prelim year needs chairman's letter?

[fishtolive]

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i was just reading thru something my school gave me which stated that people going into fields requiring a prelim year (i.e., anesthesia) need a chairman's letter in MEDICINE if going into transitional or prelim medicine years.
i searched frieda and some of the individual program sites and never saw this explicitly specified..anybody know the deal here?

 

[MTGas2B]

i was just reading thru something my school gave me which stated that people going into fields requiring a prelim year (i.e., anesthesia) need a chairman's letter in MEDICINE if going into transitional or prelim medicine years.
i searched frieda and some of the individual program sites and never saw this explicitly specified..anybody know the deal here?

Just contact the Internal Medicine department at your medical school, tell them you will be applying to preliminary year positions, and you would like a chairman's letter for your application. Some departments may want you to come in for a short interview, mine did. Then they'll just generate another letter for your ERAS. I used it for prelim spots and for some advanced anesthesia spots too.

 

[hope2bnmd!]

Do you just send the int. medicine chairman's letter to only the prelim programs you are applying for?

 

[MTGas2B]

Do you just send the int. medicine chairman's letter to only the prelim programs you are applying for?

I sent it to all the prelim spots I applied to, plus, if anesthesiology programs had no limit on the number of letters I sent it to them as well (I had three other letters). It probably doesn't really matter that much, just that you make sure you send it to prelim programs that ask for it, that's the part that matters. Since I had three letters, I figured as long as programs would take more, what difference would one more make, probably wouldn't hurt. I wouldn't send it as your 8th letter or something like that.

 

[PassinGas]

None of the prelim or transitional programs that I applied to required a Medicine Chair letter, so I didn't send one.

I would check the individual programs' websites to see what is required. I wouldn't just send in an "extra" bland letter from some guy that doesn't know you from Adam. Heck you may already be doing that with your anesthesia chairman.

All the prelim and transitional programs that I applied to understood that they were a step in the process to my becoming an anesthesiologist. They could care less about a medicine chair's letter. They just made sure that the letters I did send were good.

Another thought. I would only send the 3 best letters. My opinnion is that there is no need to send more than the best 3. The fourth best letter is just that...one extra letter that is not as good as the first three. I'd leave it out. No need to "water down" the previous three. Good luck.