For a Medical Residency, an MSPE letter is a crucial aspect, and your chances of impressing the residency admissions committee (or directors) lie entirely within the contents of the MSPE letter. However, a Medical Residency: MSPE Letter is unlike your CV or personal statement in that it’s crafted by the medical school based on your performance, and you have very little say about what goes into your MSPE Letter.

Despite the objectivity of your experiences and accomplishments, you can still redeem yourself or rise above the competition if you’ve managed to strike through with the noteworthy characteristics section.

Medical Residency MSPE

Coupled with your clerkship rotation evaluations, the Noteworthy characteristics of a Medical Residency MSPE letter are what definitively qualify you – in the eyes of the residency program directors – to enroll in a residency program. 

You are allowed to create an initial draft of your noteworthy characteristics. After which, it will be evaluated and corroborated by faculty staff before it’s allowed to be displayed on your Medical Residency: MSPE Letter.

Creating the draft for your noteworthy characteristics section can seem daunting, especially when you’re limited to three entries with only a couple sentences for each. Regardless, it’s a rewarding task that forces you to be creative and dig deep into figuring out who you are and what you can contribute to the medical residency.

A Medical Residency: MSPE Letter’s noteworthy characteristics can involve content such as:

  • Significant hurdles you’ve had to overcome 
  • Impressive extracurricular activities and feats 
  • Involvement in publications
  • A uniquely impressive academic track record
  • Situations where you’ve showcased your professionalism and leadership capabilities
  • Other purposeful life experiences that changed your perspective and shaped who you are today

You can base your noteworthy characteristics on any of these aspects, but please remember that they need to be brief yet properly embellished — so you stand out from the list of other applicants. Despite a limited word count, vague descriptions will not cut it: you need to elaborate, provide specifics, create a coherent story, and relate it all (somehow) to your medical career.  

As is the case with medical interviews, you should never repeat the same content as your CV or personal statement. Provide context and explain how you managed to survive, rise above and learn from a specific experience.

Drafting the Noteworthy Characteristics section of a Medical Residency: MSPE Letter is a demanding task, but with a little effort and outside help, you’ll definitely be able to write an outstanding draft.

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