Negative Comments in Dean's Letter

[kdur]

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Why would a school include negtive evaluation comments in the Dean's Letter (my school told us a number of times that the MSPE would contain positive and negative eval comments)? What purpose does it really serve? Do they include every positive and negative comment submitted, or do they pick and choose? And if that's the case who gets to do the choosing and and how do they decide what to select?

I am interested because I have received very positive comments on my evals throughout my 3rd year. The negatives ones were your typical "needs to read more" kind of stuff. But one of the comments was was not very good, not horrible, but not something you want to highlight. What kills me is that I was told by the attending that I had impressed him, and when I asked for feedback he said i was doing great and keep it up. The rest of his eval was great except for this one comment.

So I guess my concern is if they are looking for negative comments, and I have this sea of benign "needs to read more" and then they see this one kind of crappy one, is that the one they snag thinking "Oh here's a juicy one!"? And if so why? Does it serve them, or me, in any beneficial way?

(The comment was something to the effect that I didn't do any more than I needed to to get through the rotation.)

 

[peppy]

My speculation is that they might give a cross-section of good and bad comments with the reasoning that residencies will take the Dean's letter as more trustworthy that way. If residencies catch on that a particular school always sends out letters with nothing but positive comments then it doesn't really mean much.

 

[dermpathdoc]

dean's letters do not carry a lot of weight in the overall residency evaluation. Most of the time they are taken with a very heavy grain of salt.

 

[TenderRender]

dean's letters do not carry a lot of weight in the overall residency evaluation. Most of the time they are taken with a very heavy grain of salt.

AProgDirector has seemed to make it clear on multiple occasions that the Dean's Letter is one of the three most important parts of the residency evaluation. More specifically the percentile rankings of students in different categories and unedited comments from attendings are what he always makes sure to look at (you may be right that the rest of it is not as important). The comments must be unedited, otherwise the comments are worthless. That's probably what OP's school was talking about.

 

[dozitgetchahi]

I think this is a key difference between the allo and osteopathic programs...allo progs seem to put a lot more weight on the dean's letter, and aprogdirector is at an allo program.

 

[pipe dream]

More specifically the percentile rankings of students in different categories

What categories besides class rank?

 

[dozitgetchahi]

Usually there's some sort of breakdown by year 1/2 classes (and 3rd year rotations) as to what % of the class got which grade and where you fell with regards to each class/rotation. Usually some sort of judgement is made as to where you fell relative to the class with regard to step 1 as well.

 

[Goro]

I'm very surprised to hear this as your school has it own interests at stake to make sure that you end up in the best possible residency.

At our school, when I write stuff for the Dean's Letter files, I will be very blunt about my own student's worst aspects (which is rare) and our Director of Clinical Education has told me that they just keep those comments in the students' files for record keeping, but never put it in the Dean's letter.

Why would a school include negtive evaluation comments in the Dean's Letter (my school told us a number of times that the MSPE would contain positive and negative eval comments)? What purpose does it really serve? Do they include every positive and negative comment submitted, or do they pick and choose? And if that's the case who gets to do the choosing and and how do they decide what to select?

I am interested because I have received very positive comments on my evals throughout my 3rd year. The negatives ones were your typical "needs to read more" kind of stuff. But one of the comments was was not very good, not horrible, but not something you want to highlight. What kills me is that I was told by the attending that I had impressed him, and when I asked for feedback he said i was doing great and keep it up. The rest of his eval was great except for this one comment.

So I guess my concern is if they are looking for negative comments, and I have this sea of benign "needs to read more" and then they see this one kind of crappy one, is that the one they snag thinking "Oh here's a juicy one!"? And if so why? Does it serve them, or me, in any beneficial way?

(The comment was something to the effect that I didn't do any more than I needed to to get through the rotation.)

 

[TenderRender]

I'm very surprised to hear this as your school has it own interests at stake to make sure that you end up in the best possible residency.

At our school, when I write stuff for the Dean's Letter files, I will be very blunt about my own student's worst aspects (which is rare) and our Director of Clinical Education has told me that they just keep those comments in the students' files for record keeping, but never put it in the Dean's letter.

That's interesting, but I wonder whether that devalues the Dean's Letter then in the eyes of program directors.

 

[cleareyedguy]

We expect dean's letter's to be honest, but negative comments can completely sink an application. I'd view them as the single most important aspect of your application since they incorporate the other key elements (scores and grades). A LOR that is negative will also sink your chances, but if you can't find a few people who will provide good letters, you've not been paying attention. The Dean's Letter is more objective, more detailed, and even if the school wants to place its students well, it has much more of a reputation to uphold than does any particular letter writer. And don't think that we don't care about your performance in areas outside of your specialty area. Again, we assume you'll be interested in your future specialty. As risk assessors, we are VERY interested in how you've done in rotations that don't especially hold your interest, especially the ones that are generally viewed as rigorous. The basic message is, "we want to figure out who's going to be great, of course, but we REALLY want to know who's going to be a problem, and we will search your record like an earnest, obsessional Talmudic scholar if it means one less problematic resident who we have to suffer with for several years."

 

[2000 Man]

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