Letter of rec outside of ERAS

[axisdog]

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Hi. I'm doing a sub-I at a program I'm very interested in and want my attending to write me a letter of rec. I already have 4 letters with ERAS, so if I get a letter of rec from this attending it would have to circumvent ERAS (since I'd have a total of 5 letters sent to this program).

How do I go about getting this letter to their admission/program office? Do I ask the attending to send it themselves? Do I pick it up in an envelope and deliver it myself?

Any help from people with experience with this will be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[gutonc]

I've mentioned this several times before. You have several options, none of which are guaranteed to be of any benefit.

1. The route I took. Upload your 5th letter to ERAS (you can upload 150 letters if you're so inclined, the only limit is to how many you can assign to a particular program). Go to the programs you most want to have this letter. Un-assign letter #4 from those programs and assign your 5th letter to them. Now hold your breath. In my own experience (N = 6 programs last year), >80% of programs downloaded this 5th letter and it was present in my file at interview time. Your mileage may and will vary and there's no guarantee that your experience will be the same as mine was last year.

2. Directly submit hard copy LoRs to the programs you're interested in. Most programs say that they only accept "applications" through ERAS but make no mention of individual documents. I did submit a 5th LoR directly to 4 programs last year, 2 of which were in my file when I interviewed (and a 3rd went in after I interviewed).

3. Directly deliver your 5th LoR to PDs and interviewers at your interview. This is least likely to be of any real benefit. Depending on the program, you will have between 15 and 45 minutes with each interviewer. You can make far more of an impression on them in that time than even a stellar LoR would at that point. This is, IMHO, your least useful option. That said, if you don't have any luck w/ option 1 and you don't have time for option 2, it can't hurt to try this.

All of this being said...as long as you're not in the situation where your first 4 letters are from 1st year attendings that nobody's ever heard of and your 5th letter is from Anthony Fauci, it's unlikely to make a huge difference one way or the other.

Good luck.

 

[IMbound]

Good info on the above post, your best bet may be to have the attending you are working with directly email or mail the program director. Programs do really place importance on recommendations coming from within that program/university/hospital.