The MSPE

[lane]

how important is it, really? can it make or break an otherwise marginal candidate? could it make a poor statistical candidate or break a strong statistical candidate?

i know it's "one of many factors utilized in the selection process," but how much do programs really look at my life over the last three years reduced to a 5 page letter?

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[NotAProgDirector]

how important is it, really? can it make or break an otherwise marginal candidate? could it make a poor statistical candidate or break a strong statistical candidate?

i know it's "one of many factors utilized in the selection process," but how much do programs really look at my life over the last three years reduced to a 5 page letter?

It's the most important thing in your application, assuming you come from a US allopathic medical school. It gives us a summative evaluation, mostly of your clerkship performance.

 

[freddy13]

It's the most important thing in your application, assuming you come from a US allopathic medical school. It gives us a summative evaluation, mostly of your clerkship performance.

Well, what if you come from an osteopathic medical school and applying to an allopathic residency program? Since we're on this topic, how about dean's letter for IMG as well?

Speaking for the osteopathic MSPE only, I know that there is great variability between schools and that it is not as indepth as compared to MSPE from allopathic medical schools. How likely will this negatively affect the applicant? Thanks!

 

[mohaven]

What if you are an IMG who comes from a school with a senile dean... I wish I were joking...

 

[NotAProgDirector]

Most DO and IMG MSPE's are useless, regardless of the senility of the dean. Allopathic MD schools follow a standardized presentation of information that DO and IMG schools do not. Hence, board scores are much more important for DO and IMG applicants to allopathic residencies. Allopathic rotations with an LOR are also very valuable. Prior residents at a program from your school are also helpful (i.e. if someone before you from your school did well, I am more likely to take another student from that school. However, the opposite is also true)

 

[testerman]

Allopathic MD schools follow a standardized presentation of information that DO and IMG schools do not.

What is that standardized presentation exactly? My DO MSPE shows undergrad background, med school extracurriculars, GPA, class rank, board scores, 3rd-year grades and attending comments, and some general endorsing words. But it doesn't show shelf exam grades or what percent of students get Honors etc. on each rotation - is that the info that is additional and standardized in US MD MSPEs or is there more? (and do ALL US MD MSPEs really contain this?)

Thanks!

 

[NotAProgDirector]

What is that standardized presentation exactly? My DO MSPE shows undergrad background, med school extracurriculars, GPA, class rank, board scores, 3rd-year grades and attending comments, and some general endorsing words. But it doesn't show shelf exam grades or what percent of students get Honors etc. on each rotation - is that the info that is additional and standardized in US MD MSPEs or is there more? (and do ALL US MD MSPEs really contain this?)

Thanks!

Your MSPE contains more than most DO MSPE's.

Most allopathic MSPE's include:

1. Your third year cleakship grades and a graph/description of the third year score breakdowns for your class.
2. Some sense of your class rank. Usually this is in an Outstanding / Excellent / Good / Satisfactory type of breakdown. If so, percentages for each of these classifcations are given.
3. Complete, unedited comments from your clerkships. (i.e. no "cherry picking" the good comments and leaving out the concerning ones)
4. About half of all allopathic MSPE's include shelf grades.

 

[chaser08]

Your MSPE contains more than most DO MSPE's.

Most allopathic MSPE's include:

1. Your third year cleakship grades and a graph/description of the third year score breakdowns for your class.
2. Some sense of your class rank. Usually this is in an Outstanding / Excellent / Good / Satisfactory type of breakdown. If so, percentages for each of these classifcations are given.
3. Complete, unedited comments from your clerkships. (i.e. no "cherry picking" the good comments and leaving out the concerning ones)
4. About half of all allopathic MSPE's include shelf grades.

Should I be concerned if my MSPE does not look like this? I am at an allopathic school, however, my clerkship comments are not unedited. I have no derogatory comments on any of my clerkship evaluations, but since my comments have been "cherry picked", the institutions I am applying to will never know . Also, as far as I know, there are no graphs or percentages on my MSPE.

I am an average student. To my eyes, the MSPE is written in a favorable manner, but then again, I don't know the codewords that program directors are looking for that could hurt my chances at a residency.

