FAQs for ERAS® Residency Applicants

The ERAS application can include the following supporting documents:

• Personal Statement
• Letter(s) of Recommendation (LoRs)
• USMLE Transcript (optional)
• COMLEX-USA Transcript (optional)
• Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE or “Dean’s Letter”)
• Medical School Transcript
• Photo (optional)
• ECFMG Status Report (International Medical Graduates only)

The ERAS system will not collect or process any applicant documents. Supporting documents are received and processed by your Designated Dean’s Office. LoRs must be uploaded by the LoR Author via the ERAS Letter of Recommendation Portal (LoRP).

Yes, Personal Statements can be edited at any point during the application season – even when assigned to programs applied to.

You may have an unlimited amount of LoRs uploaded; however, only a maximum of four (4) LoRs can be assigned to a given program. Four (4) being the maximum the system will allow, not what is required. Applicants should research individual program requirements to determine what is required when applying to a program.

In addition to being able to track the status of your LoRs on the Letter of Recommendation page in the MyERAS portal, you will receive a notification in the MyERAS Message Center for each LoR that is uploaded by your LoR Authors. A copy of this notification is also sent to the email address listed for your MyERAS account.

You can check the Assignments Report (under the Programs Tab in the MyERAS portal) to ensure all supporting documents were assigned and sent properly to the programs you applied to. The checklist shows the assigned documents’ status for all saved and applied programs.

Some programs may request a standardized form/letter in addition to or instead of a narrative letter. These are still considered LoRs and should be handled in the same fashion as stand-alone narrative LoRs. You will still need to enter and confirm the LoR information in the MyERAS system and provide the LoR Author with a Letter Request Form.

If the standardized form/letter is requested in addition to the narrative letter, both documents should be uploaded as one single PDF file. Otherwise, the standardized form/letter should be uploaded alone. These instructions are included in the Letter Request Form for the LoR Author.

No, the Dean’s Letter/MSPE is not considered a LoR and will not deduct from the four (4) LoRs that can be assigned to a program.

Yes, the NBME or ECFMG (for IMG Residency Applicants) charges a fee of $80 for transmitting USMLE transcripts to the programs designated by the applicant. This is a flat fee assessed once per application season regardless of the number of programs the USMLE transcript is requested for.

Yes, the NBOME charges a fee of $80 for transmitting COMLEX-USA transcripts to the programs designated by the applicant. This is a flat fee assessed once per application season regardless of the number of programs the COMLEX-USA transcript is requested for.

Once you have released your USMLE and/or COMLEX-USA transcript, assigned it to program(s) and paid the transcript fee, the ERAS system will send your transcript requests for those programs to the NBME, ECFMG (for IMG Residency) or NBOME.

Exam transcript requests are usually processed on the same day but in special circumstances, it can take up to 5 business days from the date of your request for exam score transcripts to be processed and made available to programs. When new transcript scores are uploaded, the most recent upload date will display in the MyERAS portal.

Document assignments will be locked upon applying to a program or when assigning a document to a program you previously applied to. Once a document assignment is locked you will not be able to change it. You may only change document assignments prior to applying to a program. This applies to all document types except Personal Statements. Personal Statement assignments can be changed at any time throughout the season, even after applying to programs.

Yes, applicants must assign any newly uploaded documents after a bulk assignment. Applicants must designate the assignment of documents to each program. We encourage applicants to use the Assignments Checklist report to ensure all documents are properly assigned to programs and avoid missing documents. The MyERAS User Guide includes additional information about the Assignments Checklist. 

Discrepancies between transcripts, MSPE (Medical Student Performance Evaluations), and what students report are not new. In the past, these differences stemmed from variations in how schools report on transcripts explained within the MSPE and advised their students on how to respond. The intent of the updated question allows for applicants to ensure they can adequately address, through their own words, their unplanned academic or professionalism issues that caused an interruption or extension and what they may have learned from the event(s). The MSPE should still provide nuanced detail that the applicant may or may not include in their short response. The goal is that programs can triangulate the information to understand how the medical school and applicant addressed and grew from the event(s). The AAMC encourages all applicants with medical school interruptions and extensions to work closely with their medical schools when responding to this question.