letters of recs

[qdog]

How many letters of recs (LOR) are required by most PM&R programs?

Do they have to be by a various fields of medicine, say like one letter from IM/Peds/FP, one letter from Surgery and obviously one letter from PM&R faculty?

Or if I have more than one PM&R LOR should I send more? I will currently have 3 LORs from PM&R faculty I rotated with, although they are from the same hospital program (I rotated with 3 different docs then).

The other thing is that I will be doing my PM&R externship rotations in a couple of places for the next 2-3 months. Should I wait to get letters from those faculty, if I'm interested in going to those programs?

In essence, I will be only submitting 3 letters instead 4 to ERAS, to leave that last space available to submit a possible LOR... My only worry is that I may pass a deadline for a certain program waiting for that last letter of rec...

I hope I haven't confused everyone with my backward logic. Just trying to figure out what to have ready for submission to ERAS.

Thanks everyone for the support and advice I have recieved from you guys.

Qamar

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[qdog]

Hello... Anyone, have an answer or at least attempt to answer these questions?

Qamar

 

[StinkyTofu]

It's been awhile since I applied so things may have changed. Given that you haven't done your externship yet, I would go ahead and submit what you have. I think you can upload quite a few LORs, but I don't remember what the limit was. I wound up having quite a few LORs and submitted different ones to different programs. Personally, I would go with one letter from IM and two from PM&R. I think most programs require three, but I think I submitted four to a few programs. You can use those same letters for Prelim & TY programs. They know you are there for only one year before going on to your chosen specialty.

 

[Camber314]

I agree with Stinky, but my first criteria for choosing letters would be the quality of the letter, followed by applicability to the program in question and then which specialty the letter represents. IMHO, better to provide the best, most personal letters v. a wider variety of less impressive letters...

Good luck!

Wes

 

[qdog]

So I should send out all 3 or 4 letters now (I do have a couple of letters from Surgery/Peds/and FP), without leaving any room to add the possible letter or two from the externships I am about to do? Am I getting that right? Or should I just send out 3 for now and if I am able to get a great letter from any of these externships, use that last one to send out later in the game? I appreciate the advice, both of you have given and look forawrd to your responses...

Qamar

 

[Finally M3]

Hey there qdog. I wish I had 3 PMR letters to choose from (I only have 1 right now). From everything I've seen thus far (midwest programs only) the general consensus is 3 letters min. So I would do a 2 PMR 1 Med for the PMRs, but you may want to do drop a PMR and add a Surg/Fam/Peds/Whatever for your transitional. I'd rather do a prelim medicine than transitional, so I'm gonna send two med one PMR for those.