5 letters of rec?

[LOR]

ERAS limits #of letters of rec to 4 per program. If I do 3 aways , get LORs from each AND get 2 home letters, what should be strategy be? Drop 1 away letter? Drop 1 home letter? Mix and match depending on program?

[Guest]

It'll mostly depend on how strong you think each letter is and how relevant you think it'll be to each program you apply to. The advice I got from my home chairman before I applied is that you need a home letter, because it will look bad if you don't have one, but that the strength of any home letter is discounted since every home letter says nice things. "It's like getting a letter from your mother," were his exact words.

Of course, this is all conjecture unless you have some way of actually reading your own letters, but I wouldn't know anything about that...

[AcademicNeurosurgery]

If I were in your situation, my strategy would be to include 1 home and 3 aways. If I had an away that I didn't perform well on or didn't think it was a strong letter, I'd replace it with a second home letter.

[Guest]

Isn't it a red flag not having a letter from a Sub-I? Gaa, too much guessing in this game.

[Guest]

Which 4 of 5 great letters will not determine if you get an invite. If you are too concerned about letters, then provide 4 and bring the 5th one with you to the interview and in the extremely unlikely event that they ask you about the 5th one, hand it to them.

[abcde]

(04-13-2017, 03:47 PM)Guest Wrote: Isn't it a red flag not having a letter from a Sub-I? Gaa, too much guessing in this game.

^^^This is exactly what i was worried about. The home letters (2) will likely be from someone who knows you better than the away letters. But if you don't submit an away letter............

[dispo]

If you do 3 aways and include 2 home letters, every PD out there understand there's a max of 4 that can be sent. I like the idea of bringing one with you if they ask, or simply saying that you felt your 2 home letter writers had much better insight into your candidacy based on the amount of time you've spent with them. Try to keep in mind that away rotations are not *supposed* to be just for letters, so if you get asked you can always bring up the other reasons for looking at that program (e.g. It was clinical heavy compared to my other aways that were academic; I wanted to see as many programs as I could afford so I did 3; I wanted to spread out my aways geographically; they have a strong X department which I'm interested in; etc). And again, as long as you're willing to provide the letter and make that known, no one is gonna think you're trying to hide anything.

[Guest]

(04-14-2017, 12:17 PM)dispo Wrote: If you do 3 aways and include 2 home letters, every PD out there understand there's a max of 4 that can be sent. I like the idea of bringing one with you if they ask, or simply saying that you felt your 2 home letter writers had much better insight into your candidacy based on the amount of time you've spent with them. Try to keep in mind that away rotations are not *supposed* to be just for letters, so if you get asked you can always bring up the other reasons for looking at that program (e.g. It was clinical heavy compared to my other aways that were academic; I wanted to see as many programs as I could afford so I did 3; I wanted to spread out my aways geographically; they have a strong X department which I'm interested in; etc). And again, as long as you're willing to provide the letter and make that known, no one is gonna think you're trying to hide anything.

would it be appropriate to request a copy of the person's letter for the purpose of bringing it during your interviews? I know that we are technically not supposed to be able to read our letters but Im sure many ppl break this "rule"

[Guest]

Nothing wrong to ask the home LOR writer to allow you to carry a copy into the interview. Always make sure that they are aware.

[Guest]

Not having a letter from an away rotation is a HUGE red flag.
That being said, a program will only know where you rotated if you tell them. So if you do 3 away rotations (which was pretty common in this past cycle) and you feel you didn't perform as strongly at 1 of them, you could just not submit that letter, and just don't mention that you rotated there