Prep your ERAS

As you go through the edits, there are some generalizations to keep in mind to make your ERAS application stand out.

Think about your favorite resident – who was the outstanding resident that went above and beyond, actively engaged in teaching, compassionate with patients, and an all-around rockstar. Think about what qualities they had.

NOW – make sure all of your activities in ERAS showcase that you, too, have this potential to be the resident rockstar.

Below are some tips & tricks.

GENERAL COMMENTS 1. Make sure all the verb tenses are the same 2. The descriptions should be concise. Every single word should be crafted to tell the reader about you, the project/experience, and what it meant to you. If it doesn’t fulfill that criteria, then either delete it or re-frame the sentence! 3. Everything needs to be absolutely beautiful in the PDF format. If you use bullets, you have to use bullet points throughout. The formatting sometimes shows up weird, so I find it easier to NOT use bullets and go with the first line description and then use "enter" or "dashes" to highlight what you want.

BY SECTION

EDUCATION

Mention whether you graduated with Honors or not. For example, say “Psychology (with Highest Honors)”

MEMBERSHIP AND HONORARY/PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES

First, please join at least one professional society. At minimum, consider American Medical Association – you get JAMA as part of it! Stay up to date with newest articles.

MEDICAL SCHOOL HONORS/AWARDS

Number each award

Provide the EXACT title of the award and year with a short 4-5 word description.

Example:

1) Jane Doe Award (2018): awarded to the top 3 oral presentations at USC Medical Student Research Fair. 2) Sherbert Herbert Award (2014): scholarship for academic merit at AMA School of Medicine

WORK EXPERIENCE

What to include: Jobs related to healthcare (but not research related), unpaid internships at prestigious companies, etc. ALSO consider putting any significant artistic skills or hobbies you’ve done that are very interesting and could be considered as “work”, i.e. artwork displayed in a gallery or show, carpentry, music especially any shows or places you’ve performed at

When you fill out the description section you should hit these main points: 1. You want to give a succinct description of what the activity was (some things will simply not be intuitive from the title). 2. You need to describe exactly WHAT YOUR ROLE WAS and possibly include who you worked with. For example, “Led small-group discussions and individual sessions to review ultrasound concepts and pelvic anatomy”.

3. WHAT YOU LEARNED FROM IT – why did it matter to you? If you did anatomy tutoring, don’t just say that you were a tutor. Everyone on the admissions committee knows what anatomy tutoring entails. So give them more. Why did you do it? Why did it matter? How much involvement did you actually have?

For example, as a Tutor for Step 1/MCAT, you could end the description by saying

“I found this rewarding because it allowed me to x, y, z. Tutoring required a deep understanding of pathophysiology, which improved my communication with patients as I could explain disease processes better to patients."

VOLUNTEER EXPERIENCE

Same formula as job experience. Step 1 – concise description, Step 2 – organization details, Step 3 – outcomes

Ex: Provided surgical services in rural regions of Kenya with the non-profit Tiba, focused on alleviating healthcare disparities in rural communities. First & second assist on over 30 gynecologic, general, and orthopedic surgical procedures. This ignited my passion to for global health and providing quality and accessible healthcare.

RESEARCH Steps to follow when describing research:

1. First line brief description of the research. You ***MUST*** include the hypothesis or a one- line succinct description of your research question 2. Include why you chose certain areas for your research, how you got involved, what precise roles and responsibilities you assumed. “Ex – I was responsible for developing the research protocol and obtaining IRB approval, the majority of data collection and analysis. “ 3. End with where in the process you are: “Currently, an abstract has been submitted to the 8th Annual American Thoracic Society. I am preparing the manuscript for submission.” –or– if it has resulted in a publication, say, “Published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, one of the top journals in the United States. It has been cited x times”

Please note: include if you wrote and were awarded a grant, received a research scholarship, summer research fellowship, wrote an IRB, etc. These are uncommon and impressive, and definitely merit mention.

PERSONAL HOBBIES/INTERESTS

Pick 2-3 hobbies and give a few details. Hopefully, the interviewer will see something and connect with you on this. For example, “Reading 19th Century Russian literature” instead of “reading”. Write “Running 5k races” or “Hiking through Colorado trails” as opposed to “running” or “hiking”.

OTHER AWARDS/ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Put any non-medical undergraduate awards here. Same format as Med School Awards.

TEMPLATE Copy & past this into a word document and make all of your edits. This will be crucial to help edit things faster and more efficiently when you send to people to review. It will be as simple as this (see template below my musings)

Experience: (work / volunteer / research) Organization & Location: Position:

Dates:

Supervisor: Average Hours/Week: Description: Reason for leaving:

Once you feel that the word document is perfect, then you can go ahead and just copy and paste it into ERAS. This will prevent you from making spelling errors, as ERAS doesn't make any edits or suggestions of this kind.