Post by drdrizzle on Mar 24, 2007 9:53:01 GMT -5
Department Chair’s letter. This is usually a requirement and you need two additional letters that should be from Internists. Unless you know you can get a really good one from another rotation but limit it to only one non-internal medicine. This is how it works. When you start your fourth year, that summer, you will be asked to schedule a 30 min meeting with Dr. Szerlip. I have to admit I was a little nervous about it. But he writes a good letter of recommendation from what I have been told and this is a good chance to think about where you should be thinking to apply. This is what you can expect: He will want to look at your Personal statement (so have it ready), your transcript, and your CV. He will first ask you what your step one score is. Then comment on it. Then skim through your grades esp looking for your medicine grades. Then breeze through your CV and read the comments your attendings wrote about you in your medicine rotations. All this takes less than 30 seconds. Then he will give you an idea of how competitive you are. If you are in good shape, he will tell you. If you are not sure what he means (which should be rare), this is the time to get his honest opinion. The next part depends on if you are a fan of Dr. Szerlip or care if his opinion matters. Some people don’t. I did for this reason. Dr. Szerlip has been around for a long time, he knows a lot about different internal medicine programs. So try to think of some programs or even locations that you might want to go. He will tell you his honest opinion, then you can take it for what its worth to you. I, for one, respect it. I think a lot of chairs and residency directors are just like him. If he doesn’t think program X is very good, then I bet others think the same thing. For example, I asked him about certain program, the told me not to waste my time applying, but is should apply to this other program in the same area. All the programs that he suggested, that I interviewed at, I thought were good. Of course he has his biases, but I think most people found the meeting very helpful. Then at some point he will read, or in my case, gloss over my personal statement that I worked so hard on. He immediately told me that my statement was boring and then rambled about some PS that he read a long time ago about some painting or one about a trip to Ireland. Another student told me that this happened to her exactly the same way! So don’t feel bad when he insults your PS. On other hand, if he thinks it’s good (not likely), you know you got something there. I think his point is that people aren’t going to spend the time to read it. He is just seeing if anything grabs his attention. Obviously I am a Dr. szerlip fan. But I saw many interviewers scan my application in exactly the same way. So he may be trying to help us stand out, but in his Dr Szerlip kind of way that can irritate some people.
