letters of recommendation question

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MedicalBeast

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MS3 likely applying into PM&R residency.

Do you need a letter from Internal Medicine? or are letters from PM&R and Family medicine enough?

What is recommended/guideline in terms of LORs for applying into PM&R.

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You should have at least one from a rehab doc. Family med should be fine. It's not necessarily who the letter is from but the content that is important. It should be from someone who knows you and will write a non generic letter. You can spot those a mile away.
 
What about for prelim/transitional year programs? Do you need one from internal medicine?
 
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I absolutely echo what was said before about quality of the comments vs. the source. BTW For my prelim I used my internal medicine letter (since I matched into IM). Though I submitted 2 PM&R letters, they were strong, but somewhat generic I think (since one of my programs essentially read excerpts from them to me during my interview day and I was able to figure out who was who). The letter that came through the most for me and the one that kept on being brought up during interviews was a letter from a neurologist at my school; neurology had just been made a core clerkship and I took it seriously (unlike many of my classmates) and in the end I'm pretty sure THAT letter is what got me my interviews and what helped my ranking within programs.

You never know who will be your best advocate, and you can upload multiple letters and choose which four you want to submit to different programs. My advice is to make a good impression on everyone, and work hard, so that you know you will receive multiple strong letters, and be able to choose which ones make it to the Final Four (lol)
 
I would absolutely solicit a strong LOR from an IM attending for applying to prelim/TY programs.
 
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