A few clients have asked me about the new supplemental ERAS application for dermatology, internal medicine (categorical and preliminary), and general surgery (categorical) applicants. The application is more work for these candidates, but the AAMC says the supplemental app will foster a more holistic approach to the residency process. For more information, check out the PowerPoint presentation from a recent webinar the AAMC held on the topic. The supplemental application opened last week.
I’ve received questions recently about the residency personal statement, so I’m including some articles and blog posts that might be useful:
And as always, contact me for help.
I’ve started editing ERASes this cycle and have developed this list for guidance:
1. Include relevant pre-professional accomplishments from college. If you conducted research, for example, list and describe it. Do not include high school achievements unless they were truly unique (worked at the White House, sang on Broadway, published in Nature).
2. While you want to include many strong achievements, you do not want your ERAS to be so long that your reader is tempted to skim it, so avoid small activities (like an afternoon health fair).
3. Keep your descriptors to approximately five to seven sentences. Fewer can look lazy and more can look self-indulgent.
4. Use full sentences. It’s a formal application, and you want to make your written materials as readable as possible.
5. Avoid abbreviations. Ones you think are common might not be familiar to the reader.
6. Avoid contractions; they are too informal for your ERAS.
7. Make sure you spell out your accomplishments clearly. If your reader doesn’t understand an activity, you won’t get “full credit” for what you’ve done. Make no assumptions – not even that the reader has reviewed the experience’s introductory information (location, name of activity).
8. Write about yourself and your role – not an organization. For example, don’t use the space to discuss Physicians without Borders. Use it to discuss the specifics of your role at Physicians without Borders.
9. Use numbers to be persuasive. Saying that the conference you organized had 300 participants says it all.
10. 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.
11. Do your best not to leave the “Medical School Awards” section blank. Even if you have to simply include clerkships in which you obtained honors (or high honors), fill that section out.
12. If you have not already, consider joining your specialty’s national organization and listing it under the “Membership in Honorary/Professional Societies” section. If you are applying in two fields, take this advice, though.
13. Try to end your entries with a sentence about how the experience you just described will help you as a future specialist. Making that connection for the reader furthers your candidacy.
14. As with all good writing, avoid redundant language. Having the word “research” three times in two lines is distracting and demonstrates a lack of originality.
15. Get help. Don’t submit your residency application without having it reviewed by someone with a lot of experience. You do not want to put forward suboptimal materials for a process that is this important and competitive.
Here’s an interesting piece called “Are There Too Many Emergency Physicians?” by Thomas Cook MD, an emergency medicine program director. Dr. Cook chronicles the growth of emergency medicine residency positions from a total of 1821 in 2015 to 2488 in 2019. This rapid growth in the field may lead to an oversupply of emergency physicians.
The paradox here is that only recently there was a shortage of emergency physicians. And back when I graduated from medical school in the mid-1990s, almost no one was applying for emergency medicine. In my class of around 150 students, there were three of us. As the popularity of the show “ER” waxed, the number of applicants to the field swelled. Then, years later, the field contracted again.
Other fields have also recently seen a boom in the number of residency spots, including family medicine, psychiatry, and anesthesiology. Of course, opening up more residency positions is a good thing for medical students (especially international medical graduates) and patients, but the growth in certain fields may lead to a change in the economy of those specialties. It will be an interesting experiment.
If you’re planning to apply in more than one field, you have a challenging road ahead of you, and you should strategize accordingly. Remember that, although your ERAS activities cannot be individualized to different residency programs, your personal statement and letters of recommendation can. Demonstrating commitment to each field through your essay and letters will be a challenge, so take time to write thoughtfully, and make sure you speak candidly to your faculty recommenders.
Above all: Ensure that you assign the correct specialty-specific documents to the correct programs!
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