 

[emroyka]

FWIW, I'm also from an allopathic school and know that my clerkship eval comments were "cherrypicked"...is that really the exception? I was under the impression the main thing that mattered was the class rank codeword.

 

[freddy13]

Your MSPE contains more than most DO MSPE's.

Most allopathic MSPE's include:

1. Your third year cleakship grades and a graph/description of the third year score breakdowns for your class.
2. Some sense of your class rank. Usually this is in an Outstanding / Excellent / Good / Satisfactory type of breakdown. If so, percentages for each of these classifcations are given.
3. Complete, unedited comments from your clerkships. (i.e. no "cherry picking" the good comments and leaving out the concerning ones)
4. About half of all allopathic MSPE's include shelf grades.

aProgDirector,

the osteopathic medical school i attend do provide the class rank (i.e. 85 out of 220). Clerkship grades listed (i.e. honors, pass, fail). However, i don't believe there's a class graphical clerkship breakdown. Furthermore, i think i have comments on only 3 out of my 12 clerkship months....and I think this is typical. And the comments are 2-3 sentences. no shelf-exams. Should I be concerned? In your opinion, is this still entirely useless?

 

[Hard24Get]

Should I be concerned if my MSPE does not look like this? I am at an allopathic school, however, my clerkship comments are not unedited. I have no derogatory comments on any of my clerkship evaluations, but since my comments have been "cherry picked", the institutions I am applying to will never know . Also, as far as I know, there are no graphs or percentages on my MSPE.

I am an average student. To my eyes, the MSPE is written in a favorable manner, but then again, I don't know the codewords that program directors are looking for that could hurt my chances at a residency.

Ha - ditto, i was thinking the same thing about my MSPE. To be fair, my school's clerkship evals tend to be rather lengthy as several questions are asked of each evaluator so I could see why you would need to trim and there were only a few "read more" or "cont to improve", but it does seem "cherry-picked". Doesn't quite seem fair to the other med schools that don't....
We get a clerkship breakdown on the MSPE but don't get to see it, and find out our adjective after the MSPEs are released.

 

[AlternateSome1]

Your MSPE contains more than most DO MSPE's.

Most allopathic MSPE's include:

1. Your third year cleakship grades and a graph/description of the third year score breakdowns for your class.
2. Some sense of your class rank. Usually this is in an Outstanding / Excellent / Good / Satisfactory type of breakdown. If so, percentages for each of these classifcations are given.
3. Complete, unedited comments from your clerkships. (i.e. no "cherry picking" the good comments and leaving out the concerning ones)
4. About half of all allopathic MSPE's include shelf grades.

I am not convinced this (particularly #3) is the norm. My school also edits comments and I have yet to hear from someone at a school that doesn't.

 

[165808]

I am not convinced this (particularly #3) is the norm. My school also edits comments and I have yet to hear from someone at a school that doesn't.

My school has told us a million times that they DO NOT edit our comments. They make that very clear to us. That being said, I do know of one comment that said something to the effect of "should be encouraged to read more and ask more questions" or something really lame and generic like that from a guy that never even really talked to me. The neurology clerkship director who compiles our evaluations wrote specifically on our evals to leave that out of our MSPE if that was the only time that has ever been said, but include it if it was a pattern. So it was left out of mine.

I guess that wasn't exactly our school that "cherry-picked" the comment, but because they were told to do so. But that's the only instance that I've heard of where they pick and choose comments. We've been told time and time again to go directly to the writer if we disagree with our comments, because they'll put the entire, unedited thing in.

Hearing this from everyone else sort of makes me a little angry, because schools are not supposed to edit these comments, but it seems like every other school but ours does. That's not very fair, in my opinion. Not sure what to do about it, because the schools are going to do what they want to do, and I don't know what they can do to enforce it. But it makes me upset all the same since the residency programs have no way of telling the difference.

Whatever, I'm over it now.

