ERAS application work section

[ckent]

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For the work section, are you guys filling out a reason for leaving for every job? It seems kind of stupid to me because my reason for leaving almost every job was just because I moved on to do something else, graduated, or the job was only supposed to be temporary.

 

[Weil-Felix]

I was wondering that same thing myself. I have been going ahead and giving a (very) brief explanation, though. I figure it can't hurt.

 

[Asher]

For summer jobs, I'm listing my reason for leaving as something like "resumed fall semester college courses" and for work study I'm listing "graduated from college." I phrased the former somewhat better but as I can't get into ERAS right now I can't put down my exact wording.

I think it would probably be better to list some reason for leaving -- you don't want the PD to think that you left because you were fired for stealing office supplies or stalking some one you worked with.

 

[Fermi]

Even if it seems stupid, you should give a reason for leaving every job. It's better to take a second to fill in "summer job; returned to school" or "graduated" than to leave a blank space in which the reviewer can speculate "fired?" "AWOL?" and so forth.

 

[Ludy]

Hmm, I don't know about that. Everyone I've talked to said, first of all, only put down jobs in med school or medically related jobs before med school, and second, there's no need to put down a reason for leaving if the dates are clearly stated as a summer job (eg, June 2000-August 2000). No PD is going to have trouble figuring that one out. All these entries are put into your ERAS CV, which you've probably seen; the PDs will quickly scan that rather than look at each entry in each box, and it's my impression that you want it to look like a CV you would type up yourself. All the CV books I've looked at (and other sources like Iserson's) agree with the above 2 recommendations. So I only listed one job, the one after my first year of med school, and didn't put a reason for leaving. The less they have to read (especially when an explanation is unnecessary), the better.