the ideal LOR

[nortomaso]

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Anyone care to characterize a good letter of recommendation. I was recently allowed a peak at a letter someone wrote for me. Although it was unequivocally positive, the praise was painted with broad brushstrokes and the lack of anecdotes left me suspecting that it would ring hollow with prospective PD's. Should letters contain examples of a student's performance to back up the praise?

 

[Strap]

Well, If you're talking about the IDEAL LOR, then it would be from the Chair of a Top Tier program that not only has known you and your family forever, but has also worked with you extensively in a professional capacity and can attest to your profound knowledge of psychiatry in all its intricate levels of diagnosis and treatment as well as ooze praise about your empathy and patient interview skills (without crossing over into the treacherous realm of transferance/countertransferance, of course).

 

[nortomaso]

Well, If you're talking about the IDEAL LOR, then it would be from the Chair of a Top Tier program that not only has known you and your family forever, but has also worked with you extensively in a professional capacity and can attest to your profound knowledge of psychiatry in all its intricate levels of diagnosis and treatment as well as ooze praise about your empathy and patient interview skills (without crossing over into the treacherous realm of transferance/countertransferance, of course).

Thanks for replying. What I really want to know is does it suffice-- or even help-- to simply state that med student A has profound knowledge, empathy, etc., or is it necessary to qualify that general praise with specific examples which ILLUSTRATE the student's qualities?

 

[ptolemy]

First off, to the original post, I would be of the opinion that PD's read zillions of LORs and if YOU read it, and believe it lacks something (assuming you don't read a lot of LORs), then it probably is lacking.

That being said, if you think that it may be broad, that is not nec. a bad thing. It would be nice if there were specifics in there, but if it accurately (or overtly positively) characterizes you, that should be good enough (IMHO). Ideally, you want a letter that really illustrates (as you said) you as a person so the person reading it says something like, "Man, I think the pope outta take a bullet for this guy!" but I don't think that happens too often 🙂 I would guess that most LORs are like you described and are pretty positive and bland, but I was told once that there are certain keywords to look for in LORs that this is not necessarily the person to hire - ie. enthusiastic, or hard working w/o any mention of knowledge base, etc. and someone who reads these things all the time should be able to pick up on them.

hope this helps

 

[DO-Riz]

I agree with some of the above posts that most LOrs in general will prob be broad, as it seems u only have a month or so at most to spend with a doc who will be writing it..... and it seems alot of docs nowadays just see it as a formailty unfortunately. With that being said, Iw anted to know what peoples opinions were regarding on the length of a LOR?

Ok Thanx