How to Fill Out Your Match Application

The Match is a pivotal part of every medical student’s journey. Through this application process, fourth-year medical students and international medical graduates (IMGs) apply to their desired specialties and eagerly wait to find out whether they will begin a residency in July.

As a medical student, you’ll often hear about the Match process, and it can stir up a lot of emotions like excitement, fear, hope, and stress. To succeed in the Match process, you’ll need to submit a well-prepared application that genuinely makes you stand out among the sea of applicants. Figuring out how to highlight who you are, what you’ve accomplished, and what makes you passionate about the field you’re applying to takes time and reflection, but it’s well worth the investment. While there’s a lot to learn about the Match process the Osmosis from Elsevier team has you covered!

Understanding the Match Process

The National Resident Matching Program® (NRMP) conducts the Match process with a specialized algorithm that pairs applicants and residency programs based on their respective rank order lists (ROL). Rank order lists are based on your assessment of each program, considering factors such as your interview experience, personal preferences, and career goals. Remember, the NRMP favors applicants, so rank programs based on where you’d like to match rather than where you think residency programs might rank you.

If a match doesn’t occur with one residency program, the algorithm will continue down the respective lists.

TIP: Watch a video from the NRMP to gain more insight into the matching algorithm and a helpful checklist to help you stay on track during Match season.

The Match process spans from June to March of the following year, and there are a variety of important dates to keep in mind during this process. Before starting the Match process, review key resources to help you better understand the process.

Preparing to Fill out the Application

Once you understand what the Match entails, it’s time to gather the necessary documents to fill out your residency application. You’ll need your medical school transcript, medical student performance evaluations (MSPEs), USMLE® transcript, a COMLEX-USA® transcript (if you’re a DO student), ECFMG status report (if you’re an IMG), curriculum vitae (CV), personal statement, professional headshot, and letters of recommendation.

As you start to craft your residency application, take the time to think about how to sell your strengths and explain your weaknesses. It’s also the time to begin researching residency programs to determine which will be the right fit for you. Consider location, salary, mentorship opportunities, benefits, community versus academic hospitals, and future fellowship opportunities.

There are great tools available to research programs such as FREIDA and Residency Explorer Tool, which allow you to explore and compare numerous programs, specialties, and insights on the types of applicants that usually match the program. Thoroughly researching residency programs will help you apply smarter and answer the question you’ll undoubtedly get asked during the interview season, “why did you apply to this program?”

A Step-by-Step Guide to Filling Out the Application

When you log onto MyERAS to begin filling out your application, you’ll see a few sections you’ll need to complete. Each section is important in helping reviewers understand who you are as an applicant and the nature of your educational background, clinical experience, research experience, volunteer experience, and extracurricular activities.

Personal Information

The application’s first section is for your personal details, such as your name, address, contact information, and self-identification. While it sounds simple enough, ensuring all the details are accurate and current is crucial. It can be easy to miss a typo. However, a small error in your name or contact information can create a hurdle for residency programs when they try to contact you. Ensure this information is accurate, consistent throughout your application, and free of spelling errors.

Geographic and Training Setting Preferences

Do you remember when we discussed taking the time to research residency programs and identify your preferences for your training? Aside from deciding where to apply, it’s also something that you can elaborate on in your application. In this section of the application, you can indicate if you prefer to train in a particular area and if you prefer an urban or rural setting. When filling out this section, reflect on whether you have strong ties to a specific area of the country, have a passion for working with a particular patient population, or have no preference.

Educational Background

Next, you’ll need to list your medical school education along with your undergraduate education and postgraduate training, if applicable. This section is also an area for you to include any honor societies, scholarships, honors, awards, and professional memberships you’ve earned up to this point. This section is a great place to showcase your academic accolades. Just don’t make the mistake of assuming residency committee members are familiar with the honors or awards you mention, so make sure to include a clear and concise description for each.

Experiences

Now it’s time for the experience section, a crucial part of your application. This section helps you showcase who you are and what unique skills, qualities, and passions you will bring to a residency program. You should also use this section to showcase your involvement with the specialty you’re applying to. Program leaders value applicants who demonstrate a commitment to the specialty.

You can select up to ten experiences to detail and pick three that are the most meaningful to you. Curious as to what types of experiences you can include? Here’s a comprehensive list:

Education/Training (clerkships, elective rotations, sub-internships, observerships)
Professional organizations
Military service
Research
Teaching/mentoring
Other extracurricular activities, clubs, hobbies
Work (paid clinical and nonclinical experiences)
Volunteer/service/advocacy

Along with choosing an experience type, you can also select the frequency of your participation in the experience, a primary focus area that highlights what the experience entailed, and a key characteristic that you developed or demonstrated during the experience. You can leave these sections blank if no focus areas or key characteristics apply.

Next, let’s look at a few of the different experience types to provide you with helpful tips to make your ERAS application shine.

Clinical Experience

Your education and clinical experience are housed under one experience type in your application: Education/Training. If you reflect on your medical school journey, there are clinical rotations, sub-internships, and externships that likely stand out and may have even influenced your decision to apply to a specific specialty.

When describing these experiences in your ERAS application, it’s important to be clear and detailed about what you’ve learned, the skills you’ve developed, the patient population you’ve worked with, and your responsibilities throughout the clinical experience.

