15 ERAS Tips to Boost your Residency Candidacy

Over the years, I've cultivated several tips for crafting the best ERAS Experience Section. I've included 15 important ones below:

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. As of 2023, you have only 10 slots, so avoid minor activities (like an afternoon health fair). 

3. Write in a streamlined fashion. Avoid verbiage. Of note, you can choose three most meaningful activities, but you only have 300 characters for each. So while you want to explain why the activity was impactful, you'll need to keep your writing here especially tight.

4. Use full sentences. It’s a formal application, and you want to make your written materials as readable as possible.

5. Avoid most abbreviations. Ones you think are common might not be familiar to the reader.

6. Avoid contractions; they are too informal for an ERAS (but okay for this blog entry ;)). 

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 (position title, location). 

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 500 participants says a lot.

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. (I started Insider Medical Admissions in 2007.) You do not want to put forward suboptimal materials for a process that is this important and competitive.

(Please note that there are a few changes to this year's ERAS, including the use of Thalamus for interview scheduling. For more information, see this AAMC page.)

Not Quite What I Was Planning

Years ago, I read a beautiful book called Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure edited by Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser. The premise is that individuals were asked to sum up their lives in six words. Famous contributors include Margaret Atwood and Stephen Colbert, among others.

I thought about the book recently when I was at my medical school reunion: A dozen of us sat around a round table and talked about what we had been up to for the last 30 years. After we finished, we concluded that the overriding theme was that all of us were doing something different than what we thought we would be doing. I found that concept refreshing, and I suspect it might be reassuring to current students who feel burdened with big decisions.

I just checked out the e-book from the library so I can read it again. 

Federal Cuts are Forcing Academic Medicine into an Existential Mess

I was in Boston last week for my 30th Harvard Medical School reunion. I thought it would be fun, but it was even better than I expected.

Unfortunately, the festivities were marred by a black cloud of current and threatened federal cuts to academic medicine. Harvard, in particular, is getting hit hard, but my classmates were recounting the difficulties they are facing at their current, respective institutions - Harvard and others. 

The AAMC has done a good job offering specific examples of the damage in their recent piece "The Impact of Federal Actions on Academic Medicine and the US Health Care System." Read it and weep. 

The Disadvantages of a BS/MD Program

I've always had major qualms about BS/MD programs, especially the six and seven-year ones, perhaps because I appreciated my college experience so much. There are many other disadvantages (and a few advantages) of these programs, which are extremely well covered in podcast episode 542 of Your College Bound Kid. 

There, college counselor extraordinaire Mark Stucker does a very deep dive into the BS/MD option. Start at 10 minutes into the podcast for his extensive discussion of the (few) pros and (multiple) cons.

White Coat Investor Scholarship 2025 Applications are Now Open

Each year the White Coat Investor (WCI) offers a scholarship opportunity to students enrolled in full-time US professional schools. This year's application opened June 1, and the deadline is August 31. Students must be in good academic standing in eligible professional schools, including medical, dental, law, podiatry, pharmacy, physician assistant, nurse practitioner, and veterinarian, among others. The stated goal of the scholarship is to reduce winning students' indebtedness and to promote financial literacy in professional schools.

The lion's share of the application is an 800 to 1200 word essay. There are 10 grand prize winners.

For more information please check out this web page.

Great Podcast Episodes for College Applicants on Pre-med Paths

For those high school students already considering a career in medicine, I recommend a recent, two-part Your College Bound Kid (YCBK) podcast series. YCBK is run by Mark Stucker, a genial college counselor who covers a panoply of topics on the college admissions process. 

He and his colleague Susan Tree recently spoke about what pre-med students should be looking for and avoiding when considering colleges. They get down to the nitty-gritty, including inflated medical school acceptance statistics, specific institutions that offer mentored research programs, and the corporatization of modern medicine. The episodes are number 537 and 539. 

The Middle School Drama Class you Took Could Help your Medical Career

Taking Spanish and typing classes were two of the best decisions I made in middle school. But after reading Dr. Christina Brown's Doximity article "How We Can Help Women in Medicine Become Better Presenters," I realize that going to performing arts camp was also a boon. Brown points out that women are less likely to be speakers at medical conferences, which limits their career trajectories. She contends that public speaking, writing, and networking skills should be taught during medical school and residency to propel professional success. Her piece is worth a read.

