Recommendation letter question

[OncSurg]

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I am interested in applying for surgical residency, I have few recommendation letters from Plastics, ENT Head & Neck Surgeons (academic and well known figures). I was wondering is it necessary to have a General Surgeons recommendation?

 

[Smurfette]

If applying for general surgery, yes, the majority of your letters should be from general (or general subspecialty like vascular) surgeons.

Plastics and ENT letters (and urology) tend to raise suspicions of applying to general surgery as back up rather than due to true interest in doing general surgery and it's subspecialties.

 

[Winged Scapula]

Absolutely agree with Smurfette.

One of your letters may be from a surgical subspecialty but the majority should be from General Surgeons.

 

[OncSurg]

Thanks for the input, I have two letters from General surgeons, One from ENT and one from Plastics (The ENT and Plastics letters are from Chair in USA) and the General surgery letters are from my home country (Pakistan) Surgeons.

 

[Winged Scapula]

That's a problem. Foreign letters are usually disregarded unless they are from international experts who are well known but if that's all you have...

 

[OncSurg]

thanks for the input. Yes, those are all the letters that I have. Although, two of them are not from General Surgeons (ENT and Plastics) I will include them still, as they are from the US. Just hoping that these are not disregarded.

 

[Buzz Me]

Not disregarded...just not ideal.