Hey all, looking for some advice for applying for ortho. Submitted my ERAS app and I'm trying to decide what letters to assign. I have 3 letters that are going to every school: 1) chairman letter 2) letter from my home peds ortho guy i've worked with all 4 years of med school and 3) letter from my home joints guy i worked with during my 4th year home ortho rotation
I'm trying to decide who I should use for my fourth and final letter. These are my options:
1) Letter from home general/transplant surgery chief - I worked with him in 3rd and 4th year as a sub-I and feel that he wrote me an excellent letter (took care of patients, presented every day, etc.)
2) Letter from an away ortho attending who is coordinator for the away rotators - I did very well on my away rotation (was ranked highly among rotators), however I only worked with this attending a couple days out of the month. I'm assuming he spoke with the residents and attendings prior to writing the letter, but you never know.
Benefits of the first letter are I know it's solid and it's still a surgery letter. Downside is that it's not ortho and all my letters are from my home institution.
Benefits of the second letter are that it's ortho, it will hopefuly state that I did well as an away rotator. Downside is that it may influence schools that aren't from the region and I'm not sure how strong the letter is.
I am defintiely including the ortho away letter for schools that are in the same region, but if I include it in schools that are not in the region, say the northwest or northeast, etc. would that make programs think I'm not interested in going there? Cause I definitely don't want to limit myself regionally!
Thanks and sorry for such a long post!! Good luck to everyone applying this year!