Leverage the MSAR for Your Benefit

The Medical School Admission Requirements (MSAR) database is an online resource that allows users to search, sort and compare information about U.S. and Canadian medical schools. (When I was applying in the 90s, the MSAR was a hard copy book.) The 2025 MSAR was just recently published; if you're applying to medical school, I'd recommend purchasing the current version because it provides so much information about institutions and their admissions statistics. The MSAR allows you to compare schools by median MCAT scores, AMCAS GPAs, and other criteria. (Of course, how institutions utilize the MCAT score is variable, which contributes to the shameful opaqueness of the medical school admissions process.)

You should use the MSAR to help determine which schools are in your range and which are "reach" schools. While it's okay to have a lot of "reach" schools (if you can afford it), it's critical to ensure you are applying wisely to schools that match your numbers. The advantage of the MSAR is that you can make evidence-based decisions. I've found some applicants have eye-opening experiences when they thoroughly review schools' statistics and either realize their numbers are on the lower side and that they should apply to schools accordingly or, happily, that they have numbers that match with top schools. Either way, reviewing the data is critical to good decision making.

How To Craft Stand-out Most Meaningful Paragraphs

Back in 2012, seemingly out of the blue, a new component appeared on AMCAS®. Applicants were being asked to identify up to three of their most significant extracurricular experiences and support their selections with more writing. The instructions stated:

This is your opportunity to summarize why you have selected this experience as one of your most meaningful. In your remarks, you might consider the transformative nature of the experience, the impact you made while engaging in the experience and the personal growth you experienced as a result of your participation. 1325 max characters.

Now the Most Meaningful Paragraphs are par for the course, but applicants routinely make a few avoidable errors in crafting them. Here are tips to do your best work:

1) Don’t merge the descriptors with the Most Meaningful Paragraphs; they are separate sections: You can complete descriptors for up to 15 activities with a maximum of 700 characters each, plus up to three Most Meaningful Paragraphs with a maximum of 1325 characters each. The fact that these are two different tasks might seem clear to some, but every year, I receive AMCAS drafts to edit with merged descriptors and Most Meaningful Paragraphs.

2) Don't use patient anecdotes in your Most Meaningful Paragraphs: Most medical school applicants have patient vignettes to share, which means that a patient story does not distinguish an applicant from the masses of other candidates. Also, these patient stories can sound trite or even inadvertently condescending. Talk about yourself instead. (See below.)

3) Don’t repeat what you've written in your descriptor. The Most Meaningful Paragraphs are an opportunity to delve deeper into your achievements. Let’s say you're showcasing your experience as a teaching assistant (TA) who was promoted to head TA or simply asked to return the next semester. Highlight teaching achievements that propelled you to get the lead position or the return invite. Did you offer an unconventional way of learning the difficult material? If so, what was it? Did you provide service that was above and beyond what was required? If so, what exactly did you do and how did it help your students? Did you get excellent teaching reviews? By delving deeper, you can truly demonstrate the “transformative nature of the experience, the impact you made while engaging in the experience and the personal growth you experienced as a result of your participation.” Make sure you address at least one of the three topics mentioned in the prompt - transformative nature, impact, and/or personal growth - in your Most Meaningful Paragraph.

Bottom line: The Most Meaningful Paragraphs are an opportunity for you to demonstrate your distinctiveness and worthiness for medical school. Write substantively to make sure you don’t waste the opportunity to further your candidacy.

Residency Applicant Characteristics: Key Differences Between Those who are Ranked Highly and Those who Aren't

The NRMP posted a webinar on applicant characteristics associated with success and failure in the recent Match, specifically focusing on Family Medicine, OB/GYN, Otolaryngology, Pathology, and Diagnostic Radiology.

The webinar presents data tracking trends in whom programs (from those five specialties) ranked. NRMP says they hope to help applicants and residency directors gain a clearer understanding of the factors influencing candidate selection. Some of the data is to be expected (average Step 2 scores are higher for Otolaryngology than for Family Medicine), but there there are more specifics offered: Over three quarters of Otolaryngology programs don't take applicants with Step 2 scores under 225 whereas half of Family Medicine programs take applicants with Step 2 scores as low as 215. There are some other interesting factoids that might guide candidates' approach to the Match.

Here's the YouTube link.