Competitiveness of MSARF FAER?

[Playbutton]

I know it's early but I was looking to apply to this program next year and was wondering if any current/past scholars had an idea of how competitive this was? For context, I have good grades but other than shadowing I have no other experiences relating to anesthesia. I also don't have that much clinical research experience (I did two years of wet lab research in undergrad that I gave a presentation on but did not amount to any publications). I would really like to match into one of the projects near my school in NY or back home in CA to save some money but was wondering if there's anything else I should do before applying?

Thanks in advance!

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[scrubsandgas123]

Hello, I recently matched at a competitive location for MSARF so to answer your question, yes it is pretty competitive and prob getting more so every year. Many people don't have a lot of anesthesia-related stuff and have research in non-anesthesia-specific topics and still get in. That's the beauty of anesthesia as it relates to pretty much anything health-care related. It's a pretty holistic app (CV, LOR, Essays, rank list) so be well-spoken in your essays, why you think MSARF can benefit you, and try to get a strong letter. I applied to do it between my M3-M4 so I already had all my rotations finished, a LOR from our gas PD, and a lot of research experiences. I had great grads, but I don't think it asked me for my transcript or anything

Ive seen anything from having no pubs and only 4-5 poster presentations to kids matching for MSARF with publications in Nature journal or Scientific Reports so just be tactical on what strengths you can play upon and where you rank (I think the schools do have a regional bias)

 

[Chris.M]

Not that competitive tbh