Q: ERAS LOR from non-path faculty

[Psychopathology]

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Regarding letters of recommendation: I have no problems getting letters from pathology faculty, but I'm struggling to identify a non-pathologist. Very rarely do we stick with one attending throughout the course of a clerkship and unfortunately many attendings do not take much of an interest in students, remain indifferent to enthusiasm, etc. I want to make sure my letters are strong and it's tough to identify prospective authors just going on the duration of our relationship, the feedback they gave me on my clerkship (IF ANY!), and the grade they assigned me (IF ANY!)

I have these options. Your input is greatly appreciated.

Ask for a letter from...

A. Psychiatry attending - 1 mo, rave review on course evaluation, good grade

B. Peds attending - 1 mo, narrative course evaluation fair and positive but no extravagant praise, great grade

C. Surgery or Medicine attendings - with whom I worked for a week or two, rave reviews and great grades

D. Another Path attending - which means that that all of my evals will be from pathologists. A reliable source suggested that I avoid this option.


I'm favoring A but psychiatrists probably interact the least with pathologists. They are however exceptionally adept at evaluating and articulating the personality and strength of applicants.

Your take?

 

[Napoleon1801]

Regarding letters of recommendation: I have no problems getting letters from pathology faculty, but I'm struggling to identify a non-pathologist. Very rarely do we stick with one attending throughout the course of a clerkship and unfortunately many attendings do not take much of an interest in students, remain indifferent to enthusiasm, etc. I want to make sure my letters are strong and it's tough to identify prospective authors just going on the duration of our relationship, the feedback they gave me on my clerkship (IF ANY!), and the grade they assigned me (IF ANY!)

I have these options. Your input is greatly appreciated.

Ask for a letter from...

A. Psychiatry attending - 1 mo, rave review on course evaluation, good grade

B. Peds attending - 1 mo, narrative course evaluation fair and positive but no extravagant praise, great grade

C. Surgery or Medicine attendings - with whom I worked for a week or two, rave reviews and great grades

D. Another Path attending - which means that that all of my evals will be from pathologists. A reliable source suggested that I avoid this option.


I'm favoring A but psychiatrists probably interact the least with pathologists. They are however exceptionally adept at evaluating and articulating the personality and strength of applicants.

Your take?

All mine are from pathologists for what it's worth.

 

[MirkoCrocop]

dont underestimate the value of a strong letter from faculty other than pathologists. imo, get 1, maybe 2 from pathologists, then fill the rest with the strongest possible, whether its from a pathologist or not.

 

[djmd]

A. Psychiatry attending - 1 mo, rave review on course evaluation, good grade


C. Surgery or Medicine attendings - with whom I worked for a week or two, rave reviews and great grades

Either of those....
Unless all three pathology letters are rave glowing LORs...

 

[Psychopathology]

thank you for the feedback.

 

[yaah]

All 3 of mine were from pathologists and I didn't have any untoward effects from it. I suppose if you have some red flags in your application, like barely passing some M3 clerkships, it would help to have someone clinical to say that you can interact successfully with people.

I had 3 path letters because I had worked a lot with 3 path attendings at two different institutions. If I only had minor relationships with them I would have probably asked an IM or surgery prof.

 

[clancy81]

I got a letter from a Psych attending since she was the only attending I had worked with for an entire month. On the interview trail I got the most positive feedback about her letter as people commented that it was such a great letter and it really seemed like she knew me well. So I don't think there are any problems with using a letter from Psych. I also had 2 Path letters, and a Medicine letter from someone I only worked with for 2 weeks+some small group sessions but who gave me great reviews. I think you'd be fine with Medicine or Surgery as well.

 

[mlw03]

my opinion is that to get one letter from a surgeon, IM, or peds attending is useful. having someone to say, "this candidate understands clinical medicine" is useful i think. although i think it's silly, i would concede the surgeon's letter is probably most useful, since we interact with surgeons more than medical faculty. personally, i think a good letter from a medicine/peds attending is more useful than a mediocre one from a surgeon, but i realize some on here may disagree with that. so in summary, i think one non-path letter is valuable if you can obtain it. obviously there's plenty of evidence that all path letters is not harmful.

 

[KluverB]

Actually, overall I think we end up interacting more with "medicine" clinicians than surgeons. Surgical specimens tend to be pretty "simple". It's fielding all those medicine calls that becomes quite challenging: heme-onc, transplant (yeah, I know surgeons do the operation, but once the patient is out of the woods, so to speak, it's a turf to medicine/nephro/pulmo/hepato/etc), ID, radonc, not to mention 99.9% of CP. So, again, don't dismiss these.

 

[DarksideAllstar]

I had four letters total: 2 pathology faculty whom I knew well, one medicine, and one surgery. I was confident that they would write me good letters, and asked them point blank if they would write me a "strong" LOR, which they assured me they would. As an aside, the nice things about our student affairs office is that once the letters come in for upload into ERAS, they email us and give us a "heads-up" if a letter isn't good and will suggest you find another faculty member to solicit a LOR from.

Overall, I don't know how much it matters. For me, I wanted to have some variety in my LORs, but was it that important? Not sure. I would just get the three or four best letters that you can.

 

[mlw03]

Actually, overall I think we end up interacting more with "medicine" clinicians than surgeons. Surgical specimens tend to be pretty "simple". It's fielding all those medicine calls that becomes quite challenging: heme-onc, transplant (yeah, I know surgeons do the operation, but once the patient is out of the woods, so to speak, it's a turf to medicine/nephro/pulmo/hepato/etc), ID, radonc, not to mention 99.9% of CP. So, again, don't dismiss these.

good point. i was mainly talking about surg path. i agree that for many organs, the non-neoplastic specimens are much more diagnostically challenging, thus warranting dialog between pathologist and pulm/neprho/heme, etc. to bring this back to the original point, this only further underscores the importance of showing programs that an applicant has a solid foundation of general medical and surgical principles.