Letter of rec for residency

[Pewl]

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I'm currently finishing up grad school and there are a few professors that I've worked with that I want to get a letter of rec from. I feel like they can write me a pretty strong one. The thing is, I'm just starting med school this year so I have a ton of time before residency begins. Should I still have them write me a letter to keep on interfolio.com?

What do you guys think?

I should probably elaborate that my graduate work (biomedical physics) is in a field that I'm interested in entering (radiation oncology/radiology) for residency. I have a lot of clinical experience with fluoroscopy, rad onc treatment planning, nuclear medicine, and diagnostic radiology. This is the reason why I thought a letter from my current professors may be useful later on.

 

[Pewl]

bump

 

[angel80]

I didn't apply for Rads or Rad Onc, so I don't know what they look for, but generally letters of recommendation for residency should be from attending physicians from your 3rd and 4th year clerkships, or research preceptors in med school. I don't know if they would accept letters from before med school. It wouldn't hurt to hold on to them, although generally letters of recommendation are supposed to go from the person who wrote them directly to your school in a sealed envelope. The school opens the envelope, and then scans the letter into ERAS. My school wouldn't accept the letters until July of fourth year, when ERAS opened.

 

[Pewl]

bumpage

 

[lord_jeebus]

Resurrecting rather than opening a new thread...

If you apply for 50 residency programs, do you have to ask your recommenders for 50 copies of the letter to be sent out? Or does ERAS centralize for you?

A couple of other Q's...

Do programs have a standard minimum number of LOR's, or will you have letters that you are only sending to some programs?

Your letter writers will send one copy to someone at your school, who will scan it and submit to ERAS. ERAS then sends out as many copies as you desire.

ERAS allows a maximum of 4 letters, although I believe most programs do not require that many.

 

[Ashers]

Hey Ice... nice tag line. 😉

So as an M3, will I basically just have to approach some attending that I hope liked me on a rotation that I want to go into? So for ortho, probably my ortho elective and surgery clerkships?

What if I do really well in some rotation that has nothing to do with ortho or surgery? Do I even ask the attending for a letter then?

 

[lord_jeebus]

I think it's a good idea to take advantage of the opportunity for a particularly strong letter from any specialty. You don't have to use it but it's nice to have the option. I think most specialties wouldn't mind getting 1 letter from outside that specialty; some might want more.