ERAS filters

[lordman]

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I am US-IMG and have some questions regarding ERAS filters. @aProgDirector had a thread long time ago where he mentioned that some filters are easily done like names, but others are hard to like attempts. I believe the ERAS system keeps improving and would like to know if such filters exist/how do they work:

1) Year of graduation, is it from graduation to September? or March of the following year? Also, does internship year and govermental service work count as medical education or considered as a gap?

2) Is it true that there is a filter for publications? If so, just for peer reviewed papers only? Chapters? or total publications?

3) aprogdirector once mentioned that "gender, race, birth date and place, and SSN" are all blocked and there is no filter for them? In other words, does that mean the program can not filter on my US citizenship status? I thought being a US citizen gives some advantage. I am aware that it might will after coming to interview and asked by programs what visa you want and I respond I am US citizen, but I want to know if this can be filtered before interview while filtering applications. In other words, to get me the interview!

4) AMGs VS IMGs. Is it true that programs can easily filter IMGs out? even if US-IMG? Isn't this considered a type of discrimination?


I hope to receive some answers from people in charge like @aProgDirector and other kind people!

 

[mcl]

I am US-IMG and have some questions regarding ERAS filters. @aProgDirector had a thread long time ago where he mentioned that some filters are easily done like names, but others are hard to like attempts. I believe the ERAS system keeps improving and would like to know if such filters exist/how do they work:

1) Year of graduation, is it from graduation to September? or March of the following year? Also, does internship year and govermental service work count as medical education or considered as a gap?

2) Is it true that there is a filter for publications? If so, just for peer reviewed papers only? Chapters? or total publications?

3) aprogdirector once mentioned that "gender, race, birth date and place, and SSN" are all blocked and there is no filter for them? In other words, does that mean the program can not filter on my US citizenship status? I thought being a US citizen gives some advantage. I am aware that it might will after coming to interview and asked by programs what visa you want and I respond I am US citizen, but I want to know if this can be filtered before interview while filtering applications. In other words, to get me the interview!

4) AMGs VS IMGs. Is it true that programs can easily filter IMGs out? even if US-IMG? Isn't this considered a type of discrimination?


I hope to receive some answers from people in charge like @aProgDirector and other kind people!

Web-based ERAS, which I believe everyone will be using in the next cycle, provides 55 system-defined filters and allows programs to easily create a nearly infinite variety of their own. Programs use and/or create filters depending on what is important to them in the screening process.
1) Programs may calculate the year of graduation differently, but I calculate from the month/year of the applicant's medical school graduation to the potential start of training as the gap that needs to be accounted for. I would count mandatory internship year, governmental service work, residency training in another country, etc., as medical experience or training performed during the gap between graduation and the start of residency.
2) Yes, you can filter for publications in just about any permutation you can imagine--authorship, date, publication status, journal, PMID#, URL, etc.
3) Demographic information can be accessed or blocked at the program's discretion, with that set-up applying to all applications. Some programs block everything, some don't block anything. I always block birth date and ethnicity self identification, and block the photographs until we start interviews. The GME office knows what is and isn't blocked for each of its programs, and I suppose could override a program's settings if it wanted to. Programs can filter on any demographic category that isn't blocked. So in my program, I could filter for US citizenship, but I could not filter for applicants born before 1980.
4) Yes, programs can filter for pretty much any category within the application--including whether or not an applicant is an IMG.

 

[NotAProgDirector]

1) Year of graduation, is it from graduation to September? or March of the following year? Also, does internship year and govermental service work count as medical education or considered as a gap?

My answer is slightly different than mcl's. When you complete your ERAS application, you'll enter your medical school training information, including a graduation date (usually just a month/year without a day). Most programs that filter based upon "year of graduation" will filter based upon this entry. The program can set any specific mm/yyyy option as "too far in the past" to review. So, for example, if I wanted to screen out people who graduated "more than 3 years ago" and I was looking at applications in October 2014, I could set the filter to exclude all graduations less than 10/2011. Or 1/2011. It would be my choice (and not something you can really predict). So it's impossible to know when the "cutoff" is, because each program can choose a date.

As for whether your internship "counts" or not, that depends on 1) whether you include it as part of your medical school and enter your graduation date at the end of internship, or 2) whether each program measures from the end of school or the end of internship. Again, there's no way to know for certain.

2) Is it true that there is a filter for publications? If so, just for peer reviewed papers only? Chapters? or total publications?

Yes, although my guess is that most programs don't filter by publications. It's not very useful to limit apps to people who only have 3+ publications -- since that could be anything from 3 pubs in Nature Medicine or 3 presentations at your own Journal Club that you decided to list. It's complicated to make filters sort this stuff out. Instead, once you filter on easier things (YOG, med school type, USMLE/COMLEX, etc), I can then review the pubs.

There is an easy filter for "no publications" (or "any publications"). But remember that ERAS considers anything (poster, etc) a publication.

3) aprogdirector once mentioned that "gender, race, birth date and place, and SSN" are all blocked and there is no filter for them? In other words, does that mean the program can not filter on my US citizenship status? I thought being a US citizen gives some advantage. I am aware that it might will after coming to interview and asked by programs what visa you want and I respond I am US citizen, but I want to know if this can be filtered before interview while filtering applications. In other words, to get me the interview!

Agree with mcl. We screen all of the things you list, but don't screen your citizenship/visa needs.

4) AMGs VS IMGs. Is it true that programs can easily filter IMGs out? even if US-IMG? Isn't this considered a type of discrimination?

Yes, this is very easy. I can filter for US IMG's by filtering on "IMG" and "US Citizen". Or any other combination.

Is it a form of discrimination? No. It's not illegal to "discriminate" based upon where you went to school. It is illegal to discriminate based upon your racial makeup. So I can filter based upon the location of your school and your visa need, but not on your self identified race. ERAS makes it easy to do this 100% legally.

 

[lordman]

Thanks a lot @mcl @SouthernSurgeon @aProgDirector . I appreciate this 🙂

 

[mastmastdonan]

I wonder why the programs are given such robust tools for filtering and the applicants are basically given nothing?

I think applicants should similarly be allowed to filter out programs based on some criteria. Like if I am an IMG I might as well filter out any program that has its filter set to "no IMG's."

Sounds pretty unfair as it is.

 

[BoardingDoc]

I wonder why the programs are given such robust tools for filtering and the applicants are basically given nothing?

I think applicants should similarly be allowed to filter out programs based on some criteria. Like if I am an IMG I might as well filter out any program that has its filter set to "no IMG's."

Sounds pretty unfair as it is.

That doesn't make any sense. Even if a program does decide to filter out IMG applicants (or people with < 270 step 1, or people with only 3 LORs or whatever) those are their own personal sorting options. Why should those be made public? Would it help you to know that? Sure. You don't have a right to that information though. This works both ways. A program can't sort on applicants based on things like the applicant's geographic preference. If you really want to stay in the southwest but you applied all over, should you be required to divulge this information to the programs you applied to in the northeast? Absolutely not.

 

[TraumaLlamaMD]

On the other hand, to play devil's advocate, with the amount we pay per application after a certain number it would be great if we could not spend the money on programs that will never look at an app.

 

[gutonc]

On the third (and most importantly, correct) hand, these filters are fluid and iterative.

Sure...some programs are going to filter out people who need a visa, but maybe they'll go back after the first look and ditch that filter, or use another one (or 6) completely. Knowing the filters they use on Tuesday, won't help you next Friday when they run filters again.

 

[mastmastdonan]

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