guidelines for referees

[Guest s sadry]

i was wondering if there are any important guidelines to give your referees (e.g, minimum/max length of letter). or anything related, particularly for non-academic references who may not be familiar with what a good med school letter of reference requires.

 

also, the omsas instructions say to address the rankings from the chart in the letter (e.g, initiative, intellectual capacity). do they just expand on these qualities broadly? or go through the specific qualities.

[Guest peachy]

I think it's important to tell them that a letter is expected in addition to the form. IIRC, the form says something along the lines of "a letter with additional information may be added if you wish", and some referees may not realize that if they don't contribute that extra letter they are putting the applicant at a disadvantage.

[Guest Anish P]

i was wondering if there are any important guidelines to give your referees (e.g, minimum/max length of letter),

I would suggest a 1-2 page letter... that way it will be long enough to provide a good description of how awesome you are, why you are well-suited for medicine, etc. I don't think you'd want it to be much longer than 2 pages, because then you run the risk of boring/annoying the adcom ppl with your novella (consider that they will have to read hundreds of these letters).

 

also, the omsas instructions say to address the rankings from the chart in the letter (e.g, initiative, intellectual capacity). do they just expand on these qualities broadly? or go through the specific qualities.

I think those 'themes' in the omsas chart provide broad topics for your referee to write about... (s)he could use those as guidelines to write about your abilities more specifically; ie. based on their personal knowledge of you, they could describe how you are good at x, y, z, and how those abilities will allow you to be a good physician, etc. One way to do this is might be for your referee to relate little stories about you ("one time they did this and that...") as opposed to categorically listing your aptitudes. If the letter is easier to read, it will make it easier for the adcom person to remember you (hopefully in a favorable way!).

 

Of course, that omsas list is not meant to be comprehensive, and so if there are other areas/skills/etc. that are unique to you (and thus will make you stand out to the adcom) that your referee can comment on, you might be able to gain some advantage over other applicants.

 

Anyways, those are basically the instructions I gave to my referees when I applied... hope it helps a little...

 

- Anish