At this point, the experiences section of ERAS application is likely not unfamiliar to you. This is particularly true if you applied to medical school via AMCAS, AACOMAS, or TMDSAS. This section can certainly seem overwhelming in terms of pinpointing what to include as well as how to include it in order to capture the reader’s attention.
Below, we will walk through the basics surrounding the eras experiences section as well as what and how to include in order to make the best impression on program directors who read your application.
Generally, your experiences will fall within one of several ERAS experiences sections:
In order to further describe your experience and its importance, you will be allotted 1020 characters and an additional 510 to describe reasons for leaving the position. You will be allowed to include up to 10 experiences to showcase in your application as well as will have the opportunity to select three experiences as most meaningful experiences where you will have an additional 300 characters to discuss why that experience is meaningful and influential.
Furthermore, corresponding to each experience, you will select a primary focus area (basic science, clinical/translational science, community involvement/outreach, etc.) that captures the purpose or intention of the experience. You will also be allotted the opportunity to list key characteristics for each experience that describe what you have learned from the opportunity.
As discussed above, you will be allowed 1020 characters to describe your experience though even before this, you will list basics such as the position title, organization, dates/frequency of participations, and location/setting. Listing this information preliminarily will allow you the chance to save the characters in the description to discuss roles you played, what you learned, the importance of the experience, and how this experience might be important to your future training.
The goal of this experience should be to reflect and demonstrate your introspectiveness to show how your experiences will be of importance to you going forward. If applicable, you may decide to use examples/anecdotes from your experiences to show these aspects as well as delineate your experiences from others.
The brief Most Meaningful Experiences section is yet another opportunity to show the impact your experiences have had on you and your education thus far. Be certain to use these few characters to really describe why this particular experience is meaningful to you while including the relevance and significance of this to your future residency training. In other words, how or why did this experience affect you?
We have a team of physicians ready to help if you are struggling with how to best articulate yourself throughout your experiences. Learn more here.
As you can see, while the ERAS Experiences Section seems like a simple list of experiences leading up to residency, there is much more to the section. Through your experiences, you have the opportunity to show who you are even before you speak to program directors. To that end, it is important to ensure your experiences demonstrate exactly the vantage point of which you would like programs to see about you. Essentially, the ERAS Experiences Section is a blank canvas for you to paint a clear picture of you as an applicant with intent to hopefully meet the individuals initially reading your application.
Written by Emma Fenske, DO, view all of her posts here.
