How much do MSPE comments mean?

[TheBoneDoctah]

Meant MSPE

Long story short, I wanna go into a surgical field. During my surgery rotation, I busted a** and got really good feedback and comments in person from my preceptor inside and out of the OR. On the last day he said we did a great job and had nothing but praise for us.

With this in mind, I figured I’d get a strong eval from the preceptor. The preceptor literally just filled out my eval from my last rotation (a month later) and I was worried he would forget small details that would have been awesome to write in my eval comments.

The eval MSPE comments said “I did great on his service” which is super generic and I got a “meets expectations” instead of exceeds. I feel like I kinda got shafted on this eval since he took so long to write it.

For someone wanting to go into surgery, is this a big deal? Our grades Pass/honors at our school is strictly using our COMAT scores, so his eval doesn’t play into my grade.

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[Moose A Moose]

I think when combined with a solid personal statement and glowing LORs the MSPE can help push your application up the applicant stack.

It’s not gonna make or break you.

 

[metzthatcut]

The magic adjective matters more in your MSPE letter than the individual comments on rotations. Generally, for our program, we read your LOR to see what your attendings thought about you.

The magic adjective at the end of your MSPE is a straightforward way of gauging your overall performance in medical school as it corresponds to your class rank without having to sort through all your grades on your transcript and looking at how the grades are distributed, etc. etc.

 

[thedrjojo]

When I review applications for the people I am interviewing, I turn to the MSPE for the class rank (as metztthatcut mentioned), I look for the grade in Surgery and the grade distribution (if 60% of your school honors it, you better have honored it or I am having serious reservations), and I may read thru the comments that come along with surgery... The Letters of Recommendation are what matters much more to me, and really those I look to the last paragraph to see their summation (ie, are they trying to recruit you to their program or will they be an excellent candidate for YOUR program).

Then I go to your "hobbies" listed and try to talk about them during the interview to see what kind of person you actually are.