ERAS 2011 Announcements
International medical students/graduates and Fifth Pathway graduates planning to participate in ERAS 2011 must read these important announcements. ERAS 2011 Tokens can be obtained via ECFMG’s OASIS beginning on Tuesday, June 29, 2010. You can register using your Token at MyERAS beginning on Thursday, July 1, 2010.
- Instructions on Designating Letter of Recommendation (LoR) Writers in your MyERAS Application (JUL 1, 2010)
- New Process for Reusing Letters of Recommendation (JUN 10, 2010)
- ERAS Support Services Program to Be Added to the ECFMG Medical School Web Portal (JUN 10, 2010)
- ECFMG Original Document Policy Amended (JUN 10, 2010)
- An Announcement Regarding Fraudulent Letters of Recommendation (JUL 18, 2007)
Instructions on Designating Letter of Recommendation (LoR) Writers in your MyERAS Application
(Posted July 1, 2010)
ERAS Support Services at ECFMG wishes to bring to your attention the importance of providing specific LoR instructions at the time you are designating your letter writers in the Documents section of your MyERAS application.
To designate a letter writer, you must enter the letter writer’s name, title, and the department in which he/she practices medicine. You also should list the specialty(s) to which this letter will be assigned. The purpose of the “specialty(s) to which this letter will be assigned” field is to help you identify your LoRs when assigning them to programs and to help ECFMG identify LoRs when attaching them to your application. ERAS Support Services at ECFMG strongly encourages you to use this field to provide specific instructions about the specialty(s) to which you plan to assign this letter. If you do not enter specific instructions in this field, we may not be able to attach your LoR.
Important Note: If a letter writer is recommending you for a specific specialty, it is not advisable to use that LoR to apply for positions in other specialties. In this instance, you should enter only that specific specialty in the “specialty(s) to which this letter will be assigned” field in the Documents section of MyERAS. If your letter writer is assessing your performance in a specific specialty but recommending you for any specialty choice, the LoR is considered a general letter and can be assigned to any specialty. In this instance, enter the phrase “All Specialties” in the specialty(s) field.
To help ensure accuracy in attaching LoRs, ERAS Support Services at ECFMG conducts a review of the content of your LoRs and the specialty(s) you designate in your MyERAS application. We expect to receive more than 100,000 LoRs during the ERAS 2011 application season, so it is your responsibility to provide us with specific LoR instructions.
If we determine that there is a mismatch between the specialty to which you are applying and the specialty for which you have been recommended in the content of your LoR, a notification will be sent to the e-mail address in your MyERAS application. The LoR will not be attached to your application until we receive direct instructions from you, as outlined in the e-mail notification.
The AAMC has developed on-line tutorials to assist you with the application process. To view these tutorials, visit the AAMC’s Resources to Download page at http://www.aamc.org/programs/eras/applicants/resources.htm.
It is your responsibility to monitor the status of your ERAS application via the AAMC’s Applicant Document Tracking System (ADTS), available on the AAMC website at https://services.aamc.org/eras/adts2011/. If you need assistance, contact ERAS Support Services at ECFMG at (215) 386-5900 or eras-support@ecfmg.org.
New Process for Reusing Letters of Recommendation
(Posted June 10, 2010)
If you participated in the ERAS 2010 season and also participate in the ERAS 2011 season, you are considered a Repeat Applicant and therefore are not required to resubmit your Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), medical school transcript, photograph, or letters of recommendation (LoRs). New for ERAS 2011, the process for reusing LoRs has been modified.
The only LoRs that will be available for reuse are those that were transmitted to the ERAS PostOffice during the ERAS 2010 season. If you submitted an LoR but did not finalize the letter writer in MyERAS during ERAS 2010, that LoR was not transmitted to the ERAS PostOffice and will not be available for reuse for ERAS 2011.
After you have completed your request for an ERAS 2011 Token through OASIS, you will be presented with a list of the LoRs that were transmitted to the ERAS PostOffice during ERAS 2010. In order to reuse an LoR for ERAS 2011, you must select the LoR from this list and then save your selections. If you choose not to make your LoR selections at the time of your Token request, you can return to OASIS at a later date to make your selections. However, once you have saved your LoR selections in OASIS, you will not be able to make any changes to the list. If you choose to not use an LoR that you have selected, simply do not assign it to a program. If you choose to use an LoR that you did not select, you will need to resubmit it to ERAS Support Services.
The LoRs you select will be transferred to the ERAS PostOffice within one to two business days from the time that you reserve an electronic slot for the letter writer in MyERAS.
The reuse of LoRs is optional. It is especially helpful for applicants who waived their right to see an LoR and therefore could not request to have it returned to them via the ECFMG Return of Document Service (RODS). Unless the content of a letter has changed, you are strongly encouraged to reuse your LoRs.
For more information, see ERAS 2011 Repeat Applicants.
ERAS Support Services Program to Be Added to the ECFMG Medical School Web Portal
(Posted June 10, 2010)
The ECFMG Medical School Web Portal (EMSWP) provides access to ECFMG’s web-based services for international medical schools. ECFMG is currently working to expand EMSWP to include a program for ERAS Support Services.
Once implemented, international medical schools will be able to use this program to upload Medical Student Performance Evaluations (MSPEs), medical school transcripts, and letters of recommendation (LoRs) on behalf of their students and graduates; track receipt of these supporting documents by ECFMG; and verify the ERAS registration activity of their students and graduates. It is expected that this service will become available for a pilot group of international medical schools in August 2010.
ECFMG plans to extend this service to all international medical schools that have established an EMSWP account. If you are a representative of an international medical school, you may e-mail the Program Administrator, Ms. Patricia Baldwin-Browns, at ERASAdmin@ecfmg.org for information on how to establish an EMSWP account.
ECFMG Original Document Policy Amended
(Posted June 10, 2010)
In concert with the existing policy established for all U.S. medical graduates applying for residency programs and to maintain the integrity of documents reviewed by program directors via ERAS, ERAS Support Services at ECFMG requires that all letters of recommendation (LoRs) and Medical Student Performance Evaluations (MSPEs) submitted as part of an ERAS application be original documents. New for ERAS 2011, the Original Document Policy has been amended to no longer require that letter writers sign LoRs in an ink color other than black. All LoRs, however, must still be manually signed by the letter writer. LoRs with an electronic or stamped signature will be deemed copies. Applicants are reminded that photocopies of original letters also will be deemed copies, and will be annotated as described in the Original Document Policy.
The submission of copies will not cause processing delays nor will documents be rejected if copies are submitted. Additionally, this is an ECFMG requirement only. Programs have been instructed not to disregard an ERAS application based on a copy annotation.
Refer to the Original Document Policy for more information.
An Announcement Regarding Fraudulent Letters of Recommendation
(Posted July 18, 2007)
International medical students/graduates, including Fifth Pathway participants, who participate in the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS®) are reminded that the submission of fraudulent letters of recommendation to ECFMG constitutes irregular behavior, as defined by ECFMG.
