LORs for Pathology Residency

[DoctorFood]

Hey everyone

I'll be applying or Pathology residency this cycle. Most of the programs require 3 letters of recommendation. However, the deans at my med school highly encourage us to send 4 letters. Does the number matter?

I have three strong letters confirmed already. I'm wondering if I should add another letter, which may not be as strong due to the lack of structure of the pathology rotation and minimal interaction with the attending.

Any thoughts? Thanks!

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[KCShaw]

Varies -- some programs won't even notice if you send an extra, others may get annoyed that you didn't follow their instructions to the letter. Come to think of it, will the online system even allow you to assign more than the requested number of LOR's?

I think it's worth -getting- 4 LOR's, so you have them available. But I wouldn't go out of my way to give a program something they aren't asking for unless for some reason it's exceptional.

 

[lipomas]

I think that four letter thing is a new development. Unless they are including the Dean's letter as one of the four. I don't know of any programs in path that wanted four, but maybe that has changed. Seems silly to me.

 

[Euchromatin]

I had three for last year's ERAS cycle and everything worked out fine. Other than a few people asking after one of my letter writers when I interviewed at the institution she did her residency at, I don't think LORs were mentioned during any of my interviews. I think as long as at least one of your strong letters is from a pathologist, you should be all set.

 

[pathalot]

I'm applying this year too and also have 3 LoRs. All the program websites I've looked at require only three. My dean said that if you give programs 4 when they only require 3, they may throw out your app because you "can't follow directions." That being said, I plan on getting another LoR from an away rotation and then contacting the programs to see if they want me to send it to them.