We talk with our guest Dr. Jessica Starr, current residency program director, about being a standout residency candidate.

Why do you need to be a Stand Out candidate?

Post-Graduate Training is becoming more competitive and as a result applicants are doing more to self-brand and sell themselves. 20 years ago, if you were the leader of one organization and applied for a residency program, you most likely would get it. Now, having a single leadership experience pales in comparison to candidates with 2-3 leadership experiences, 1-3 research or quality improvement projects, and even publications. You want to shine in the sea of applicants applying for programs you are interested. You want to get your foot in the door at these programs and then do well on the onsite site interviews.

What are things programs look for in Stand Out Candidates?

• Knowledge or familiarity with the pharmacy school you are graduating from
• A well written LOI
• Great References
• A well Formatted CV (with all the criteria below)
• Research experience
• Leadership experience
• High GPA (we'll talk more about this later)
• Diverse APPE/rotation experiences
• APPE/rotation experience in the area you are applying for (e.g. hospitals or clinics)
• Work experience with preference for work experience in the area you are applying for
• Community service
• Strong self-vision of goals and how to obtain them

Lets break each of them down:

1. Knowledge of program: Unfortunately this is somewhat out of your control unless you are listening to this episode before you enter pharmacy school. The older, more prestigious the school, the more alumni will have graduated and dispersed across the nation and the more individuals who will understand the caliber of students. For example, I went to a school that was established in the 2000's. I attended East Tennessee State University, which I am proud to say has built a prestigious reputation in a short amount of time; however, when I graduated, no one outside of the region had any idea what type of program ETSU was. Therefore, when I applied to residencies out west, they most likely did not give my application much consideration. This is not something that should drastically change your evaluation of programs or application process, it is just something to consider when applying to programs far from where you attended pharmacy school.
2. Letter of Intent: The letter of intent is your 1 page (or 2) narrative and voice prior to onsite interviews. Aside from descriptions on your CV, your LOI is the only thing programs have to really hear you before they meet you. Your Letter should VERY CLEARLY and VERY SPECIFICALLY describe 3 things. First, what are your short and long-term goals and how does that relate to your desire to pursue post-graduate training. Second, why THIS program, the one getting the letter, is THE PLACE, that will allow you to achieve those goes. Third, why your experiences thus far will BENEFIT the program and help the purpose of the program! Did I mention you need to be specific?? No fluff!
3. Great References: Your reference writers need to be able to speak confidently and specifically about your clinical (or other) qualities that pertain to the post-graduate training program you are applying. You want to get individuals who will write you a POSITIVE letter of reference. Key note, people who write references a lot are better at writing references and will most likely talk about your qualities more thoroughly than someone who doesn't usually write letters, but just likes you.
4. A well Formatted CV: Needs to be perfect, error free, easily scannable, with explanations on major projects or initiatives like research, leadership/organizational involvement. You can also put bullets under APPE experiences if you want to describe those, just keep it consistent.
5. Research Experience: Research experience has really become a mandatory requirement to achieve an accredited Post-Graduate Training Program. This DOES NOT need to be a robust research study in which you are part of every process from the hypothesis to the manuscript publication. This can be performing one part of someone else's research, like writing the background section on a review article or doing a few days worth of data collection. The key is describing this on your CV. Email your mentors and faculty and ask if they have ongoing projects or projects that need help. Email your APPE preceptors ahead of time and ask if they have stuff you can work on during the APPE experience.
6. Leadership experience: Listing that you were part of an organization means nothing to program. You need to be involved. You do not need to hold officer positions (although this is a plus). You just need to be involved. How do you get involved? Ask your officers, "How can I become more involved?"
7. High GPA: This is controversial with a lot of individuals saying this does not matter as much as long as it's decent and other sources that describe a higher GPA leads to higher chances of matching to programs. It does not hurt to have a high GPA. If your GPA suffers, it just depends on what else you have going on. If you have no work experience, no leadership experience . . . basically no extracurricular experience then that is not good because it appears you just suffer academically. If you have a job in a hospital or community pharmacy and your GPA is 3.2, that's ok, because you are balancing multiple things. Just find a way to sell yourself and sell the real world experience as being more beneficial to you than having a higher GPA and no real world experience.
8. Diverse APPE/rotation experiences: Something else that is partially out of your control. Understand that programs will look not just at completed, but to-be-completed rotations. Don't stack your spring with easy rotations, they will notice this and it will hurt your chances. Ideally you just want to cram as many experiences that pertain to your Post-Graduate training program into your APPE year as much as humanly possible. You also want to front-load as many of these as you can so you can talk about these experiences during interview season. Grades are not as important as experience, so do not choose experiences based on ease of getting an A. No one cares if you get a B on an acute care APPE. They are more interested in the fact that you did an acute care APPE.
9. APPE/rotation experience in the area you are applying for (e.g. hospitals or clinics): We just talked about this!
10. Work experience with preference for work experience in the area you are applying for: Another controversial subject. Some say work experience is work experience. Others say hospital work experience is better than community work experience when applying for PGY1s in hospitals. The controversy comes from some thinking hospital work experience will make you a better PGY1 in a hospital because you understand the system better. Others will say community work experience is equally as good because it makes you more well-rounded and you will better understand what happens to patients when they are DISCHARGED from the hospital or during communications with community pharmacies.
11. Community service: It is ok if this is a school organized function. This still needs to be something you volunteered for vs had to do as a mandatory experience. It's ok if it counts as co-curricular credit, you still volunteered and did it. Advocacy is also a component of this.
12. Strong self-vision of goals and how to obtain them: This should shine in your LOI.

To standout, you need to create a plan and time-line for accomplishing all the things we discussed. Start today! Before it is too late.