LOR's--directed toward residents...

as far as number, you should send how many they ask for. you can send less if they are all great, but do not send more. that makes it look like you can't follow instructions, and they will probably throw away the extras anyway. PD letter is pretty important if your school has a program. that said, if your other letters are outstanding (and/or famous) you could probably get away with that.

cheers.

dont try to make things more difficult. If a place asks for 3, send 3, not 2,not 4. we dont look at extra letters.
i always viewed the whole application process like this :places get WAYYYY more applications than spots and need to "trim down" these numbers when considering who to interview. Some things are out of your control (like what level they set their USMLE screener at) and others (like following their particular application requirements) are easy to follow tto keep yourself from getting weeded out for some dumb reason like you only sent 2 letters and they want 3. All those silly supplemental applications and requests for your college (and sometimes high school) transcripts are, in my opinion, easy ways for places to cut down to the people who are not just adding their program to their list to "apply to enough places".

good luck, its a frustrating process

here's my problem: i have 4 letters. 3 of them are great, from surgeons i worked directly with who all know me well and wrote personal letters. the 4th letter is the obligatory chair of the dept letter, which is a form letter from a guy that barely knows me. one of the programs i'm very interested in is requesting three - and specifically they say ONLY three - letters. i'm torn .... send the letter from the chair and pick one of the other 3 to leave out? or toss the really impersonal form letter from the chair.




(when orthogate crashed, it lost all my account info. this isn't actually my 1st post.)

Im in the same boat Novas. I have 6 letters. One is the form letter from the chair/PD. The others are great. One is from a famous person. I will obviously be sending that one everywhere. All the other letters I have are from people that i really had the chance to get to know.
As far as the home letter from the PD goes, I think I will only be sending that one if it is specifically asked for. As far as I can tell, there really are only a few programs that asked for a letter from the your home program's PD/Chair. If I read it correctly, when it says '3 LOR's', to me that means any 3 LOR's, no?

If it doesn't specify Chairman letter, then send the 3 best. i think a good letter, is a good letter....regardless who it is from.
Those who have extra letters that are good.....you can always bring it with you on the interview and give it to the PD. This is an option as well. i wouldn't do it unless you really wanted them to see this letter (in addition to the 3 you sent in thru ERAS). If it just states the same thing as the other letters, it likely won't matter much. (for example, i had a letter from previous employer....not a doctor from med school/rotation...that i wanted in my file, so i brought it with me to my interviews for them to put into my file. never had an issue with them taking it. probably didn't matter one way or the other
Bottom line(in my opinion): A great letter (from someone you worked with) is better than an average letter from chairman; and that 1 extra letter (4 versus 3) probably won't make a difference in the end.