Preparing for Residency Apps

• February- April  

• Meet with your career advice to talk generally about your match strategies  

• Write/update your CV. You will send this to your letter writers, and it will be helpful for completing your ERAS (or other system) application and might be needed for away rotation applications. 

• Start brainstorming your personal statement. Some letter writers will ask for this, so it is helpful to have a draft. Most students don’t finalize this until the summer, however.  

• Identify your letter writers

• Apply for the Fee Assistance Program (if applicable)

• April-June  

• Work on the MSPE Noteworthy Characteristics and other student-supplied sections. Your Student Affairs dean will have a timeline with deadlines for you to follow.  

• ERAS opens in June. Use the token you receive via email to create an account. Not all specialties use ERAS (e.g. ophthalmology and the SF match). Touch base with your RAD if not sure what system is used to apply to your specialty. 

• Request letters of recommendation  

• Continue working on your personal statement  

• June-August  

• Ask for letters of recommendation from Sub-Is and away rotations  

• Finish your personal statement  

• Work on application  

• Draft your list  

• Take a professional photo  

• Request your transcript  

• September  

• Review the final draft of your MSPE  

• Finalize your personal statement. You can make specific versions for different programs if you want  

• Finish adding your experiences and other information into ERAS/other systems  

• Finish your list and add programs and signals  

• Register for NRMP (if applicable)  

You might have already written a CV in medical school, but you will definitely need to update it for your applications. You will send this to your letter writers and advisors to show them what you've been involved in during medical school. It is also helpful to reference when completing your ERAS application. However, ERAS will generate a CV based on the information you enter into the application, so you won’t upload your actual CV to ERAS. 

Recipes for Success:

• Do this in January or February, especially if you are applying to away rotations.

• The medical school has a template on the intranet you can find if you need help getting started. 

  • Here's a template from the AAMC

  • Here are a few more templates 

• It can be helpful to divide research into “publications, presentations, under review, and in process” rather than discussing each individual project.

• You can underline or bold your name in the list of authors for your research projects to make it easy to find your name. 

• Focus on making your CV easy to read and professional. No crazy templates, doodles, or pink font. 

The residency personal statement is very similar to the medical school personal statement but shorter. It should be less than one single spaced page in 12 pt Times New Roman font. DO NOT go over one page because some people will simply throw out your essay without reading it if it goes onto a second page. It should be narrative, engaging, well organized, easy to read, and highlight why you will be a great resident in your speciality. Obviously this is a tall order and it takes time to write a strong personal statement. Ask for edits from people who know you well both inside and outside of medicine. Mentors who review applications for a residency or fellowship can be especially helpful. 

Recipes for Success:

• Focus on why you want to be a doctor in your specific specialty rather than why you want to be a doctor in general. 

• Avoid listing the aspects of the speciality that you like and instead connect your interests/passions/experiences to specific parts of the specialty. Most people who choose orthopedic surgery like working with their hands and most people who choose OB/Gyn love the variety of the field. Instead of listing those things, use stories to illustrate how the field connects to you personally. Imagine you are seeing a unique version of your specialty through the lens of your experiences and interests. 

  • Also remember you're not trying to convince your reader why this specialty is so great. They're already doing it! They want to know why YOU want to do it. 

• I have heard mixed advice about starting your essay with a meaningful patient encounter. Some people feel it is overdone and others think it can be effective. I personally chose to avoid it because I thought it would help my essay stand out. If you do start with a patient encounter, make sure the focus quickly shifts back to you and your strengths. And this should be obvious, but be careful about sharing protected health information. 

• Don’t be afraid of the Terrible First Draft. One of the hardest parts of writing a personal statement is starting. I wrote many terrible drafts and it took time for me to connect ideas from different drafts into my final personal statement. 

• Don’t use AI/Chat-GPT to write your personal statement because it will sound generic.  You can use these tools to help proofread or fine-tune what you write 

• You can personalize your personal statement to different residency programs if you want. ERAS allows you to upload a different personal statement for each program. This can be very tiring, so I would suggest only doing this for programs that you really like.  If you do it, it should be truly personalized to the program, and not seem like you could put any residency program into the personalized sentences. 