 

[normansatx]

At my school they DEFINITELY DO NOT edit the comments. If you have a problem with a comment made (ie it was by someone who barely knew you, was unfair, completely out of the blue) that was to be taken up with the clerkship director up to one month after the end of our third year. The clerkship director had the power to remove comments from their final assessment sent to the Dean, if they determine that it was a non pertinent comment or unfair in some way. They don't just "cherry pick" the good ones, I know this b/c my roomate had all averages show up on his dean's letter that we got a few weeks back to proof read. When he emailed the Dean to explain that these were by an attending that did not know him, they stated that ALL comments on your eval from the clerkship director are included and can not be editted under ANY circumstances. Another evaluator used his formal name, he goes by his middle name. They would not even change that.
Schools that edit and "cherry pick" their Deans letter are the reason that many residencies and PD's think they are trash. Pretty soon, every student from XYZ School of Medicine will sound flawless and will have all "Honors". This is why we should definitely not go to pass/fail for USMLE, its becoming the only way to standardize performance accross groups.

 

[chaser08]

Ha - ditto, i was thinking the same thing about my MSPE. To be fair, my school's clerkship evals tend to be rather lengthy as several questions are asked of each evaluator so I could see why you would need to trim and there were only a few "read more" or "cont to improve", but it does seem "cherry-picked". Doesn't quite seem fair to the other med schools that don't....
We get a clerkship breakdown on the MSPE but don't get to see it, and find out our adjective after the MSPEs are released.

Hm...I don't know if I saw my adjective or not . I saw the word "excellent" used multiple times, but I don't know if that suffices for my adjective or if there will be a separate section (that I am not privy to) where the real adjective will show up.

I haven't asked to see any of my classmate's letters - I wouldn't show mine to anyone, so would never ask anyone to show me theirs - so I have no idea how mine looks in relation to my peers.

Regarding cherry picking vs using the unedited version: I agree that it can (and does) affect the value of the MSPE. However, I don't think it's much different from schools that use pass/fail vs A/B/C vs A/B+/B/C+/C etc. After all, if a school uses only unedited evaluations, it's not a far leap to think that these clerkship directors could tailor their statements so that there are no derogatory comments and they might as well be cherry-picked statements. I'm not saying that it happens, but if it does I wouldn't be surprised.

The USMLE is the only objective assessment and I take some comfort in that. My edited comments speak to a good fund of knowledge and my USMLE score bears that out. Skills in dealing with the patient are reflected (albeit less so) by the CS results.

The disparities in procedures regarding MSPEs amongst the allopathic schools is interesting. I await aprogdirector's responses to our worries.

 

[Cuteasaurus]

A question to those who say your schools don't edit your comments:

Is there some sort of standardized evaluation for all clerkships? For example, do only attendings fill out evaluations for all clerkships? Always attendings and senior residents? Always all members of the team? It just seems like you can wind up with a lot of comments pretty quickly. Without editing out some of the crap, it seems like the Dean's Letter could get very long, very quickly.

 

[NotAProgDirector]

It appears I touch a bit of a nerve, here.

First of all, for schools that do not edit comments, we absolutely DO know that's the case and take that into consideration. Every dean's letter comes with a bunch of standardize appendices, and one of them asks if the dean's letters are unedited, edited for conciseness, or simply edited (don't quote me on that -- dean;s letters aren't out yet this year and I don't have home access to look at last year's apps but it's something like that).

What is kinda interesting is that I expect many MSPE's are edited, and the dean's office tells us they are not (or that it's just "conciseness").

If you're brave enough to do so, PM me with your school and what they tell you their stated policy is about editing dean's letter comments. If you do so, I'll send you back what your school officially reports to us (assuming someone from your school applies to my program)

The "performance" graphs are also part of the appendices, not sure if they show them to you or not. Sometimes this is included in the transcript instead. Virtually all allopathic schools include this information.

Advice to all: Stop panicking about your MSPE's. They are not under your control. If we get a less-than-useful one, we simply deal with it. It's unlikely to hurt you in any meaningful way -- we simply have to rely on other factors more heavily.

 

[165808]

A question to those who say your schools don't edit your comments:

Is there some sort of standardized evaluation for all clerkships? For example, do only attendings fill out evaluations for all clerkships? Always attendings and senior residents? Always all members of the team? It just seems like you can wind up with a lot of comments pretty quickly. Without editing out some of the crap, it seems like the Dean's Letter could get very long, very quickly.

