that will appear as the first page of your application and will include a summary version of the items included in the full application PDF. You may select a total of six (6) experiences to the coversheet for each type of Professional Experience you report. When you start an experience for the coversheet, this means that you are selecting it to appear on the Applicant Summary, which will be visible to all of the schools to which you apply.

Should I list experience on my application?

Please use your best judgment when entering information into the Professional Experiences section of your ADEA AADSAS application. It is up to you what additional information you would like to share with the dental school to which you are applying.

Where do I send documentation of my experience hours?

ADEA AADSAS does not collect any documentation for the experience sections. If any schools require documentation, it should be submitted directly to them.

What is my “Title?” Who is my supervisor?

If you did not have an official title, you enter the type of activity you did; for example, “Dentist Shadow” or “Nurse Shadow,” etc. The organization is the location where or for whom the work took place, and the supervisor is the person who was responsible for you or was in charge of your activity.

I’ve begun my experience, but plan on accumulating more hours before dental school begins. Can I include those?

In the experience sections, you may only document (in hours/weeks, etc.) the time already completed. Once you submit your application, you may not update your hours. However, in the text box under “duties,” you may clarify your expected time commitment, and send any updates directly to the schools to which you are applying.

I haven’t begun my experience yet, but plan on doing so soon. Can I report that?

No, you cannot report “planned” experience. Once you have accumulated the experience, however, you can add new experiences to your application, even if you have already submitted it. Please note you cannot edit experiences which have already been entered. You may send updated information directly to the schools to which you are applying.

Where can I report my publications or presentations?

There is no place on the application specifically for publications as the dental schools have not requested that this be documented on ADEA AADSAS. If you wish to include this type of activity, you may be able to list them in the “Achievements” section of the application, if appropriate.

I have plans to add experiences after I submit my application. Can I add new experiences after I submit?

Yes, new experiences can be added but existing experiences cannot be updated after the application is submitted.

How far back in my career should I list achievements?

It is recommended to include important achievements from during and after college.

Can I add new achievements after I submit?

Yes, new achievements can be added but existing achievements cannot be updated after the application is submitted.

Can I add new certifications after I submit?

Yes, new certifications can be added but existing certifications cannot be updated after the application is submitted.

I do not have a certification, but was trained in various health-related activities as part of my work experience. Can I list that here?

No. If you completed courses as part of on-the-job training, these can be listed under the appropriate job in the “Experiences” section of the application.

I do not have a transcript for my certification. What do I do?

Transcripts are not required for certifications. Even transcripts for certificates or Associate programs in Dental Hygiene or Dental Assisting don’t include the certifications on them, as the certifications are usually granted by state boards or similar organizations, not the schools themselves.