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Positively Influence your Letters of Recommendation by Making the Job of Letter Writing Easy

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When pre-meds, residents, nurses, and physician colleagues asked me to write them LORs when I was Assistant Residency Director, the first thing I requested was that they send me background information to make my letter robust…and my job easier. Accordingly, whether you are applying to medical school, post bacc programs, dental school, residency, or fellowship, I strongly recommend you create a “LOR packet,” which can include the following:

1. A brief, well-written cover letter defining all of your important accomplishments
2. Your curriculum vitae (CV)
3. Your personal statement in its final form (if available)
4. Your transcripts.

With regard to the cover letter, keep it streamlined: Thank the writer and highlight your pre-professional achievements on one page. The point of the cover letter is to supplement a writer’s knowledge of your candidacy and offer flattering content for inclusion. A college professor may know that you made the only A in an organic chemistry class, but her LOR for medical school will be more complete, and she will demonstrate a more intimate familiarity with you if she knows enough to write that you volunteer regularly at a homeless shelter.

With regard to the CV and personal statement, these make useful supplements to the LOR packet only if they are in professional and final form. Don’t include rough drafts, as poorly organized background information leaves your writer the impression that you are disorganized. Also, only include the transcript if it bolsters your candidacy, demonstrating academic achievement. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot if you have some bad grades you’d rather not showcase.

Bottom line: An applicant who offered me a list of her accomplishments in a tidy, accessible package was more likely to get a strong, comprehensive letter that was submitted promptly. If you can make a letter writer’s job easier, your forethought is likely to pay dividends in the letter you receive. The savvy applicant can take subtle advantage of her ability to “lead the witness.”

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Sesame Street Can Help You Write a Great Medical School Personal Statement

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I learned an interesting fact years ago: When small children don’t understand something, they will simply tune it out and start to engage in another activity. That’s why great shows like Sesame Street use professionals to make sure their content is precisely age-appropriate. Children – and adults – don’t like being confused, and you can’t blame them.

In their personal statements, some medical school candidates make the mistake of referring to an accomplishment without explaining it. This is understandable since we are all intimately familiar with what we’ve done. The problem is that the vast majority of application readers are way too busy to do independent research or go back and forth checking an applicant’s supporting documents if she writes something that isn’t crystal clear.

I remember a talented candidate I advised who showcased an award she had won. She listed the name, but didn’t explain what it was. When I asked her, she told me the award was an academic honor given to only the top 1% of students out of several thousand. I was impressed! And, I asked her to rewrite the section so that her admissions readers would give her the credit she deserved for that extraordinary accomplishment. Because the medical school admissions process is so competitive, what you fail to adequately explain counts against you.

On a related topic, don’t expect a reader to understand something in your essay because it’s explained in your AMCAS activities. Different faculty members will approach the application in different ways, so – to get “full credit” for your accomplishments – you need to assume that your reader is seeing your essay first, independent of your AMCAS activities. Ensure your personal statement can stand alone and doesn’t rely on your AMCAS Activities section for clarification.

Contact me for help with your written materials. I have read thousands of essays, and I personally review every document sent to me.

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Avoid the Trite

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The goal of your written materials (and your interview) is to distinguish yourself from everyone else to demonstrate that you are worthy of a competitive medical school, residency, fellowship, or postbaccalaureate slot.

Therefore, it’s critical that you avoid flowery or trite language: Using it does the opposite of making you distinctive. When I’m editing, I often reference a piece by Lisa Miller called, “When Did Everything Become a ‘Journey’?” about the overuse of the word. Miller cites linguistics professor Jesse Egbert who notes that “journey,” as a noun, has almost doubled in American English since 1990. 

In her piece, Miller also includes a wry quote from a Los Angeles clinical psychologist who describes the word “journey” as “eye-rollingly cheapened.” In editing personal statements, I see the word used frequently – maybe once in every four essays I revise.

Good writing takes a lot of time – brainstorming, outlining, and many drafts. Make sure your written materials are the best they can be by being diligent about your process (and by getting help).

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Avoid These Ten Common AMCAS Mistakes 

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Here’s a brief list of AMCAS Work and Activities section errors to avoid at all costs:

1. Don’t write to write. While you want to include many strong achievements, you do not want your AMCAS to be so wordy that your reader is tempted to skim.

2. While you need to be brief, don’t write in phrases; use full sentences. It’s a formal application, and you want to make your written materials as readable as possible.

3. Don’t assume your reader will carefully study the “header” section (including the title of the activity, hours, etc.). Make sure your descriptor could stand alone: Instead of “As an assistant, I conducted experiments…” use “As a research assistant at a Stanford Medical School neuroscience lab, I conducted experiments…”

4. Don’t be vague, dramatic, or trite. Make sure you spell out your accomplishments clearly and substantively. If your reader doesn’t understand an activity, you will not get “full credit” for what you’ve done. Make no assumptions.

5. Avoid abbreviations. Again, you want to be formal; plus, abbreviations you think are common might not be familiar to the reader.

6. Write about yourself and your role – not an organization. For example, don’t use the space to discuss Doctors without Borders. Use it to discuss the specifics of your role at Doctors without Borders.

7. Avoid generalities and consider using numbers to be persuasive. Saying that the conference you organized had 300 participants says it all.

8. Don’t merge the descriptors with the most meaningful paragraphs because they are separate sections: You can complete descriptors for up to 15 activities with up to 700 characters each plus up to three most meaningful paragraphs of up to 1325 characters each.

9. Unless your PI won the Nobel, avoid using supervisors’ and/or doctors’ names in your descriptors as they will be meaningless to the majority of your readers.

10. Choose the right category for each activity, so you get “full credit.”

Bonus: Get help. Do not submit your medical school application without having it reviewed by someone with experience. You do not want to showcase suboptimal materials for a process that is this important and competitive.

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AI-Generated College Essays

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“I hope this letter finds you well…”

When my family and I played around with ChatGPT – asking it to craft silly letters to different people – every ChatGPT response started with that phrase. I quickly realized that originality is not ChatGPT’s strong suit.

On top of the fact that most institutions consider AI-generated essays to be unethical (even plagiarism, at Yale), an applicant’s ability to write something distinctive (and persuasive) is really what demonstrates his or her worthiness for competitive university spots.

I found this amusing New York Times piece called, “We Used A.I. to Write Essays for Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Here’s How It Went” reinforced my strong distaste for AI-generated personal statement writing.

Although challenging to craft, your written materials are a tremendous opportunity to showcase your creativity and further your candidacy.

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About Dr. Michelle Finkel

Dr. Michelle Finkel

Dr. Finkel is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Medical School. On completing her residency at Harvard, she was asked to stay on as faculty at Harvard Medical School and spent five years teaching at the world-renowned Massachusetts General Hospital. She was appointed to the Assistant Residency Director position for the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency where she reviewed countless applications, personal statements and resumes. Read more

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