For us, every clerkship has a different method of evaluation since our school hasn't quite gotten around to the whole inter-clerkship communication and standardization thing yet. It's basically all at the sole discretion of the clerkship director what goes into the official comments that we see on our evaluations. That gets put word-for-word into our MSPEs; at least, it was for mine.

Sometimes they have to fill out our evals through myevaluations.com, other times we have to hand out hard-copies of eval forms that aren't even all the same between clerkships. Sometimes it was just one attending evaluating us, sometimes it was all the attendings, residents, and interns. I know for sure that some of the comments made by interns and residents never made it into my MSPE, and they never even made it into my eval that I got. It gets pared down by the site director, then the clerkship director, I guess. But, as far as I know, never by the dean unless explicitly told to by the clerkship director, as in my case.

Bottom line is that while our dean claims to not edit the MSPE comments for content, the clerkship and site directors do this along the way SOMETIMES. I'm not sure whether this is a good or bad thing -- just giving you some idea of the way at least some schools do it.

 

[AlternateSome1]

Schools that edit and "cherry pick" their Deans letter are the reason that many residencies and PD's think they are trash.

I would argue that trashy programs are the ones that believe a couple of random comments from people who knew you two days are meaningful. Comments such as "needs to read more" can easily be left out of an evaluation if a student has killed the shelf exam. As far as "editing for conciseness", a lot of negative comments may be left out in order to make things "concise." Furthermore, a lot can be determined about a candidate by reading what is consistently mentioned throughout the dean's letter, and by what is missing. If you never have a comment that mentions your knowledge base or your skill level, something may be wrong.

 

[starwisher]

At my school each clerkship has the exact same evaluation, The differ in how much the clinical evaluation contributes to our grade and who evaluates us (always attendings, usually resients also, sometimes interns and rarely nurses or our peers). The clerkship director always looks over all the evaluations and decides what to include in the narrative evaluation which goes on our MSPE, if we don't agree with a comment we have to talk to the clerkship director and convince them to reword it (I got one line taken out of one of my evaluations because it was completely untrue and irrelevant). Our school lets us see our entire MSPE and make comments on it although the dean can only change things outside of the narrative evaluations. It states in our clinical evaluation section that they are exact copies of our evaluations and are unedited. There is a section in the appendixes which includes three options, completely unedited, edited for length or grammer but not content or edited for content--my school checks edited for lenth/grammer but not content because they will fix gramatical errors. It does irk me a little that other institutions cherry pick their comments, especially considering I have one sort of borderline evaluation from a clerkship and I do wonder if that will hurt me once my MSPE goes out. Does it mean that programs will know my other evaluations weren't cherry picked? Does an average MSPE from a well reputed school that has honest, unedited evaluations mean more than a more favorable sounding one from a school known to edit their students comments?

 

[Hard24Get]

I dunno, maybe my school is more edited for conciseness. Looking over my evals, there was one "needs to read more" and a "work on presentations", etc, with like 7 evals saying the opposite. So maybe they were excluded as outliers. Also excluded were some of my best comments, "working with her was like working with a colleague", and "performs at the level of a fellow" . So maybe both extremes of infrequent comments get left out when editing for conciseness. Otherwise, you are right - it wouldn't be fair.

At my school each clerkship has the exact same evaluation, The differ in how much the clinical evaluation contributes to our grade and who evaluates us (always attendings, usually resients also, sometimes interns and rarely nurses or our peers). The clerkship director always looks over all the evaluations and decides what to include in the narrative evaluation which goes on our MSPE, if we don't agree with a comment we have to talk to the clerkship director and convince them to reword it (I got one line taken out of one of my evaluations because it was completely untrue and irrelevant). Our school lets us see our entire MSPE and make comments on it although the dean can only change things outside of the narrative evaluations. It states in our clinical evaluation section that they are exact copies of our evaluations and are unedited. There is a section in the appendixes which includes three options, completely unedited, edited for length or grammer but not content or edited for content--my school checks edited for lenth/grammer but not content because they will fix gramatical errors. It does irk me a little that other institutions cherry pick their comments, especially considering I have one sort of borderline evaluation from a clerkship and I do wonder if that will hurt me once my MSPE goes out. Does it mean that programs will know my other evaluations weren't cherry picked? Does an average MSPE from a well reputed school that has honest, unedited evaluations mean more than a more favorable sounding one from a school known to edit their students comments?

