Hey guys, first time posting. I am a MS3 on my last core year rotation, so fourth year is coming up pretty soon. Any insight on this would be very much appreciated.
I know that the standard for applying to ophtho is to have 2 ophtho letters and 1 non-ophtho letter. Here's the thing, I have asked a psychiatry attending to write my non-ophtho letter. I was able to work with this attending very closely for the entire rotation, and he has expressed to me on multiple occasions that he believed I was a very strong student. Because of how small the team was, I think this letter could be a great and personal letter about my work ethics and drive for patient care. However, psychiatry is probably as far as you can get from a surgical subspecialty field, so I am not sure how much weight this letter would actually carry on my app and how much this would help me.
There are a few reasons I did not ask for a LOR from medicine or surgery. I had medicine and surgery pretty early on in my third year and had not been thinking about LORs until very recently, and by this time I am not sure if these attendings even remember my names.
My question is, does the fact that my third letter comes from a psychiatry attending take away from my application at all? I have the option of doing a Sub-I in medicine earlier in fourth year to get a letter there, but since I decided on ophtho pretty late, I already will need to put in work to get ophtho letters from my home department and away rotations. If the psychiatry LOR is good enough, I would probably try to place all my efforts towards the ophtho LORs.
I know that the standard for applying to ophtho is to have 2 ophtho letters and 1 non-ophtho letter. Here's the thing, I have asked a psychiatry attending to write my non-ophtho letter. I was able to work with this attending very closely for the entire rotation, and he has expressed to me on multiple occasions that he believed I was a very strong student. Because of how small the team was, I think this letter could be a great and personal letter about my work ethics and drive for patient care. However, psychiatry is probably as far as you can get from a surgical subspecialty field, so I am not sure how much weight this letter would actually carry on my app and how much this would help me.
There are a few reasons I did not ask for a LOR from medicine or surgery. I had medicine and surgery pretty early on in my third year and had not been thinking about LORs until very recently, and by this time I am not sure if these attendings even remember my names.
My question is, does the fact that my third letter comes from a psychiatry attending take away from my application at all? I have the option of doing a Sub-I in medicine earlier in fourth year to get a letter there, but since I decided on ophtho pretty late, I already will need to put in work to get ophtho letters from my home department and away rotations. If the psychiatry LOR is good enough, I would probably try to place all my efforts towards the ophtho LORs.
