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Your guide to the Supplemental ERAS Application
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Your guide to the Supplemental ERAS Application
This blog will help you navigate the supplemental ERAS application required for your residency application in the United States.
Update June 2023 :
The AAMC has discontinued the Supplemental ERAS application for the 2023-2024 Match season. Nonetheless, this blog remains valuable as several aspects from the supplemental ERAS have been incorporated into the updated ERAS application. To familiarize yourself with the other changes in the ERAS application, don’t miss out on our latest blog post here.
Do all specialties require the supplemental ERAS application?
No. Not all specialties are participating in the supplemental ERAS application. Here is a list of participating specialties
- Adult Neurology
- Anesthesiology
- Dermatology
- Diagnostic Radiology and Interventional Radiology
- Emergency Medicine (Program Signals only)
- General Surgery
- Internal Medicine (Categorical only)
- Internal Medicine/Psychiatry
- Neurological Surgery
- Obstetrics and Gynecology (Program Signals only)
- Orthopedic Surgery
- Pediatrics
- Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
- Psychiatry
- Public Health and General Preventive Medicine
Do all residency programs within a specialty require the supplemental ERAS application?
No. Not all residency programs within a participating specialty require submitting the supplemental ERAS application.
You can check a list of participating programs here
What is the fee associated with the supplemental ERAS application? Is the supplemental ERAS application free?
There is no fee associated with the supplemental ERAS application. The supplemental ERAS application is free
What is the value of the supplemental ERAS application?
Showcase the most important experiences in your application since the supplemental ERAS application has a limit of 5 experiences (which might be lost in your ERAS application which does not have a limit for the number of experiences).
When is the deadline for submitting the supplemental ERAS application for Match® 2023?
September 16, 2022, at 5 pm. ET. Residency programs will be able to start reviewing applications (including supplemental ERAS) on September 28, 2022, at 9 AM ET. Make sure to register for the ERAS token prior to September 14, 2022, to receive the email invitation for the supplemental ERAS.
What are the components of the supplemental ERAS application?
Past experiences, geographical preference, and program signaling.
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Past experiences, geographical preference, and program signaling.
The past experiences section of the supplemental ERAS application gives you the opportunity to showcase the 5 most important and meaningful experiences in your application. In addition, you can share another impactful experience that demonstrates a challenge or a hardship you faced on your journey to medicine.
You need to fill in the following information for each of the 5 meaningful experiences:
Position title
Organization name
Start and end dates
Frequency of participation
Setting (rural vs urban). Rural is defined as population of ≤2500 while urban is defined as population of ≥50,000
Experience type: explains what type of experience you had. The following categories are included:
- Education/training (includes clinical training such as clerkships, away rotations, sub-internships, structured observerships, etc.)
- Military service
- Professional organization (includes societies, associations, etc., at the local, regional, national, or international levels)
- Other extracurricular activity, club, hobby (includes sports, music, theater, student government, etc.)
- Research
- Teaching/mentoring (includes paid teaching positions such as high school teacher as well as teaching assistant, tutor)
- Volunteer/service/advocacy (includes unpaid experiences, service, advocacy)
- Work (includes paid clinical, nonclinical
Primary focus area. The following categories are included:
- Basic science
- Clinical/translational science
- Community involvement/outreach
- Customer service
- Health care administration
- Improving access to health care
- Medical education
- Music/athletics/art
- Promoting wellness
- Public health
- Quality improvement
- Social justice/advocacy
- Technology
Key characteristic: This should demonstrate the most important characteristic you got out of this experience. The following characteristics are included:
- Communication
- Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
- Cultural Humility and Awareness
- Empathy and Compassion
- Ethical Responsibility
- Ingenuity and Innovation
- Reliability and Dependability
- Resilience and Adaptability
- Self-Reflection and Improvement
- Teamwork and Leadership
You are only allowed to pick one experience type, one primary focus area, and one key characteristic for each of the 5 experiences.
Description of the experience (maximum 300 characters including spaces): Explain why this experience is meaningful and how it influenced you. Do NOT describe what you did in the experience as this is already mentioned in your CV.
For the “other impactful experiences”, applicants have the opportunity to share any challenges they faced throughout their medical journey. Programs do not expect all applicants to complete this question as not everyone faced such a challenge or hardship. But if you faced one, it is highly recommended that you include it here. There is a character limit of 750 characters including spaces.
This is what it looks like on the supplemental ERAS application.
“Please describe any challenges or hardships that influenced your journey to residency. This could include experiences related to family background, financial background, community setting, educational experiences, and/or general life experiences.”
Responses to past experiences questions will be shared with the participating programs to which you apply in all participating specialties except Emergency Medicine and Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Don’t risk your residency match chances with an average ERAS application. Allow our experts to enhance your accomplishments using our comprehensive ERAS CV editing services.
Geographic Preferences
For geographic preferences, applicants have the opportunity to share their interest in programs located in a particular location in the US. Applicants can choose up to three US divisions or choose that they have no preference.
If you choose a particular location, your preference will only be shared with programs located in that location (so if you picked Pacific, programs in New England won’t know that you picked Pacific). If you choose “I do not have a division preference” programs will know that you don’t have a preference. If you choose not to answer that question, programs will receive no information about your geographic preference.
You will also get to write a short paragraph (up to 300 characters, including spaces) to explain your choice of a certain geographic location or that you don’t have any preference. This answer will be shared with programs in a specific location if you picked that location or with all programs if you chose that you don’t have a preference. If you want to keep your options open and not limit yourself to a certain geographic location, you can consider choosing “I do not have a division preference” so programs get notified that you are open to any option.
Here are the available categories with the states that fall within that category.
- Pacific: AK, CA, HI, OR, WA
- Mountain: AZ, CO, ID, MT, NM, NV, UT, WY
- West North Central: IA, KS, MN, MO, NE, ND, SD
- East North Central: IL, IN, MI, OH, WI
- West South Central: AR, LA, OK, TX
- East South Central: AL, KY, MS, TN
- South Atlantic: DC, DE, FL, GA, MD, NC, PR, SC, VA, WV
- Middle Atlantic: NJ, NY, PA
- New England: CT, ME, MA, NH, RI, VT
You will also get to choose the setting preference. Rural is defined as population of ≤2500 while urban is defined as population of ≥50,000. Here are possible responses to this question
- Strong preference for rural
- Slight preference for rural
- No preference
- Slight preference for urban
- Strong preference for urban
You will also get to write a short paragraph (up to 300 characters, including spaces) to explain your choice of a certain setting or that you do not have a preference. This answer will be shared with all programs.
Program Signaling
Each applicant will also get the chance to signal a certain number of programs within each specialty. This will help demonstrate an interest in the program since each applicant has a very limited number of signals. The number of residency programs you can signal will vary based on the specialty. Also, whether you should signal home institutions or places where you did sub-internships (if you are interested in those programs) will vary by specialty. (For example, dermatology does not require you to signal home institution even if interested in applying there, while anesthesiology programs do).
Programs that you signaled will be notified while programs you did not choose will not get the signal. That means programs will know that you did not signal them if they did not receive a signal from you.
Here is a list of the number of signals per specialty:
Adapted from AAMC
Good Luck on your residency application and don’t hesitate to reach out to us for any questions.
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