 

[lemedecin05]

i heard that the MSPE has code words....and that "good student" really means bad. is that true? what about "very good" "excellent" etc??

also, do ophthalmology residencies look at the MSPE since students have already been getting interviews?

 

[fantasty]

also, do ophthalmology residencies look at the MSPE since students have already been getting interviews?

Yes. I think it's been mentioned a few times on here, but people have been getting invited for interviews even before there LOR, personal statements and/or transcripts are in (although probably not all 3). The program directors are probably filtering out (in?) some applicants early based on board scores, items on the CV, etc.

 

[spumoni620]

i heard that the MSPE has code words....and that "good student" really means bad. is that true? what about "very good" "excellent" etc??

also, do ophthalmology residencies look at the MSPE since students have already been getting interviews?

The "code" words you're referring is the statement in the last paragraph where it says something to the effect of, "overall, based on overall clinical performance and academic achievement in medical school, Student X's performance is [outstanding, excellent, very good, good] in comparison to his peers." So those words are understood to place the student in one of four quartiles. A PD reading this would know what "outstanding" or "good" really means.

This is the way it works at my school, but I assume it's fairly standard among schools so that it's useful as a comparison in the MSPE.

 

[freddy13]

The "code" words you're referring is the statement in the last paragraph where it says something to the effect of, "overall, based on overall clinical performance and academic achievement in medical school, Student X's performance is [outstanding, excellent, very good, good] in comparison to his peers." So those words are understood to place the student in one of four quartiles. A PD reading this would know what "outstanding" or "good" really means.

This is the way it works at my school, but I assume it's fairly standard among schools so that it's useful as a comparison in the MSPE.

Ok, so I've compared the last paragraph with my classmates. We've come up with..

-highly recommend
-recommend
-recommend without reservation

I guess the adjectives varies depending on the medical school. I don't know which of those above three adjectives is considered the best? Or is "Outstanding" or "highest recommendation" considered the best? I don't know because who knows what other Code words there are.

maybe aprogdirector can tell us

 

[165808]

We have outstanding, superior, good, and (I think) competent. They correlate to what 25% of the class you're in at the end of third year. Our school will also break it down into basic and clinical sciences, if you performed really well in one, but not so much in the other, so you could be superior in basic sciences but good in clinical sciences.

I think that's what most schools do....??

 

[NotAProgDirector]

Every school has there own way of doing this. Many schools actually tell us what % of student are in each category, but not all do. Sometimes they tell us how many are in "outstanding" and "excellent" and let us guess the rest.

For Freddy:
Highly Recommend would be the best
Recommend without reservation next
Recommend is the last

 

[doctobe2]

Last year, my school released some of the students deans letter LATE ( missing the Nov 1 deadline) and I was told by some of the students that they were denied interview by some schools that they applied to because of incomplete application. This year again it seems that the Deans letter are not going to be ready on time again.

My question is, Is it true that schools that have the NOV 1 deadline and do not send out any invites without the Deans letter might reject my application if they dont recieve my MSPE on Nov 1?

Thanks

 

[testerman]

So what about "above average?" (DO school) Is that always the third or fourth best? Sorry, I don't know what others' from my school say. But saying "above average" also sounds odd to me because my rank from years 1 & 2 is BELOW average.... Oh, and they don't mention the word "recommend" anywhere.

Every school has there own way of doing this. Many schools actually tell us what % of student are in each category, but not all do. Sometimes they tell us how many are in "outstanding" and "excellent" and let us guess the rest.

For Freddy:
Highly Recommend would be the best
Recommend without reservation next
Recommend is the last

 

[nykka3]

Last year, my school released some of the students deans letter LATE ( missing the Nov 1 deadline) and I was told by some of the students that they were denied interview by some schools that they applied to because of incomplete application. This year again it seems that the Deans letter are not going to be ready on time again.

My question is, Is it true that schools that have the NOV 1 deadline and do not send out any invites without the Deans letter might reject my application if they dont recieve my MSPE on Nov 1?

