Lying on ERAS activities

[JoseyCali123]

hello everyone,

I know of certain people who have only volunteered for 1 shift at a disabled children center and stated that they worked with this organization for 3-4 years.

Why is it so easy to lie on ERAS? How can this be verifiable? people keep saying that they will be caught during interviews or whatever, but medical students are known to be able to fluff anything.

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[fasteddie911]

Absolutely people can lie or stretch the truth and likely a program won't really check but if the lie is small it probably won't really make a difference whether someone gets an invite/match. I doubt many PD's get excited over a few years of volunteering, or X interest group, etc.

 

[GoSpursGo]

Agree with above, I don't think these people are getting much help from lying, and it's a major risk because even if 95% of the time you don't get caught, the 5% you do you get screwed. So it's super risky for minimal benefit.

Basically, don't do it, and don't worry about others doing it.

 

[doc05]

hello everyone,

I know of certain people who have only volunteered for 1 shift at a disabled children center and stated that they worked with this organization for 3-4 years.

Why is it so easy to lie on ERAS? How can this be verifiable? people keep saying that they will be caught during interviews or whatever, but medical students are known to be able to fluff anything.

Why does this surprise you? People lie all the time.

 

[Apollyon]

Why does this surprise you? People lie all the time.

I did NROTC in military school, and am a smart guy. I did not commission (did not go into the US Navy as an officer). However, I can "talk the talk". I could - easily - say that I was a surface warfare officer for 3 or 5 years, and carry it off. However, that is 100% patently untrue. So, I don't.

As my learned colleague said above, don't do it, and don't worry about others doing it.

 

[colbgw02]

Doing the right thing when no one else will know either way is a real, perhaps even the best, test of character. OP, it's not always easy to do, but when it comes to these types of things, try to find your motivation internally rather than from externally. That is, recognize that doing the right thing is its own reward (deontology), rather than just doing something in order to avoid punishment (consequentialism).

 

[anonperson]

hello everyone,

I know of certain people who have only volunteered for 1 shift at a disabled children center and stated that they worked with this organization for 3-4 years.

Why is it so easy to lie on ERAS? How can this be verifiable? people keep saying that they will be caught during interviews or whatever, but medical students are known to be able to fluff anything.

It's easy to lie about that stuff because no one really cares that much about the extra curricular list.
It gets a passing glance usually and maybe an offhand remark by an interviewer in general.

Stuff like Step scores, class rank, letters etc are things PDs really care about. And these are things that really can't be faked or fluffed.

 

[operaman]

I wish you could have seen the behind the scenes background checking we were doing during our residency interviews a couple weeks ago. Not only were we fact checking things on the application, but we were contacting every resident and medical student we knew that knew the applicants. It was like a room of people on computers frantically trying to figure out who is full of crap.

Would we catch something like exaggerated volunteer hours? Probably not. Would we even notice the activity at all? Probably not. Little bits of fudging don’t really help and it definitely hurts if you get caught. If we happen to make contact with the person who runs the clinic you claim to have been intimately involved with and they don’t know who you are, it definitely gets you dinged. Just be honest and you won’t have to worry about things.

And also: be careful what you put under hobbies and interests. Don’t try to be memorable. Just be yourself. And be aware this is a professional job you’re applying for so don’t list any weird stuff.

 

[obgyny]

This was the first year that I interviewed resident applicants (as a senior resident). I don’t have time to look up stuff, but I was surprised to see the program directors and other attending interviewers did actually google some things people listed in their ERAS.

I agree with other posters that I don’t think it’s worth the risk. Extracurriculars aren’t really that important for residency anyway.

And don’t list anything you can’t talk about in an interview. I may not take the time to google things, but if I happen to ask you about something on your resume, you better know what you’re talking about. It’s easy to see when something was just “fluff” with no substance.


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[NotAProgDirector]

If it were to come to light that you had lied on your ERAS application while you were in training, you could be fired immediately.