I'm doing my home AI in July, and the two programs I applied to for aways only have spots available in August and September. From what I've heard, people like to have their ERAS application done by September. Would it be a mistake for me to be doing aways back to back in August and September?

I'm worried that being out of town and busy will make it impossible to do stuff like get transcripts, chase down letter writers, etc. Having not been through the process though, I'm not sure if this should be a major concern or not. So, I guess my question is, how much busy work is involved in setting up your ERAS application, and how much of it do you need to be in your home town for? Should I cancel one of my aways (and try to schedule a later one somewhere else) in order to do this?

While you can't submit your ERAS until September, you can begin filling it out on July 1. I believe on the website you can also take a look at the application prior to July to see all the things that need to be filled out and submitted when the time comes. I'm assuming getting transcripts won't be too hard because your school will upload these - for statistics purposes they want people to match, so I'm guessing that you shouldn't have much trouble getting your transcripts in. So in reality most of the stuff is under your control besides the LORs. If you think you can handle LOR-related stuff from out of town then it shouldn't stop you from doing important away rotations. I haven't applied yet however, so if any of this is wrong please chime in

You should submit your application ASAP. With that being said, many ortho programs don't really even start reviewing them until after the Dean's Letter arrives November 1st. I have been told that some simply start reviewing them in the order they were received and stop reading once they have reached a number of acceptable applicants to send invites to. You can assign a letter writer even if that letter has not been turned in to your academic office.

When you say 'submit on Sep.1' are you assuming with all of our letters complete and in-file? Because I have yet to ask for any letters, and I also wanted to get a letter from my September away rotation. Or can you send apps to programs before all your letters are in?

In order to submit applications to any program you have to complete and certify the CV portion of your application. Any research, activities, jobs, AOA status, etc cannot be changed once you certify your application. For most people, the research part is the biggest hang-up because they may be waiting for notification about pubs or presentations that haven't been announced yet and want to include everything possible in their CV.

In regard to LOR, you list your letter writers in ERAS and then when the letter is sent to your Dean's office they scan it and attach it to your application under the appropriate letter writer's name. The only thing that you have to do before applying is make sure you list your letter writers and then assign them to the various programs you are applying to. You can change the assignments later and I think you can add letter writers after certifying your app, but I'm not 100% sure about that. Some programs have cut off dates in early-mid October and you will need to make sure that you get all of your materials to them by that date, but most still download until Nov 1st (of course like someone said before, the earlier the better because you never know exactly how they do their reviewing and you don't want to delay).

When you add a program to apply to there is a page where you check boxes to send various LOR, your transcript, USMLE scores, photograph of yourself. All of those things are uploaded to ERAS once you apply by whoever is responsible for them (Dean's office, USMLE) and are downloaded by the programs whenever the program decides to begin downloading applications (it is highly variable).

In summary, the most important thing is to get you CV complete because you CANNOT change that once you certify it and you must certify it before you apply anywhere. Hope this helps. ERAS can be confusing.

AOA status, etc cannot be changed once you certify your application.

Unless things are different this year, you can change your AOA status after submitting your application. There are schools out there that announce only senior AOA in November, and you can definitely change this (and couples match status, basic demographic info, etc on the profile webpage). I think pickle is right about not being able to change publications, other awards, etc.

ERAS takes like an hour to fill out if you already have a detailed CV that you've been regularly updating. With that being said, at this point in the game, you should have a CV that you've been regularly updating... If you don't have anything to put on a CV then I'd say you better get off your butt and get to work because you're facing a poor prognosis.

Happy ERAS Day guys! I just got my token today from our Deans office and started checking out the app. It seems pretty detailed and adding >50 programs seems llike it might be a pain. But I am glad we finally have started up this process up again.

You know the part where it asks you to list "higher education" experiences? Is this the same type of thing with the medical school where we have to list ALL the schools we attended even if it was a community college where we took a 3 credit english comp class one summer or do they just want to know about where you got a degree from? I mean they're not asking us to submit transcripts or anything...

You know the part where it asks you to list "higher education" experiences? Is this the same type of thing with the medical school where we have to list ALL the schools we attended even if it was a community college where we took a 3 credit english comp class one summer or do they just want to know about where you got a degree from? I mean they're not asking us to submit transcripts or anything...

yea, i ended up not. I took Orgo at a different school during one summer, and initially had it listed as an undergrad institution. When you click the CV, it lists it as if you went there and got a degree in Orgo, so I removed it.