Thanks

wow that sucks. i feel lucky then, b/c our dean is very anal about getting things done on time. we start meeting with the dean for our mspe's starting in april thru july. then in early october we can check a draft of the mspe to check for mistakes (i.e. typos), but of course we can't remove comments that we don't like. right now my mspe is uploaded but waiting for nov. 1st to be seen.

 

[NotAProgDirector]

Last year, my school released some of the students deans letter LATE ( missing the Nov 1 deadline) and I was told by some of the students that they were denied interview by some schools that they applied to because of incomplete application. This year again it seems that the Deans letter are not going to be ready on time again.

My question is, Is it true that schools that have the NOV 1 deadline and do not send out any invites without the Deans letter might reject my application if they dont recieve my MSPE on Nov 1?

Thanks

I am not so strict about the Nov 1st deadline, but I can't speak to other programs.

Two critical things that the Dean of Student's office needs to do are to get MSPE's out on time, and make sure that students don't screw up the match. Not getting them out on time seems completely unacceptable.

So what about "above average?" (DO school) Is that always the third or fourth best? Sorry, I don't know what others' from my school say. But saying "above average" also sounds odd to me because my rank from years 1 & 2 is BELOW average.... Oh, and they don't mention the word "recommend" anywhere.

Each school is different. I don't know what "above average" means, esp since you admit that your early performance was below average. MSPE's are subject to the Lake Wobegon effect, hence why adjectives like this without some description are useless.

 

[buckley]

IMG here...i don't know if im ecstatic or sad that our MSPE's are considered useless. Our school does NOT allow us to see the contents. I have no idea what it looks like or what the comments are about me. So come first interview day, can I say that? I didnt know other students were able to see their MSPEs. Thanks

 

[NotAProgDirector]

IMG here...i don't know if im ecstatic or sad that our MSPE's are considered useless. Our school does NOT allow us to see the contents. I have no idea what it looks like or what the comments are about me. So come first interview day, can I say that? I didnt know other students were able to see their MSPEs. Thanks

I'm being a bit melodramatic here. Some IMG MSPE's have some value. Most do not.

Not all schools allow their students to see their MSPE's.

You should not ask to see your's while interviewing, if that's what you were asking. If the writer didn't share it with you, then it was meant to be private. Plus, it's tacky to ask.

 

[buckley]

Oh no..I was just thinking what if Im asked about something in my MSPE. Is it okay for me to say that I have never seen it? It's weird because on another thread, we were advised to carry copies of the MSPE. I sure don't have any...

 

[NotAProgDirector]

Oh no..I was just thinking what if Im asked about something in my MSPE. Is it okay for me to say that I have never seen it? It's weird because on another thread, we were advised to carry copies of the MSPE. I sure don't have any...

Nothing in your MSPE should be a surprise, since it all should be from your evaluations.

That being said, if someone brings up something from your MSPE that is "news to you", and you haven't seen it, I would simply say "My school's policy is not to review MSPE's with students, so I am not completely familiar with this issue. If you could please read the exact text to which you are referring, I'd be happy to address it." Or something similar. That's totally reasonable.

Before people start having a cow about this, it's VERY unlikely to happen IMHO. If there is someone out there who had this happen, please let me know.

 

[buckley]

Hopefully nothing is "news" to me...Thanks! I'll keep that response in the back of my mind...

 

[Hard24Get]

Man, I just got an email saying I would find out my bottom line Thursday or Friday. I am sad because it seems like the class I am graduating with is uncharacteristically strong (ie people who were shoe-ins for AOA still didn't get it). Just praying to be in the upper 50%....

 

[buckley]

Remember, class ranking isn't everything. Besides, you're competing with a different set of applicants in a much bigger sea, not just your class. Good luck

 

[freddy13]

So how does this really work?

Let's say the residency program policy is to offer the majority of interview invites after the dean's letter is released.

It's a given if you are AOA and stellar board scores, you'll get an interview offer before the Dean's letter is released.

Well, what if you are an above avg applicant. Are the programs sitting on all these invites, just so they can confirm with the dean's letter that this is truly a strong applicant (no negative comments on clinical rotations)? Then, immediately sending the invites within a day or two? Or do they review the entire package once the dean's letter is released?

