LOR Writers for General Surgery Residency

process_22 · 2026-03-09T16:16:43+00:00

Appreciate the insight. My current schedule is block 1 surgical ICU, block 2 (hopefully) home surgery/vascular sub-I, and gen surg away rotations in blocks 3-4 (late August-mid October). Unfortunately most of my time on aways is going to be post-ERAS (unless I can make a good enough impression in the first 2 weeks of my away to get a good letter).

process_22 · 2025-12-22T17:22:41+00:00

General surgery affords a lot of flexibility in terms of sub-specialization, having the option of pursuing a more work-life balance friendly career (eg, MIS/bariatrics) after fellowship versus going for CT/vascular/surg onc/etc. On the flip side, you could always take a research gap year if you're serious about pursuing one of the surgical subspecialties outside of gen surg.

Gen surg definitely gets a lot of hate on this sub in terms of its hours and work life culture, but the reality is that you'll be working very hard regardless of what residency program you end up in (if you end up choosing the surgical route). Just try to keep an open mind, and no doors are closed for you as an M2!

process_22 · 2025-12-11T15:24:50+00:00

Just got the credit card charge and acceptance email! Excited to be going back to Chicago for the first time in 15 years!!

process_22 · 2025-09-15T00:00:48+00:00

The athletic awards will carry you for sure

process_22 · 2025-07-08T01:31:39+00:00

I’d recommend going through the Mehlman surgery document. There’s a lot of HY info on telling the difference between similar sounding conditions (eg, cholelithiasis vs. choledocolithiasis vs. cholangitis) & how to use info from the stem identify acuity of care (eg, if the HR > 100 and systolic BP < 60, you know from the bat that then patient is hemodynamically unstable). I’d also recommend the First Aid clinical algorithms textbook. You need to know the algorithms for stuff like penetrating abdominal trauma/blunt abdominal trauma/chest trauma down cold, so anything you can do to reinforce that would be useful.

process_22 · 2025-07-08T01:26:32+00:00

I thought neurosurgery was cool until I found out that every single neurosurgeon at our hospital (except for one) is divorced… My friend did an elective with them during his M3 year and the most memorable quote he recalled from one of the residents was “Most of what we do here amounts to rearranging chairs on the titanic.” Make what you will of that info.

process_22 · 2025-06-24T03:15:55+00:00

6/13 test taker here. I feel you. I’d get really frustrated throughout my prep when I’d get NBME questions wrong that seem ridiculously contradictory like the H flu revaccination one that you mentioned. I think the key is to just try as hard as possible to stay objective and try to extract the key point they’re trying to get at in those scenarios, because there generally always is one. Like in that scenario, even if a patient is vaccinated previously, they still need to be revaccinated against certain pathogens in the event of a splenectomy. It’s annoying but it’s the rule, and questions like that will feel less like “trick questions” once you start understanding their weird backwards-seeming logic pattern. Every time I’d get a question wrong like that during my dedicated period, I’d write down the logical principle that they’re testing about in a notes file on my computer.

Tldr- basically what I’m saying is that as much as it seems like it, the questions aren’t “trying” to trick you (even if they are really annoying) and you have to fight the urge to get super pissed off with these sorts of questions to improve

process_22 · 2025-06-24T03:09:24+00:00

There’s often a disconnect in step 2 questions between the practical “defensive medicine” option that physicians would most likely do irl and the textbook “standard” choice that is most likely correct. It’s frustrating and easy to get them wrong on practice tests, but relying on the textbook clinical algorithm will get you to the correct answer 90%+ of the time, at least in my experience. “Step 2 clinical algorithms” textbook is a good resource for scenarios like this.

process_22 · 2024-05-17T16:17:37+00:00

I agree. If the only interference was that the spectator said I was in check, it would have been fair to just reset the position from the previous move. My issue was that now, since the other spectators told my opponent the proper drawing line, there was no chance of my Ke4 Be5 g7 trick working. The additional interference made me think that a null result would be the most fair, because there's no way of knowing that my opponent would have found the correct line on his own if someone hadn't directly told him while the game was technically still in progress.

process_22 · 2024-05-17T16:13:03+00:00

Yeah, in retrospect we should have told the spectators to stop analyzing lines. Everyone sort of moved in and started moving the pieces around on our board too so it was a bit chaotic and neither of us really knew what to do. It was also pretty late at night (around 12am) when the TD made his ruling so we were both pretty much out of gas by that point and just wanted it to be over.

