ERAS Madness

Anna Burkhead -- This week, ERAS (Electronic Residency Application Service) opens for fourth year medical students all over the world to submit their applications to US residency programs. However, if you’re anything like me and my neurotic friends, today certainly isn’t the first day you’ve logged in and browsed through the application system. (Not to worry anyone! If today is your first day on ERAS, you still have plenty of time!)

I am applying for Dermatology residencies, with an Internal Medicine preliminary year. Since Dermatology is considered to be quite a competitive specialty with a low match rate, I have to apply to a large number of programs. The reported average number of programs applied to is 55. Right now, I have 53 programs on my list! I have yet to preview my invoice for my application. I may just have to shut my eyes, enter my credit card number blindly, and hit submit, so I won’t have some sort of respiratory arrest before my application goes out!

With a list topping 50 programs, there are certainly ones I’m more interested in than others. In fact, when I’m poking through the super-elaborate spreadsheet that I’ve made detailing program characteristics, I occasionally catch a glimpse of a program name and find myself wondering what state it’s in.

When and if (please when!) interview offers start coming in, I’ll have to do some better research. When applying for medical school, it was easy for me to keep my programs straight, since I only applied to two. But for residency, my ideal plan is to interview at about 15 programs, and that will require much more careful research and documentation.

Right now, ERAS is the topic of choice in every medical school circle I’ve been a part of for the past few weeks. Not that I’m complaining; I certainly have just as many questions and complaints as the next Joe, MS4. However, I am looking forward to the few months during which we’ll be at an ERAS standstill. Applications will be out, with no changes to be made. We won’t expect interviews to be offered until a few months later (at least that’s true for Derm, most of the interviews are mid-December and the whole of January).

I have one reminder to myself for every time I stress about ERAS and applications. I have about eight months left out of four years of medical school. That means I’m about 83% done. In other words, the “damage” is done. I have done nearly everything I possibly can in order to make myself a good candidate for a Dermatology residency. This ERAS stuff is basically just wrapping all that information up and sticking a big fancy bow on it.