Master the ERAS Experience Section with MD Tips and Examples

What Should You Include on the ERAS Experience Section?

The ERAS Experience section is part of your residency CV. You can fill in up to 10 experiences and designate 3 of them as the “most meaningful”. You can also share any significant obstacles you faced and overcame at any point in the “impactful experiences” category. The "Hobbies and Interests" category has been moved to its own section of the ERAS experience section, where you can share more information about any hobbies or secondary interests you have. You can still include hobbies under the "Other" category, too!

Note that any of your experiences do not need to be limited to your time in medical school! Use experiences from any point in your life to enhance your ERAS application. However, remember our golden rule – quality always trumps quantity. Focus on including experiences that were truly meaningful to your growth as an individual and a professional.



“I started by compiling a list of all my experiences through my life and medical school. Then, I categorized them as volunteering, work, or research. I pared down my list in order to focus on the most important experiences to me, and to ensure that the reader wouldn’t have application reading fatigue as often times experiences just get glanced over.” – Dr. Monica Taneja, MD, Harvard South Shore, Psychiatry.

Remember that you can recycle some of your most notable experiences from your medical school application, and any activities you completed during a post-bacc program or special master’s program!

For each experience you include, you will be required to provide the following information.

Focus on including experiences that would fit into the three main categories. In other words, do not leave any of the categories blank. Try to have a balanced representation of activities in the ERAS Experience section.

How to Structure Your ERAS Experience Descriptions

The format of this residency application section is very similar to that of the AMCAS Work and Activities section, the TMDSAS Employment and Activities section, or the Experience Section of the AACOMAS application system. And if you applied to medical schools in Canada, most of you filled out some form of description of your experiences, skills, and extracurriculars.

The selected experiences section includes:

1. Up to 10 experiences that demonstrate who you are and what your passions are. For each entry, you’ll include a description, position title, organization name, start and end dates, frequency, location, and setting.
2. Your 3 Most Meaningful Experiences. From your 10 selected experiences, select 3 that had the biggest impact on you.
3. Any impactful experiences that shaped you and your journey to medicine
4. Hobbies and interests. In 300 characters, share your unique hobbies or side interests.

Your description is the most important part of every entry. You are given 750 characters to describe the activity and your responsibilities and 300 characters for the 3 most meaningful entries. Your "impactful experiences" entries also have a limit of 750 characters.

Your description must concisely demonstrate what position you held, what your responsibilities were, what kind of impact you had, and what you accomplished in this role. Make sure to dedicate some space to discuss what you learned from this experience and why it was so significant in your journey to residency. Include solid examples of how and why you learned your skills. For example, if your clinical experience taught you how to read patient histories and lab results, make sure to describe under what circumstances you learned this skill:

And while not all of your experiences have to be medically related, the characteristics you developed and lessons you learned should be applicable to medicine. For example, if you were a part of your med school's student council, committee, or organized a fundraiser, your description of this activity should include what kind of leadership lessons you learned, what organizational qualities you developed, and so on.

Interested in 7 tips to make your ERAS Application stand out:

Your residency applications are meant to demonstrate the diversity of your experiences, your versatility, and your curiosity, among other qualities. Do not write about the same experiences in all your residency components. While it's expected that you will have some overlap between your residency CV and MSPE, try not to discuss the same experiences in your residency personal statement. Additionally, keep in mind that you may be able to complete the Supplemental ERAS Application, in which you can further discuss your most important activities. Do not feel the need to emphasize the same activities and qualities over and over again to make the right impression – you will have plenty of opportunities to discuss a variety of experiences that demonstrate your strengths.

ERAS Experience Section Examples

Since we strongly encourage you to write in full sentences to add that extra bit of competitive edge to your entries, our descriptions will also be written in complete sentences.

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