Work & Activities · 9 min read
ERAS Experience Description Examples: How to Write Your 10 Activities
Published April 24, 2026
You can list up to 10 experiences on your ERAS application. For each one, you get exactly 750 characters to explain what you did. You cannot use bullet points — the ERAS portal strips them out — which leaves you staring at a blank text box, trying to compress months of clinical or volunteer work into a single paragraph that does not sound exactly like every other applicant’s.
Below is the framework for what program directors actually want to read, along with two before-and-after examples showing how rough notes turn into polished descriptions.
The 750-character framework
Program directors read thousands of applications. For your standard experiences, they do not want narrative prose. They want the facts. Your job is to answer who, what, when, where, why, and how within the 750-character limit.
The strongest descriptions follow a simple formula:
- Context. Where were you, and what was your role?
- Action. What specific tasks did you perform? Use active voice.
- Outcome. What was the result of your work?
Stop writing CV bullets in prose form. Do not waste character space explaining what the clinic or lab does; the reader knows what a free clinic is. Focus on your specific contribution.
Before and after: two worked examples
Example · Volunteer clinic
- — volunteered at free clinic downtown, about 8 months
- — saw mostly uninsured patients, lots of diabetes + htn
- — helped triage, took vitals, translated spanish sometimes
- — one guy came in w chest pain, we called 911, turned out to be MI
- — made me realize how much access matters, not just medicine
Over eight months at the Downtown Free Clinic, I served as a triage volunteer for an uninsured, predominantly Spanish-speaking patient population. My primary responsibilities included taking vitals, performing initial intakes, and serving as a medical translator for attending physicians. Managing a high volume of patients with uncontrolled diabetes and hypertension required rapid assessment skills. During one shift, I identified a patient presenting with atypical chest pain, immediately alerted the attending, and initiated a 911 transfer for what was confirmed as a myocardial infarction. This experience reinforced that effective care relies on recognizing high-acuity presentations in low-resource settings.
Why it works: It uses active verbs (served, performing, identified). It includes a specific clinical scenario without getting bogged down in storytelling. It is outcome-oriented.
Example · Clinical research
- — worked in Dr. Smith's cardiology lab for a year
- — entered data into REDCap for a study on statin adherence
- — called patients to remind them about follow-ups
- — presented a poster at a regional conference
As a research assistant in the Department of Cardiology, I managed data collection for a 200-patient retrospective cohort study evaluating statin adherence protocols. I was responsible for extracting patient history from the EMR, maintaining the REDCap database, and conducting standardized phone interviews to assess medication compliance. To reduce loss to follow-up, I implemented a revised patient outreach schedule that improved contact rates by 15%. I synthesized our preliminary findings into an abstract and presented a poster at the Regional Cardiovascular Symposium. This role developed my ability to manage clinical datasets and communicate research outcomes.
Why it works: It quantifies the work (200-patient, 15%). It explicitly names the tools used (REDCap, EMR) and ends with a concrete outcome (the poster presentation).
A smarter way to draft your experiences
Writing about yourself in 750 characters, up to 10 times, while you are on a sub-I is brutal. If you want to speed up the process, ERAS Optimizer includes an Activities Generator built for this exact step. You paste in your raw bullet notes, title, and duration, and the tool outputs a structured 750-character description that follows active-voice, impact-oriented conventions.
It does not replace your actual experiences; it just gets you from a blank page to a solid first draft in seconds. You can generate up to three activity descriptions per day on the free tier.
Your next step
Once you have your core experiences drafted, you need to decide which ones matter most. Out of your maximum of 10, you select up to three to tag as “most meaningful.” Each of those three gets an additional 300-character reflection. Look through your drafted list: the experiences that changed how you see medicine, or taught you the most about patient care, are your next priority. Our guide to choosing most meaningful experiences walks through the selection filters and the 300-character reflection in detail. For the broader framework, see our meaningful experiences guide.