The New D.O. Application

Yesterday the new Liason International D.O. application website was launched. Naturally, I started populating the application with my information. A few thoughts come to mind:

• The new layout is so pretty! The previous website was an ugly eyesore; it was very dated looking. The blues and greens make this a very modern-looking page, and the simple graphics add a very nice touch.
• It isn't just pretty, it is also WAY more functional and easy to use than the previous version. Now, it isn't perfect, but there are several things that I have noticed that are improved:
• The transcript entry utility is a lot simpler to use. You can organize things by quarter/semester, meaning you can select a semester, add the classes, and choose another quarter, instead of having to re-enter the semester information each time you add a class. This saves a TON of time--last cycle I spent HOURS inputting the information, and I still messed it up.
• It also has a bar on the bottom that lists if the schools you are applying to have certain pre-requisite courses. If you hover over the "i" icon, it tells you if the course is mandatory, how many credits they require, and the minimum grade they will accept. This last piece of information quite helpful for non-trads who already have a science degree--it tells you if the "pass" grade you earned would be accepted. For example, for Rowan, they want a 2.5 minimum grade in the biology pre-requisite. This would mean you would need somewhere above a C+ for consideration, and that it might be worth your while to retake the course.
• One unanswered question about the transcript tool: I went to Drexel University, and it is on the quarter system. The old application asked us to translate the quarter hours into semester hours using a chart in a PDF that wasn't even prominently displayed on the site or the webpage (this is part of why it took hours for me to complete this step in the past). The new website has no mention of whether or not I need to recalculate all of my credit hours. I assume that during the verification process, they will tell me if I need to do so.
• The "Evaluations" section. I wish they had a more clear description for what this is. Who are these evaluations coming from? I don't know if this is supposed to be for Letter of Recommendation (LOR) writers such as a science professor, pre-medical committee, D.O. physician, or workplace supervisor, or all four of those things. And if it's from a pre-medical committee, I have no idea how they would have a SINGLE email address to give.
• And thought that I'd put this out there: as a non-trad, it is effing HARD to find professors willing to write these LORs, especially if you're more than a year out of school. I wish med schools would take supervisor letters more seriously, especially for those of us who are working in a science- or medically-related field.
• I'm guessing the section is for LORs though, as on their previous emails they mentioned that the new website would have a utility to replace Interfolio, and that this way your LORs would come bundled with your application itself, allowing for faster processing times.
• In the personal information spot, I'm surprised they eliminated information about siblings. They do, however, have a more detailed information spot for people to list physicians in the family. Unfortunately for me, that spot will remain woefully blank. It makes me vaguely uncomfortable to see a spot dedicated for nepotism on an application that is supposed to evaluate the student holistically, rather than the student's family.
• The language entry spot. They ask you to pick a primary language. For those of us who were raised bilingual (this is a case for so many of us who were born in America to immigrant parents who could speak at least a minimum of English), there is no "primary" language. It feels weird to call my home language level "advanced" because I cannot understand the news/literary grammar, but I'm fully able to converse and live a normal life using my home language.