Letters and Photo for ERAS

[Futuredoc1364]

Hi,

I am an MSIII and I know there have been many posts about LOR's for ERAS and I read some of those posts myself. Recently my school had a session for us when they went over ERAS policies and from what I understand, we can upload as many letters as we want but we have to pick and choose which letters we send to each program and only 4 max to each program. Am I correct on this?

Another issue which I read mixed posts about is how bad it is to have letters from fields other than medicine and surgery? I did well in my Family med rotation (HP) and unfortunately I was only an average student in IM becuase I had it early during the third year and I only got a pass. I did very well in surgery though (H) from which I will ask for a letter.

So I was thinking about contacting my main family medicine attending who saw all the evals from the other attendings in the practice and put my grade together to see if she is willing to write me a strong letter. So it will be acceptable to submit to programs considering it is not an IM letter? I just thought considering that she knows me well compared to some other rotations I have had, it should be OK, but if it is totally not useful at all I should not bother her about it.

On the same note, I still have pediatrics and OB/GYN left for third year and I am hopeful to be able to "shine" and find attendings who can write me letters assuming the above rule of being able to submit letters from any field applies.


Also I will get a letter from my research mentor in med school and also probably two letters from my radiology elective I finished last month. (I will probably have 6-8 letters on file on ERAS).

Thank you in advance for your advice....

Now one very RANDOM question about ERAS picture since I am writing a thread :

My school was taking ERAS photos yesterday and I wore a dark suit and tie which was nice. But here is the issue: I am a male suffering from male pattern baldness and there is still quite a bit of hair on the front of my head. However, in a photo with a flash the thinning hair was obvious. So the photographer said that he will use photoshop to make it look better. Now is this going to be OK in terms of making my hair look fuller and when they actually meet me I have a lot thinner hair?

I am sorry if this question is so random but being a medical student I have the right to worry about very minor things.

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[Amxcvbcv]

You're correct about the LoRs; you can submit as many as you want to ERAS, but can only "send" four to each program. When you get around to filling out the application, you basically just check which letters go where.

I think I had only four letters in the system. Two radiology (one from an away-rotation PD, and one outstanding letter from a doc I worked with on some poster presentations), one internal medicine, and one psychiatry.

I wouldn't say it's categorically bad to have letters from other specialties. It's more a matter of content. I would say you need to have at least a letter from surgery or medicine, even if it's just mediocre. This is more for your preliminary position anyway.

As for the hair... I wouldn't worry about it, unless the photographer makes it look like the after-shot for a hair club.