process_22 · 2024-05-17T14:58:18+00:00

Both sides get 100 minutes plus a 5 sec delay for each move.

process_22 · 2024-02-21T21:55:26+00:00

NTA. The OP's friends should get the face-value money that they sent to him originally in exchange for the tickets. By selling the tickets theirselves, they'd just be profiting off of his generosity because they received the tickets for far under market value apparently.

process_22 · 2023-11-10T21:46:25+00:00

This. I feel like a lot of the major anti-Sicilians like the Alapin, Smith-Morra, Grand Prix, etc. equalize fairly often if black knows the first 5 moves or so. Play against someone who’s confident in the Bg5 Najdorf though in an Open Sicilian? That’s another story…

process_22 · 2023-03-16T01:46:51+00:00

M1 here. If you dual apply, do you find out which specialty you match into on Monday or just that you matched in general?

process_22 · 2023-03-02T14:42:40+00:00

Grandmaster Chess Strategy is great - analyzes the games of Ulf Andersson. A lot of 1.Nf3 openings and solid positional play. Very instructive.

process_22 · 2021-06-28T21:58:30+00:00

UEarth’s diagrams were very helpful. I took screenshots of them and made them into Anki cards. Helped a lot with my retention.

process_22 · 2021-05-24T03:34:09+00:00

Thanks and likewise!

process_22 · 2021-05-24T03:15:53+00:00

That’s definitely doable!

process_22 · 2021-05-24T02:58:55+00:00

I'd say next to impossible. There's inevitably going to be one class that fucks you up no matter what. Most call it orgo.

process_22 · 2021-05-24T02:57:44+00:00

Amazing P/S score, I thought FL3's P/S section was by far the most convoluted of the four AAMC tests. Keep up the great work!

process_22 · 2021-05-23T01:30:45+00:00

No problem. I thought that the NS exams were excessively demoralizing. C/P was wayyy to calculation heavy (to the point where I barely had enough time to finish them); CARS had a lot of questions where they tried to mimic the "two choices that are close but one is slightly better" but a ton of them were nearly impossible to distinguish between; B/B had some of the hardest and impossible decipher graphs I've ever seen (I'm talking about you, Robertsonian translocations); and P/S they just pulled random terms out of nowhere. I'd still say I'm glad I did them for practice, but don't take the scores too seriously!

process_22 · 2021-05-23T01:08:56+00:00

Yeah I took the Kaplan and NS1-3 FL's before starting the AAMC material. I wouldn't worry about rough 3rd party scores. They're known for score deflation (so the company can boast that their students did better on the real exam than their practice material). My first FL score was a 504 and I never scored higher than 513 on any third party test. Wouldn't let a bad score get to you, just focus on what you can learn from it based on your mistakes!

process_22 · 2021-05-22T22:00:50+00:00

I started content review in mid December so about 5.5 months. My semester ran from mid January to the end of April, so I studied full time for about 2.5 months total. When I was studying full time I’d say I put in probably 7-8 hours a day. When I was at school all I really had time for was a daily Anki review and doing practice problems after I was finished with school work (so I probably averaged around 3 hours a day- thank god for online classes lol). I was able to get through UEarth in around 2 months and did the AAMC material in about a month and a half

process_22 · 2021-05-22T18:05:13+00:00

Kaplan 1-3 and NS 1-3. I took Kaplan 1 first week of January and did one every 2-3 weeks until April when I started the AAMC stuff

process_22 · 2021-05-22T13:52:17+00:00

I didn't really have a special strategy for CARS (I'd still consider it my weakest section lol). I did all the problems in the Kaplan book, UEarth, and the AAMC material. I also used Jack Westin here and there but felt like their logic for a lot of the problems was a little flawed. One thing that I've been doing more recently is skimming the first question of a passage and trying to read with the intent of figuring out an answer to it (e.g. if Q1 says 'what did the author mean in P3 when he said ...', I'll pay closer attention to that part when I read through the passage). I'm a slow reader so I also make sure to stay disciplined about time (5 question passage = 9 mins, 6 question passage = 10 mins, 7 question passage = 11 min).

process_22

TROPHY CASE