Where should I get letters for preliminary medicine/transitional year?

[Dr. Doctor MD]

I will likely be applying radiology, which requires a prelim/transitional PGY-1 year. As I go through my rotations, I'm trying to decide who I should ask for letters of recommendation outside of my ultimate specialty of interest, for the purpose of matching my prelim year.

For internal medicine prelim years, how many letters of recommendation would be ideal? 3-4? and of those how many should be internal medicine vs radiology? 1 vs 3, 2 vs 2, 1 vs 2, etc?

For transitional years, how many letters of recommendation would be ideal? and how many should be in internal medicine vs radiology?

I would love to hear from anyone who recently applied to transitional/prelim years or anyone else who is familiar with the process. Thank you in advance for any advice or suggestions.

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[Dr. Doctor MD]

Anyone have any tips?

 

[applicant5000]

afaik you don't need any letters for the prelim/ty year beyond what you would use for your radiology program.

 

[ciestar]

Don’t want to derail, but when should you start asking for LOR’s? I am a MS3 and just started my third week of my FM clerkship, but I guess it doesn’t hurt to think about..

Is it best to only ask an attending?

 

[Dr. Doctor MD]

afaik you don't need any letters for the prelim/ty year beyond what you would use for your radiology program.

Thanks for the response.

That's interesting that they aren't required, but I'm surprised that they wouldn't be at least preferred for IM years as that is what we will be practicing most of the time. I feel like if I was a PD, I'd want to see letters about how the applicant performed on wards vs in another setting like rads, anesthesia, derm, etc.

Do you have any thoughts about that?

 

[differentiating]

For internal medicine prelim years, how many letters of recommendation would be ideal? 3-4? and of those how many should be internal medicine vs radiology? 1 vs 3, 2 vs 2, 1 vs 2, etc?

The recommendation at my school is 1 medicine department letter (written by prelim advisor), 1 IM attending letter, and then a strong letter from the field you’re applying into (in this case, radiology). But I would contact your school’s prelim advisor to know more about what they recommend.

 

[Crayola227]

No you do not need IM LORs beyond what your specific specialty choice recommends. This is because all med intern years and all med interns are essentially the same. The MD/DO is what makes you qualified to do one. The PD who will only have you for one year just needs to know that you will be a good intern. Just about any doc can speak to how they think you will do in your undifferentiated intern year, given that they all have done one too, and can imagine how you will stack up, if they know you. You do not need internists to speak to this.

If your program has an integrated intern year, then again, they will be more focused on how you will do in the specialty as opposed to what internists alone think.

If your intern year will be surgical I don't have specific advice.

 

[Jay Dave]

Guys I assume somebody would answer this for me :

If we apply for prelim year at a program say XYZ. As many of you suggested that we apply with all our usce and LORs in Radio but still we would be accepted ( depending on the complete CV ) for prelim.
After completion of prelim what is the next step in the process to match into Rads ? Going through the match process all over again ? Getting into radio in XYZ itself if they have a programs for RADS ?

Asking as an IMG.
TIA.