The MSPE is a standardized letter written by your dean (sometimes called the “Dean’s letter”). There are many sections including information about the medical school and your rotation grades and comments. You will be responsible for writing the noteworthy characteristics as well as the paragraphs about your selectives and SHCD experience. You will pick 4-5 noteworthy characteristics and write a paragraph about each. The noteworthy characteristics are categories such as leadership, service, research experience, education/curriculum development, master’s degree, or obstacles overcome. They are an opportunity to highlight the things you have accomplished in medical school. You can also write about something unique to you, such as the languages you speak, musical skills, or athletics. 

You will get detailed instruction and a lot of guidance on what to write and the timeline of when things need to be completed. There will also be example language that you can use. You will review your draft with your Student Affairs Dean to get comments and have another chance to review and make comments right before applications are due. 

Recipes for Success:

• Spend the most time writing the noteworthy characteristics as these are often referred to when making interview decisions 

• If you have a unique skill or accomplishment, I would recommend highlighting it in the noteworthy characteristics. You might not have another place to talk about it and it can help you stand out. Only do this if you have an impressive accomplishment to share, for instance running multiple marathons rather than running a few miles a week. 

• Only list Master’s degrees that you obtained during medical school 

• If you are only applying to one speciality, definitely mention it in your noteworthy characteristics. If you are applying to multiple specialities, mention neither as you can only upload one version of the MSPE. 

The specific letters that you need depend on your specialty. Some specialties require a standardized letter of evaluation (SLOE) or a chair letter. Talk to your advisor to figure out if you need these and who typically writes them. You may also need additional letters if applying to a preliminary or transition year. 

Most programs request 3-4 letters. You will have to check each program website to determine how many letters they want and if they want specific letters like the SLOE or chair letter. Make a spreadsheet or table to keep track. You will want at least two letters from people in your specialty who know you well and have worked with you clinically. It can also be helpful to include a letter from a research mentor, especially if you are applying to academic programs or have an interest in research. You will want at least one letter to come from someone who worked with you on a Sub-I and letters from away rotations are helpful because they show what you are like in a new/often stressful environment. 

Ask your letter writers in person if possible and then follow up with an email containing your CV and any other materials they request. Be clear about the deadline and don’t be afraid to check in if you haven’t heard from them as the deadline is approaching. It can also be helpful to ask them to talk about specific parts of you or your application that you want them to highlight (research, working on a team, doing an extra presentation etc.). 

You will request letters directly through ERAS once it opens in June. Letters of recommendation are listed under the documents tab on the home page. Add your letter writer’s information and then have ERAS send a link where they will upload your letter. You can see the status of your letters on this page as well.

My main memory of ERAS is that every part took longer than I expected. I left myself a few weeks in September to work on it and was happy that I did. You will get a token to register in June and then you can start slowly adding your information. Here is a worksheet of the most recent year’s application. There are sections for background information, geographic/setting preferences, education, selected experiences, impactful experiences, and publications. You will also upload a professional photo and authorize Mayo to upload your transcript and MSPE. 

There are separate tabs where you can see the status of your letters and save programs. You will apply to programs from the programs tab after you have submitted your application. You will add your selected letters, your personal statement, transcript, MSPE and professional photo for each program. 

Recipes for Success:

1. You can add multiple hometowns where you feel a sense of belonging. A surprising amount of match is geographic preference/connection, so add all the places where you lived for a significant amount of time and feel connected to. 

2. You can add a preference for rural or urban settings. Unless you have a strong preference for urban or rural medicine, I would suggest saying you don’t have a preference and are happy to train anywhere you will get great training.  

3. Impactful experiences are challenges or hardships that you have overcome. About half of students leave this question blank. The examples given are significant challenges like food scarcity or loss of a family member, and I think it is totally fine to leave it blank if you haven’t experienced something like this. 

