BOSTON, MA – Considered to be the Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, and Serena Williams combined of this year’s graduating medical school class, outstanding fourth-year medical student Tanya Cash has currently amassed 4,986 letters of recommendation (LoRs) on ERAS.
ERAS, which stands for Electronic Residency Application Service, is an online service fourth-year medical students use to apply to residency programs.
“Only a maximum of 4 letters of recommendation can be assigned to any given residency program, but a special exception has been made in the case of Ms. Cash,” explained ERAS spokesperson Liza Owens. “Programs and program directors want to read every single one of her letters. She’s an extraordinary, legendary candidate.”
To make this happen, the ERAS web site has undergone maintenance in the past 48 hours solely to accommodate the data required by Cash’s application profile.
“I only asked three attendings with whom I worked for letters, to be honest,” explained Cash, obviously overwhelmed by the outpouring of support. “The other 4,000-plus letters were completely voluntary. I don’t know what to say.”
Cash brings up a point: letter writers, even those who have done them often, need to be pestered by medical students to have them turned in on time. It’s the nature of the letter writing process. To have voluntary letters written and uploaded ahead of schedule without any reminders is completely unprecedented.
“Any program who doesn’t rank her Number 1, even those in other subspecialties, is a complete moron,” explained one of Cash’s mentors, Ray Williams. “To pass up on her would do irreparable damage to a program’s reputation. Cash is clearly a once-in-a-lifetime candidate.”
