Lor

[entprospect]

I know this topic has been discussed before, but I have a specific question. People have said that one of your letters should prob be from an non ENT, esp one that can write about how you walk on water and sometimes even turn some water into wine. My question is that lets say if that person is not a "professor" but a community doctor with whom you did a FM or Peds rotation. Is that unacceptable? Must it say at the bottom of the letter "professor" or is it just as good to have MD.

Thanks for your help.

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[forbin]

I think anyone who has taught you in a clinical rotation in medical school is acceptable for a LOR, even if they are a community doc. I've still always believed, though, that having all your letters written by oto attendings is the way to go.

 

[resxn]

My take is that if you get a letter from outside of ENT, get it from someone with some kind of reputation. I wouldn't have a community FP doc write it. I would have the chair of the Urology department write it. I wouldn't have some doc-in-the-box who thinks your a god(dess), but instead have the chair of vascular surgery write it.

In my opinion, the following are the ranks of LOR's in terms of who's writing them assuming they all like you enough to write great letters:
1 - your department chair
2 - the next best reputation from your ENT department
3 - nationally recognized (surgical) chair from your school or another school (even if in another department other than ENT) that knows you well enough to write a good letter
4 - a generic ENT from your school
5 - a generic ENT from another school
6 - a generic surgical specialist from your school
7 - a generic surgical specialist from another school
8 - a primary care doc from any school
9 - a community doc from any school
10 - a resident
11 - your dad, who's an ENT
12 - your sister, who's still in college
13 - the family dog

I debated whether to put the community doc at 13, but thought my point was made well enough where he stood. No offense to community docs--2 of the best docs/teachers I had in med school were community docs--but they just don't carry the weight that the ones above do in terms of position.

Weigh that against the expected quality of letter and then decide for yourself.

 

[TheThroat]

Don't disagree with resxn, but I did have an unknown FP (#8 on his list) write a LOR for me. I just didn't think anyone else would write a glowing letter for me.

In my opinion, having a chairman letter is a requisite, (1st letter), another letter by the oto who knows you best is the 2nd letter, and the third should be by someone who loves you...really, really loves you. If that is an oto, especially a well-known one, sweet, but the 3rd letter doesn't HAVE to be from an oto to have a good app.

 

[resxn]

Don't disagree with resxn, but I did have an unknown FP (#8 on his list) write a LOR for me. I just didn't think anyone else would write a glowing letter for me.

In my opinion, having a chairman letter is a requisite, (1st letter), another letter by the oto who knows you best is the 2nd letter, and the third should be by someone who loves you...really, really loves you. If that is an oto, especially a well-known one, sweet, but the 3rd letter doesn't HAVE to be from an oto to have a good app.

Thanks for clarifying that, Throat. I agree that your 3rd letter should be someone who thinks you are the best thing to ever matriculate into medicine, the order is only there to say based on position, who is the best.

My 3rd letter was from a vascular surgeon--and it was probably the best.

 

[ceberzof]

I do not know if this has been answered, but when programs say 3 letters required can you send four. So far I have two ENT letters one from chairman at my school, and one from chief of ENT at another school. I have been using a medicine letter as my third.

Another ENT letter was sent on my behalf, just not received by my school yet. So I used the above three for my applications.

Does anyone know if programs mind receiving four letters? That way I could attach this other letter when it comes in to my existing application. Because now the ERAS system allows four to be sent to each program.

Thank for your help

 

[shwtime11]

I sent 4 letters to quite a few programs unless they had "up to 3 letters" explicitly written in the application guidelines. Most places said "at least 3 letters" and some had no clarification at all. I used one letter from my chairman, 2 from ENT's from my school, and 1 from the chairman of the surgery department who is well known.

 

[ent]

I submitted 4 letters to all the 20 programs I applied to. If a program says that they require 3 letters, will it look bad if they find 4 letters in my submitted eras application?