4. You can add in progress and submitted but not yet published research. Be sure to add all the work you have completed because some programs filter by the number of research publications when reviewing applications. Always add the PMID for published research. 

5. Don’t forget to take a new professional photo, unless you love the one you took as an M1. You can do this at Mayo through the professional photo services. Look up the hours under at this link on the intranet and then find your photo in the Mayo photo directory. 

The experience section significantly changed last year when the number of experiences was limited to 10. Be thoughtful about which experiences you choose, pick meaningful experiences, and try to highlight multiple strengths (ie don’t use all 10 for research projects). You will choose a primary focus and key characteristic for each experience from a pre-set list. Again, I would try to spread these to show a number of different aspects of yourself while still focusing on the things that you are most passionate about. Don’t be afraid to pick multiple experiences in the same area if this is what is most important to who you are and what you are looking for in residency. 

You will have 1020 characters (this is super short!) to describe each experience and your role. Some people do bullet points, some do paragraphs. I have not heard that one is preferred over the other and you should do whatever is the easiest to read. For me, this was bullet points. 

After you describe your 10 experiences, you will pick three experiences that are most meaningful and have another 300 characters (again very short!) to talk about why it was meaningful. This should discuss the key characteristic/focus area you selected and should NOT restate what you did or a set of skills that you learned. 

I will list some general advice here, but it is really important to talk about this with your advisors as the number of programs you apply to varies widely by speciality. First, figure out how many programs you should apply to. General advice is to apply to the average number that people applied to last year in your specialty. I personally found the average number in my speciality to be very high and applied to fewer programs than that. How many programs you apply to definitely comes down to your comfort level, the advice of your advisors, and how competitive your application is. The NMRP also publishes reports on each year’s residency match results by speciality and applicant characteristics.

Choosing which programs to apply to was hard for me because I didn’t know where to start. I found it helpful to start with programs that I had heard of and places that I wanted to live. Then consider if you are interested in academic or community programs. Think about if you are interested in fellowship and if the program has fellowships in that subspecialty or if other residents in that program have matched into the fellowship you're considering. Consider call schedule, average hours per week, number of residents, and the number of hospitals/sites where you will rotate. You can find this information using FREIDA or the AAMC residency explorer tool. Look into if they have protected didactic time, what rotations they complete, if they have elective rotations, and what patient populations they serve. The best place to find this information is typically the program website. 

Talk to your advisors and past students about programs that may be a good fit for you. Keep track of this information in a spreadsheet or other document. It can also be helpful to attend informational sessions. These typically occur throughout the summer and can be found on the program website/social media or are organized by the national organization in your field (ACOG, AAFP, AAP etc.). Doximity is another helpful free website that has ratings and reviews from prior residents. 

Not all specialties have signals and the number can vary widely. Again talk to your advisor about using signals wisely. In specialties with a large number of signals (>15), signals often serve as an application cap and it is rare to get interviews outside of the places that you signaled. As a result, it is VERY important to have a mix of competitiveness in the programs you signal and to be very strategic about how you use your signals. Think carefully about your competitiveness and how many signals a program is likely to get. Your signal will go farther at a place that gets fewer signals and this can make it easier to get an interview. If your speciality only has a few signals, you should use them to express extra interest in the programs you are most excited about.

ERAS now allows you to express a preference for three geographic regions. The regions are shown here. The programs in that region will see that you had a geographic preference for their region and programs outside those regions will not get any information about geographic preference. If you don’t express a geographic preference, you can write a short statement about being willing to train anywhere that all programs will see. If a program gets no information about your geographic preferences, they will assume that you expressed a preference for a different geographic region, so definitely write a statement about being willing to train anywhere if you don’t select three regions. 

Geographic preferences are new this year (i.e. 2023-24), so it is hard to say how they influenced interview decisions. The advice that I received was to only use geographic preferences if I wanted to apply primarily to programs in the three regions that I selected. I had a strong geographic preference for where I wanted to train, so this was easy for me to do. If you find you want to apply to programs across the country instead, I would suggest not using them.