Hi everyone,
Recruitment season officially opens this morning. It will proceed unabated until February, when we post our rank lists. Nothing is more time consuming than recruitment and no effort more crucial to our success.
We’re not going to mess with our system, which works beautifully. We’ll start by screening for raw talent. Viable candidates must have superb grades, high USMLE scores, and strong letters of recommendation. They have to demonstrate academic potential with substantial research and extracurricular accomplishments. Most importantly, they have to show commitment to outstanding patient care.
We’re looking for applicants who will enrich our residency- those who will bring fresh ideas, join committees, and assume responsibility with a smile. We want residents who will leave our program better than they find it- those who will magnify the joy that makes our residency so special.
We seek many kinds of residents. We seek ethnic, racial, religious, and geographic diversity. We seek investigators, teachers, and master clinicians. We seek residents who love doing procedures and those who love diving into charts. All are welcome.
Though we’re looking for many kinds of residents, we seek certain unifying traits: Intelligence. Curiosity. Grit. Compassion. Selflessness. Humility. Kindness. We’ll try to discern these qualities within transcripts, test scores, dean’s letters, CVs, letters of recommendation, and personal statements. We’ll learn more during interviews, meals, and conversations. We’ll mine objective data and we’ll listen to our guts.
The applicants will do the same with us. They want superb training, and they’ll undoubtedly be impressed by our offerings. They want to join a residency with values that resonate with their own, and I know they’ll be inspired by the talented, dedicated, humane physicians who create our community.
I love recruitment season. The applicants’ names and faces change every year, but the goal stays the same- to recruit another extraordinary class of Yale interns. It’s going to be a spectacular year.
And with that, it’s time to open ERAS. We already have 3139 applicants.
Mark