 

[misyel]

Did your school already upload your MSPEs to ERAS? Mine did... and they were already downloaded by all the programs I applied for. However, they're not allowed to view it until Nov 1...

 

[TxMed]

Last year, my school released some of the students deans letter LATE ( missing the Nov 1 deadline) and I was told by some of the students that they were denied interview by some schools that they applied to because of incomplete application. This year again it seems that the Deans letter are not going to be ready on time again.

My question is, Is it true that schools that have the NOV 1 deadline and do not send out any invites without the Deans letter might reject my application if they dont recieve my MSPE on Nov 1?

Thanks

bet i know where you go to school. sorry.

 

[doctobe2]

Thanks to aprogDirector and everyone who answered my question. Hopefully our dean will see it fit to submit our Dean's letter before the 15th of November and latest by the end of Nov.

 

[bujji13]

Thanks to aprogDirector and everyone who answered my question. Hopefully our dean will see it fit to submit our Dean's letter before the 15th of November and latest by the end of Nov.

Seriously, what school is this? I feel for you - you must have the patience and temperament of a saint. I would be furious (and I will be furious, if mine isn't uploaded by tomorrow). There are plenty of programs that use the Nov. 1st deadline, and pretty much every school uploads them by this date. This is purely incompetence committed by those who succeed to get away with it..

 

[JBlue]

So I got to see my dean's letter today. There were a couple of issues that I wondered if I should worry about. First of all my GPA is lower by about .2. It is correct on my transcript so I wasn't that worried but should I have them correct it? Also, there were no comments from my EM rotation and I am going into EM. Does this matter? There is actually a listing for my EM rotation and then nothing after it. I have 2 SLORs with comments so I think PDs can look at that if they want. Do these things matter at all? I should also add that it is a miracle that my Dean's letter got in on time so I am hesitant to ask for changes. Thanks!

 

[doctobe2]

a

 

[gutonc]

So I got to see my dean's letter today. There were a couple of issues that I wondered if I should worry about. First of all my GPA is lower by about .2. It is correct on my transcript so I wasn't that worried but should I have them correct it? Also, there were no comments from my EM rotation and I am going into EM. Does this matter? There is actually a listing for my EM rotation and then nothing after it. I have 2 SLORs with comments so I think PDs can look at that if they want. Do these things matter at all? I should also add that it is a miracle that my Dean's letter got in on time so I am hesitant to ask for changes. Thanks!

It's kind of a moot point now, this being nearly 11/2 at the time of writing, but the answer is, yes, you should bring it up and ask for it to be fixed. (or perhaps I should say that you should have done it.) You should be allowed to see your MSPE and correct factual errors but nothing else. It's certainly not the end of the world but it would be nice if it were correct.

As for the comments or lack thereof, likely, whoever got stuck w/ your eval just checked 5/5 or 10/10 on everything and sent it on its way. W/ good SLORs you should be fine.

 

[persia]

My MSPE does not show my class rank for the first two years. We have histograms that are supposed to show where we are in relation to the rest of the class, but mine is not there.

Anyone else have this, or challenge this? I think it looks strange to not have it included.

 

[Hard24Get]

My MSPE does not show my class rank for the first two years. We have histograms that are supposed to show where we are in relation to the rest of the class, but mine is not there.

Anyone else have this, or challenge this? I think it looks strange to not have it included.

I think sometimes the school doesn't show you that part. Also, are you combined degree? I am and was told after I asked that they don't do it for mine because I am not traditional, or whatever. Maybe it will look strange, but maybe programs are used to that?

 

[Cuteasaurus]

Sometimes the histograms aren't on the Dean's Letter. Sometimes they're included as part of your transcript, though that doesn't mean you nec. get to see them.

 

[persia]

Ok, those are helpful answers. Thanks for replying! I was wondering because the eras site MSPE document shows the histos for pre-clinical years. I have the bars for honors and class average but my place on it is not marked. I would like to see where I stand in relation to my class (at least, I think I do).

Glad to know that not everyone gets to see theirs, I wasn't sure why mine wasn't there.