Tips for applying to residency: what you need to know … Congratulations on making it to your last year of medical school. Looking back I bet you remember the day you got excepted into medical school and what a journey this has been!
Fourth year is an exciting time because you will be applying for residency, attending interviews. compiling your rank list, match day and finally having a little time to enjoy your life.
Well let’s get right into it, the reason why you came to this post in the first place.
Here are my top tips for MS4’s applying for residency:
- Have strong letters of recommendation. Ask previous fourth years who applied into the same specialty for a list of good letter writers. Many attendings are great teachers however may not be great at letter writing. Thus, it is important for you to really think about who will be a good letter writer for you. You want this individual to vouch for you and make you shine in the eyes of the residency application reviewer‘s.
I also tell students to make sure that they have at least have 3 to 4 letters. This may seem like a lot but one of your letter writers may not get your letter back to you in time for you to submit your application. OR the person simply may not write it. Hence the need for the extra letter if your able to. In One thing I did throughout my third year of medical school was to build rapport with each and every attending that I worked with. I applied into anesthesiology using a variety of letters one from a family medicine physician. Another from an internal medicine physician, another from an OB/GYN, and the last of course from an anesthesiologist. I was actually able to get my letter of recommendation from the previous program director in anesthesiology at my medical school solely off of relationships that were built.
Write a captivating
- personal statement. You want to catch the eyes of your readers right from the first sentence. I remember reading many personal statements examples online to get ideas for my own. In my search I stumbled across a personal statement that compared cooking to medicine and I loved it. This inspired me to compare something that I am extremely passionate about to anesthesiology for my own personal statement.
If you’re like most science majors writing may not be your strong suit so I encourage you to send your personal statement. 1-2 individuals that you trust to give you constructive feedback. I remember going back-and-forth with my college advisor via email with draft after draft of my personal statement. She held me to high standards and wanted the best for me so she was extremely honest and ultimately assisted me and writing a captivating statement.
- Choose meaningful experiences to include in your application. What I mean by this is that on ERAS, you will be asked to list experiences such as shadowing. Medical brigades, research, and publications. Don’t just choose any shadowing experience that you’ve ever had, choose one or two that you are able to elaborate on. Explain what you did and more importantly what you learned from that experience. A bonus is if you can explain how this may impact your future in medicine.
Overview
Keep your experiences detailed but concise. Longer does not necessarily mean better. I’ll get into this more in my post about residency interview tips; but if you are unable to remember research that you did from ages ago and are not able to elaborate on that it in an interview. I would highly suggest not including this in your ERAS app.
Overall this is the time to share your accomplishments and eloquently brag about yourself. If you are involved in some of the same activities that you were from when you completed your AMCAS application (to get into med school) don’t hesitate to go back to that application to review what you wrote in the past for ideas.
- Research the programs that you are applying to. Don’t just apply to any and all programs in your specialty. Stop stressing about applying to all the “top programs in the country”. You want to choose programs that align with what you want to gain and get out of residency. For example do you want to complete research throughout your residency then it may be best for you to go to a research oriented program. For me I found that using the website FRIEDA was a great resource for comparing/contrasting and gaining information on the majority of residency programs.
From there I would go onto each residency program website and write down features such as number of residents in the program, location, average Step 1/2 Score of the applicants and etc. I put all of this information into an Excel sheet and used this throughout interview season. I also put if I received any secondary applications or interviews from each program as a way to keep track of all of the information.
- Apply as soon as the application is open. In order for you to do this this means that you will have to have your application already completed and spell checked prior to submitting. I would encourage you to ask a trusted individual to help you go over your application for any errors. Some programs will begin to look at applications the same day ERAS officially opens! You do not want to be in a position where your application wasn’t even considered because you didn’t submit on time.
Overall I know this can be an extremely stressful time. Having to balance all of this while still going to rotations and taking tests makes it even tougher. But you’ve made it this far and you will make it through this. I hope these tips help you when applying into residency. Please leave any comments with questions that you have below!
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Xoxo,
The Active Medic