As the most significant part of your application, an ERAS personal statement can be your greatest chance to succeed. Basically, this type of document will help you to state the reason why you’ve chosen that particular field and convince the committee that you’re the best candidate for the position. Whereas you don’t have control over a residency letter of recommendation, this one allows you to show your candidature as well as possible. So, you have a real opportunity to make the most of it!
Wondering how to find the specialties for the 2020 ERAS season? Make sure you check the list of participating specialties and programs on the ERAS website.
Sometimes an ERAS program is included in the list, but later on, it withdraws. Sometimes the ERAS staff is not informed about the withdrawal, so it’s essential to make sure the programs are participating before sending the application documents to them.
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Things You Need to Know before Applying for MyERAS?
- At the assigned dean’s office, you must get an ERAS token. A token from another school or institution won’t do the trick, so your documents won’t be uploaded correctly.
- A token from another ERAS season will not be accepted either. You will not be allowed to continue the registration process, so make sure you have the right one beforehand.
- 1 token is valid for 1 registration only, so make sure to insert the information accurately.
- Get an AAMC account to register for an ERAS token. Use an account from the previous season or another AAMC service.
There are 4 components ERAS consists of: MyERAS web-based applicant site, the dean’s office workstation (DWS), the program director’s workstation (PDWS), ERAS post office (ERAS PO). ERAS can be accessed via the AAMC Website.
MyERAS Application Needs to Involve the Following:
- MyERAS application
- MyERAS personal statement
- Photograph
- Exam transcripts, including COMLEX or USMLE
- School transcript of records
- MSPE or student personal evaluation
- Letter of recommendation
- All of the ERAS residency application and supporting documents can be found in the table
ERAS Personal Statement Length
To sum up the opinions, the right thing would be to say that experts recommend keeping the length of an ERAS personal statement up to 1 page. In fact, committees do not want to read a very long paper to evaluate your self-introduction. Limiting your ERAS personal statement to up to 500 words will help you to keep the narration clear and concise and save time both for you and the application committee. Your application will certainly not be rejected if you extend the narrative to about 750-800 words, but 600-650 are going to be better.
Mine was about 500. On one interview, I was told that the program’s main criterion for evaluating personal statements was not noteworthiness but rather inoffensiveness.
ERAS allows the personal statements to be as 28,000 characters (including white spaces). An ideal statement contains about 1-2 pages.
Here’s an example representing the perfect ERAS personal statement length.
The Best Things You Can Do to Your Personal Statement
- Start early. The earlier you start writing, the better your statement will be.
- Multiple versions. Write several versions of the document until you’re happy with the result.
- Don’t compromise. Remove all the information that is unnecessary for the reader.
- Try to explain the reasons. If there’s any time gap or sign of failure in your professional career, find the appropriate reasoning.
- Tailor your personal statement to any kind of application. It should be unique for all the programs you’re applying for. A powerful residency personal statement never fails to convince because it does not look like a template, so try to individualize your personal statement maximally.
- Be straightforward and don’t lie. The worst thing that can be found in a personal statement is fake info.
- Check. Double-check. Tripple-check. Edit and proofread a personal statement no less than 3 times. Then do it again. The best is to ask someone else to do the final check because sometimes it’s hard to find and eliminate your own mistakes.
- Cut drastically. Get rid of all the clichés and overused words. They’re certainly turn-offs.
- Be objective. Ask your friends to give you honest feedback considering your personal statement. Ask to evaluate it from various angles, including content mistakes, how interesting it is, etc.
- Structure of the statement. Make double spacings between paragraphs so that the text can be more readable. Also, you can get the best residency personal statement help from us.
EXCEPTIONALLY IMPORTANT ADVICE: Programs view personal statements as black-and-white ASCII text that is in Courier New 10pt font.
Things Worth Avoiding:
- Self-praising statements.
- Self-centered claims.
- Overly emotional stories about yourself. Stories focused on your emotions and feelings undermine your credibility.
- A weird writing style.
- Inappropriate comparisons and vague metaphors.
- Quotations. There’s not enough space for quotations in personal statements, so try to avoid them as well.
- Sentence structures and word combinations that are difficult to perceive. The committee is bombarded with applications every day, so they will be grateful if you do not incorporate them.
Let’s investigate the ERAS application cost, which you need to consider!
Your ERAS personal statement can be remembered in a good or bad way, depending on various features and your actual academic and job experience. While your story of how you have been acquiring education in medicine is compelling in the eyes of some people, others will find it tedious and banal. If you feel like nothing meaningful is left to say, you had better ask professional writers to compose your residency personal statement because this brief piece of writing can literally determine your future. Also, there is an interesting article about common mistakes in writing a residency interview thank-you letter.
A well-written ERAS personal statement is the first step on your way to an excellent career. Don’t lose your opportunity and get help from our professional writers straight away!
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