Materials to acquire Letters of Recommendation?

[DOwnage]

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I am in a position to get a letter of recommendation from a couple profs and a DO. My window is fairly small and I want to strike while the opportunity presents itself. I've read that you should have materials prepared such as a personal statement, a CV or resume, and secondary essays to give the professors something of substance to talk about in the letters.

I haven't started writing a personal statement; should I start writing one that I plan on submitting to med school or should I just write a quick one that will get the point across?

What should I do about a CV/resume? I've seen business style resume's that talk about grades, classes, extracurriculars, and previous work experience...that is more tailored towards acquiring a JOB as opposed to being relevant to medical school. What should I do to make a more relevant document?

What is the deal with secondary essays? Do I just find some secondary essay topics like "Why DO?" and just start writing short essays?

 

[engineeredout]

For a doctor to write a good LOR, especially one who doesn't know you THAT well, you should be able to provide a copy of your personal statement as well as a CV that includes activities/interests as well as past experiences. It will allow the doctor to write as personal a LOR as they can, as it's pretty easy to see when someone is writing a generic bull**** letter and doesn't know you at all.

As for secondaries, you can go through old class threads for the specific schools and you'll probably find the secondaries topics that people have posted. Some essays you'll be able to reuse for multiple schools with minor tweaking.

 

[DOwnage]

For a doctor to write a good LOR, especially one who doesn't know you THAT well, you should be able to provide a copy of your personal statement as well as a CV that includes activities/interests as well as past experiences. It will allow the doctor to write as personal a LOR as they can, as it's pretty easy to see when someone is writing a generic bull**** letter and doesn't know you at all.

As for secondaries, you can go through old class threads for the specific schools and you'll probably find the secondaries topics that people have posted. Some essays you'll be able to reuse for multiple schools with minor tweaking.

A few follow up questions:

1) How many pages can the CV/Resume be? I've been told in more business type jobs to shorten it to 1. Does the same apply in this instance?

2) I was in a band that raised money for charity. It was not an "official" school sponsored thing and was more "freelance". Should I list it and if so, how?

3) I participated in a Marketing Research Project which could be classified as research experience to an extent. However, this was part of a class project, therefore I got a grade for it. Should it be included or not?

4) How long do secondary essays have to be typically?
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Thank you!!!

 

[Helen Wheels]

I have asked for several LORS and what I did was give each recommender a copy of my resume and my personal statement. Recently, I asked a physician I shadowed to write an LOR and I just gave him a copy of my AACOMAS application. I felt that since he had only known me for a few hours, the extra info of my MCAT and courses would be helpful. I think it is very helpful to supply this extra info because most LOR writers only know you in a limited way, from a class, or work, or shadowing, etc.

My resume is only one page, FWIW.

How long should secondaries be? In most cases schools will specify a word limit for you. The schools will also tell you exactly what to write about.

You could mention the involvement in the band since it was for charity (it is community service). I don't know exactly what your role was in the class project but I don't think adcoms would want to see that listed because it was marketing research and not basic science or clinical research.

 

[DOwnage]

You could mention the involvement in the band since it was for charity (it is community service). I don't know exactly what your role was in the class project but I don't think adcoms would want to see that listed because it was marketing research and not basic science or clinical research.

The class project was a team-based project and I was basically the team leader. The only reason I asked is because we used SPSS for statistical analysis which can also be used by medical researchers.

 

[DOwnage]

Does one include shadowing experience on a resume/cv? If so, would it be lumped in with extracurriculars like volunteering or in its own section?

I used search to try and find an appropriate response but I didn't find a clear-cut answer...