Questions about LORs for residency app

[duckfriedbacon]

Hi guys,
I'm a long time lurker and first time poster.
Recently, I got screwed over my 4th yr electives and didn't get the ideal electives I wanted. I am left with two choices.
1. doing a Peds AI at a community-based hospital in July or August and doing some Peds electives later in Sept and Oct
2. doing two Peds electives at the departments that know me well (I've worked on projects for them) in July and August, taking my CK in Sept then doing the Peds AI at my ideal hospital in Oct (no spots opening in July-Sept)

Problem is, a lot of my friends told me that most of the Peds programs require that departmental letter from your Peds AI and doing the AI in Oct will put me in a lot of disadvantage. Is that true?

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[deleted311769]

Hi guys,
I'm a long time lurker and first time poster.
Recently, I got screwed over my 4th yr electives and didn't get the ideal electives I wanted. I am left with two choices.
1. doing a Peds AI at a community-based hospital in July or August and doing some Peds electives later in Sept and Oct
2. doing two Peds electives at the departments that know me well (I've worked on projects for them) in July and August, taking my CK in Sept then doing the Peds AI at my ideal hospital in Oct (no spots opening in July-Sept)

Problem is, a lot of my friends told me that most of the Peds programs require that departmental letter from your Peds AI and doing the AI in Oct will put me in a lot of disadvantage. Is that true?

At most programs, your departmental letter comes from a mix of your clerkship evaluations, your course director, and the department chair (who you will likely meet with briefly). if you do an AI early enough, the comments/evaluations from that will most likely be included. However, I cannot imagine that it would be required to do an AI before getting the departmental letter.

Now, your friends might be meaning that people often get LORs from an attending they work with during their AI. I agree - that is pretty common. However, if you are doing a peds elective instead, there is no reason to think you couldn't get a LOR from one of those attendings.

The reasons to do an AI early include:
-wanting to get it over and done with
-having a lower core clerkship grade, and wanting to prove you can get honors
-wanting to get an LOR from one of the attendings during the AI, because you know you will be awesome and work particularly closely with them

Doing your AI at community hospital vs the department you know well is a different question. It won't matter that they know and love you at your home program if you are doing your AI late, because you won't be using them for an LOR anyway. Unless you have heard bad things about the experience at the community hospital, there is no reason to think that it is a worse place to do an AI. We can't do a peds AI at a community hospital, but the community hospital medicine AI at my school is very popular because you can work very closely with attendings, and get great LORs with a slightly more manageable workload.

So in the end, It's really up to you which schedule you choose.

 

[twilightdoc]

Hi guys,
I'm a long time lurker and first time poster.
Recently, I got screwed over my 4th yr electives and didn't get the ideal electives I wanted. I am left with two choices.
1. doing a Peds AI at a community-based hospital in July or August and doing some Peds electives later in Sept and Oct
2. doing two Peds electives at the departments that know me well (I've worked on projects for them) in July and August, taking my CK in Sept then doing the Peds AI at my ideal hospital in Oct (no spots opening in July-Sept)
Problem is, a lot of my friends told me that most of the Peds programs require that departmental letter from your Peds AI and doing the AI in Oct will put me in a lot of disadvantage. Is that true?

"A lot of your friends" may have given you slightly erroneous information. Yes, it would be great to have "aced" a Peds AI at the "mothership" prior to the ERAS deadline, but it isn't essential. If you did quite well on your Peds clerkship and have good potential letter-writers from that experience, that will be a big help. Doing Peds electives early and having strong letters from them will also help. If you have an excellent academic record thus far, I wouldn't sweat the AI. Perhaps a different story if you have some holes in your academic record and need to validate your potential as a Peds house officer. But I have known plenty of med students who have gotten "top tier" Peds residencies without doing a Peds AI for LOR purposes.

 

[michigangirl]

Agree with everything twilightdoc said. You have to take what your friends say with a grain of salt when said friends are in the same level as you and know just as little about how the process works as you do. Unless you didn't do well in your core clerkship, the AI in October will not be a problem. The "dean's letter" will be comprised of comments and grades from all of your core clerkships. So as long as those are good, you'll be fine.

 

[BigRedBeta]

My sub-I was with a community IM practioner, still used the LOR I got for peds. My only peds letter was from a PICU attending that I worked with on an away rotation that wasn't a true sub-i. A good letter is a good letter, even from a non-impressive source, and is always preferable to a mediocre letter from someone who sounds impressive