IamNikolas Registered User Posts: 1 (4/9/01 7:48:06 pm) Reply Backup Blues I want to apply for Ortho, but I wanted to apply for a backup specialty -- General Surgery. Does anyone know how to go about this? That is, I cannot get letters from general surgeons because I'm doing all Ortho electives early in my 4th year. Would any decent surgery program interview me if I don't have letters of rec from gen. surgeons??? Does anyone know of someone who's done this? Thanks. hurricane26 Registered User Posts: 9 (4/9/01 8:12:12 pm) Reply Backup You can get as many letters you want from whoever you want. Then you designate which schools/programs recieve which letters. You don't have to send the same 4 LOR to everyone. You can even write two personal statement and no one will know your motives. IamNikolas Registered User Posts: 2 (4/9/01 10:24:56 pm) Reply Re: Backup I didn't know that about the personal statements...Thanks. But in regards to the letters, my problem is that I don't know any general surgeons to get letters from....and this summer, I'm ONLY doing Ortho electives...so I won't have a chance to get letters from general surgeons, let alone do an elective in general surgery. So am I pretty much out of luck as far as general surgery goes? Ortho2002 Registered User Posts: 11 (4/10/01 5:38:01 am) Reply Letters Didn't you do a surgery rotation in your third year? If you got honors in that, getting a letter from your chairman in the department of surgery shouldn't be a stretch. IamNikolas Registered User Posts: 3 (4/10/01 10:14:20 pm) Reply Re: Letters I haven't gotten my grade back yet...but let's say I did get honors...would letters from 3rd year be good enough. Everyone I know who's going into gen surg is doing electives early in their 4th year. I figure if I don't do ortho, I would like to at least get into one of the top programs in gen surg...I'm wondering if anyone else has done this or knows of someone in same position...Thanks for all previous replies. Techno Registered User Posts: 10 (4/11/01 10:12:36 am) Reply Backup General surgery isn't that competitive--that's why it's your backup, right? You probably won't get into the primo general surgery programs without doing a 4th year elective in gen surg, but you wouldn't want to anyway, given how malignant some of the top gen surg programs are. Personally, I wouldn't do a 4th year elective in gen surg just to generate a rec letter. Get rec letters from your 3rd-year rotations and pray that you get a spot in ortho. Campaign hard for ortho instead of splitting your time between two specialties. Ortho is much better specialty in terms of surgeries (subjectively speaking), hours, lifestyle, pay, and... most importantly... PRESTIGE. Just kidding about the last one.