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I am an MD/PhD student and am considering path or surgery. My first clerkship was pathology. This was before any of my core clerkships. the attending i worked with was not impressed by the fact that i couldn't make my diagnosis in 0.2 secs at 10x and said he won't write me a letter (despite the fact i put in long hours, was VERY nice to him, and tried hard to learn what i could). basically a crappy experience.

i have used up my elective time in order to finish my thesis. i have board scores around 225 and a few pubs.

now my question is: will decent path programs (eg, univ of xyz) accept an application without a letter or rec from a clinical pathologist? (i do have other letters from surgery, ob/gyn, and medicine- assuming they are solid).

thanks for any input you may have.

 

[Doctor B.]

I would try to get a letter from someone in pathology. It doesn't necessarily have to be surgical path. Letters from forensics folks, blood bank, etc will do fine. Was there anyone else in the department that could write you a letter?

 

[Ludy]

I have a semi-related question... is it better to have 3 letters in pathology or 2 pathology and 1 from another field?

For the OP, I thought everyone going into path could count on a letter from the department chair. That's how it works at my school. He's never worked with me, but I have an appointment with him to sit down and talk about programs and my career, and then he'll write a letter. I'd recommend talking to your path dept chair about it... they usually love to hear about students going into path, especially if you're research-oriented. The other option is to get one from your adviser in path. Even if he/she hasn't worked with you, he can talk to residents who did (as opposed to the attending with the high expectations) and add information from his meetings with you for more personal info.

 

[Doctor B.]

That's good advice. It's hard to say if 3 pathology letters is better than 2 path and 1 other. I would say, make sure you have at least 1 path letter but for the other two, get them from whoever will write you the best ones. Some pathologists might like to see letters from other fields in order to show that you did well in other areas. For comparison, I had 1 from path, 1 from family practice and 1 from internal medicine.