Is Doing an sub-I for my specialty in mid-August too late?

[thedude777]

Hi everyone, just got my finalized 4th year schedule today. It was lottery-based and unfortunately I got the sub-i for my specialty from mid-August to early September. Would this be too late to be able to ask for letters of recommendation? I can move it up to right after Step 2 in mid-June but I am worried that I will be rusty after studying and thus not perform as well. All the other slots are full unfortunately.

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[aldol16]

It's cutting it close but not too late. Take a look at when ERAS is due this year. You can still submit letters after ERAS submission but ideally would have them all together before the submission date. As long as you have a 2 week buffer between end of sub-I and the ERAS due date, you should be fine but you should ask people to write your letters as early as you can and make them aware of the deadline.

 

[thedude777]

Thanks for the reply! It looks like the deadline for submission is September 28th and my sub-I is 6 weeks so it goes from August 8th to September 16th. So it would be a little under two weeks at the latest. If I happen to connect with the people I work with for the first few weeks, it wouldn't be an issue but I'm worried in case I connect better with the attendings from the last 1-2 weeks. I just have bad memories from stressing out over people submitting letters of recommendation on time for medical school applications haha.

 

[NotAProgDirector]

You can submit your applications with 3 letters, and then add the 4th SubI letter when it's available. If you decide to do this, you MUST save one slot for the SubI letter. Once you submit 4 letters, you can't "remove" one and add the SubI letter, nor can you just send an extra letter.

You can also mention this in your application (if you list the SubI as an experience, you can state "I will add an LOR from this SubI at its completion".