Is chairman letter from your school important?

[watermen]

Ok..we can only submit 3 letters right? Let's assume student get one letter from an away rotation. 1 letter from the research attending...1 letter from the attending you round with from your school rotation, if this is the case, where are you going to place your chairman letter. Most of the time, student really dont get to spend much time with the chairman...is chairman letter really important compare to someone that spend more time with you? does it look bad if you don't submit a chairman letter?

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[W06]

A letter from your chairman is absolutely necessary. Even if they haven't spent a ton of time with you, they will be able to assess you through your interactions with other faculty and the residents. It's not optional.

 

[soeagerun2or]

Say it's the chairman at your externship, would that suffice?

 

[mpp]

Only if you can't get one from your medical school. Both would be ideal.

 

[Bitsy3221]

duplicate

 

[Jackofknives]

I have a question as well. By chairman letter, do you guys refer to the Dean of the school or would a letter from the head a faculty suffice? I'm concerned about this because I'm currently working with the head of a faculty at my school and I'm afraid that Dean's letter would not be as enthusiastic as the letter I will be getting from my mentor.

 

[cdql]

I would say the chairman letter carries more weight. Everyone has a dean's letter and for the most part, the dean's letter has nothing but good things to say. People reading these letters have to separate the students using levels like Godly, Awesome, and Merely Super Good. I should also add that if you are interested in neurosurgery, it probably helps to have the letter come from the chairman of that department or the chairman of surgery. Of course, the best solution is to have sparkling letters from all 3 areas (the last one being from your dean...any reason why it wouldn't be enthusiastic? Most deans aren't in the business of trampling their own students)

 

[Jackofknives]

I'm from Europe and as far as concerned there is no tradition for the Dean to write LOR because it is not needed since the matching process here is quite bureaucratic and you probably don't even need an impressive CV either to match a position. Here you can scrub in clinics for a few years, do a phd etc and the Health Service convert your experience into points (eg phd = 9 points, neurosurgery requires 12 pts), once you have enough points you will get accepted to a specialty. Futhermore, I don't know the Dean that well.

I am currently working with the chairman of the Medical Anatomical Institute at my school, doing basic research about the aberrant morphogenesis of breast neoplastic cells and I'm planning to continue the work until graduation, so I guess it's a good idea to ask for a LOR from him. I'm also planning to get 3 more letters

2: I'm planning to do an away rotation in the US and get a LOR from the chairman in surgery if possible.

3. I'm not sure of which one is better here. Coming from Europe I think we have some terminology differences, I hope you guys can understand whom I'm referring to. We have two surgical institutes that are mainly concerned with clinical research and one neurosurgery clinic at the university hospital. Should I ask for a LOR from the chairman of one of the surgical institutes or from the surgeon commander (the chief in the clinic, is it called "Chief resident" in american?) at the neurosurgery clinic?

4. a LOR from the Dean

Is four LORs too many? If so, is it a good idea to exclude the LOR from the dean?

Any advice is appreciated!

Thanks in advance