If you can include a clinical experience that is within your desired specialty, that’s a great idea. However, programs are looking for well-rounded applicants. If you have clinical experience from a different specialty that you’d like to showcase, make sure to highlight how the skills you gained will benefit your patients and make you a better physician in the long run.

Research Experience

Medical students often stand divided on research; some love it, while others prefer to avoid it altogether. No matter where you stand, including research experiences on your ERAS application is an excellent way to stand out. University-based programs often seek students with a foundation in research. If you’re planning on going into academic medicine, highlighting your research experience should be one of the focal points of your application.

When describing your experience, your goal is to clearly speak to the goal of the research, what type of research you were doing, your involvement, and the impact of the research on your career goals. Remember, it’s about quality, not quantity. If you can’t speak confidently about a research experience, you should exclude it from your application.

Also, keep in mind that publications and presentations are in a separate portion of your application under publications. You don’t need to include duplicate information on your application; decide which section makes the most sense for your research.

Volunteer and Extracurricular Activities

Including volunteer experiences and extracurricular activities in your experience section is another way to demonstrate how well-rounded you are as an applicant. Interviewers aren’t looking for students who are only good at passing exams. They’re also interested in applicants who showcase skills such as leadership, teamwork, and involvement within the community.

When it comes to choosing the activities to include, figure out how they’ve shaped you, your degree of involvement, how passionate you are about them, and what they tell your interviewers about you as a person. Think about the qualities you can discuss in the description of each of these experiences and how they can help you succeed as a resident.

Letters of Recommendation

Before you can speak with any residency committee, your application, including your letters of recommendation and personal statement, represents you on paper. Now that we’ve taken a deeper look into the application let’s shift our focus to the letters of recommendation.

These letters should be well-written, impactful, and shine a light on the qualities that make you a stellar resident physician. Your letter writers can be professors, mentors, or attendings with whom you’ve built a professional bond during medical school or beyond. Don’t focus on getting generic letters from individuals who don’t know you well. Your letters should highlight your clinical skills, who you are as a person, and your strengths.

Check out these tips for getting meaningful letters of recommendation:

Ask early! You don’t want your letters of recommendation submitted late.
Don’t forget to ask for letters of recommendation from attendings you’ve impressed during clinical rotations.
Send an email with your CV, personal statement, and a headshot to your letter writers.
Make sure to include any pertinent experiences or relevant patient interactions.
After your letters are uploaded, don’t forget to send thank you letters to show your gratitude.

Personal Statement

Let’s discuss the importance of the personal statement for the Match application. Creating a compelling personal statement will take lots of reflection and revisions, but having a framework of key components to include will make it easier.

First, you need to grab your readers’ attention quickly using a strong introduction. Residency programs receive countless applications, so you must hook them and keep their attention within the first few sentences. The rest of your personal statement should detail your skills, explain any red flags or challenges you’ve dealt with, highlight relevant experiences, and display why you’re an ideal residency candidate.

To tailor your personal statement to reflect your unique experiences and aspirations, take some time to ask yourself a few questions:

What skills do I have that make this specialty a fit for me?
How can I explain any red flags?
What experience has led me to this specialty?
How do I want to impact this field?
What makes me unique in medicine and beyond?

If you need a brainstorming session for your personal statement, see where these questions lead you.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

You’ve read a lot about what you should include in your Match application. Now it’s time to discuss the common Match application mistakes to avoid!

When crafting your application keep an eye out for the following:

Inaccuracies and typos in your application
Overloading the application with irrelevant details
Failing to adhere to character limits and formatting guidelines
Letter writers submitting your letters of recommendation late

Overall, these mistakes can make you look like someone who is disorganized or lacks attention to detail. Remember, the goal is to stand out and get invited for an interview. Programs receive countless applications, so provide relevant, accurate, and well-organized information on your application and skip the fluff!

Finalizing Your Application

Finishing your Match application feels like crossing the finish line of a marathon, and it’s definitely worth celebrating! Before you kick off your celebration, review your application multiple times. It can be easy to miss a mistake. So, give yourself enough time to review it (a few times, ideally) with fresh eyes.

Seeking feedback from your mentors or trusted peers is also invaluable. They can help identify strong parts of your application and the parts that need more fine-tuning. Each Match cycle is different, so review all the requirements and ensure your application is complete before submitting it.

Conclusion

Hopefully, after checking out these tips, you feel more confident about applying to the Match! As you work on your application, focus on being exceptionally thorough and crafting a thoughtful application that highlights your unique qualities and experiences. This process can feel daunting, but starting early and seeking help when needed will make it more manageable. Many students have gone through the Match process and successfully matched, and you will be no different. There are patients out there who need doctors just like you, so make sure to work hard on your application so that you can succeed during Match season.

Good luck, and we’ll see you in March for the Match!

Some Helpful Match Resources

Learn more about the Match process:

The Osmosis Ultimate Guide to the NRMP® Match
Association of American Medical Colleges® (AAMC) Guide to Applying to Residency
NRMP’s Guide to the Residency Match
AAMC Specialty Residency Forum
American Medical Association® (AMA) Specialty Guide

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