Resident Eligibility and Selection Process

To be considered, applicants must at minimum meet all requirements imposed by the UW Health Graduate Medical Education Department (UW Health GME) for credentialing and appointment. These requirements can be found in UW Health GME policies Resident and Fellow Credentialing and Conditions of Appointment and Recruitment and Selection of Residents and Fellows. Briefly, to begin employment at UW Health in a GME program, candidates must:

• Have graduated from one of the following types of medical school:
  • A U.S. or Canadian allopathic medical school accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME)
  • A U.S. osteopathic medical school accredited by the American Osteopathic Association Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation (COCA)
  • A non-U.S. or Canadian schools accredited by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG)
• Pass USMLE Steps 1 and 2 or COMLEX Levels 1 and 2.
• Be or become eligible for employment in the United States in one of the following ways:
  • S. citizenship
  • Permanent residency status (i.e., green card)
  • J-1 visa sponsored by the ECFMG
  • Employment Authorization Document

Please note that UW Health does not sponsor H1-B or other H-1 category temporary worker visas and does not accept the F-1 Optional Practical Training (OPT) visa. For more information, please see UW Health GME Non-Citizen Eligibility Requirements.

All applicants who meet minimum UW Health GME requirements identified above and submit a complete application will undergo holistic review by members of our Recruitment Committee. Review will specifically include consideration of the following departmental eligibility criteria. Applicants who do not meet all of the criteria below should address deviations in their personal statements or elsewhere in the ERAS application for consideration on a case-by-case basis. For additional details regarding our eligibility requirements, please see the Recruitment FAQ on the Department of Neurology website.

• Applicants must provide a transcript showing a ‘pass’ or passing score on USMLE Step 1 or COMLEX Level 1 at the time of initial application review to be invited to interview. A passing score on USMLE Step 2 or COMLEX Level 2 is not required before the interview, but is required for the applicant to be ranked.
• Applicants should have completed their medical education without major academic or professional difficulty (e.g., repetition or remediation of coursework, adverse administrative actions).
• Applicants should demonstrate in their application a sincere interest in the field of neurology. As medical school experiences can vary, we do not require any one particular method of showing this interest.
• Applicants should have no more than two years’ hiatus (e.g., full-time research activities, additional non-clinical education) between their last substantial clinical experience and the start of training at UW Health.

The adult neurology residency program welcomes applications from international medical graduates (IMGs). To be competitive for interview and subsequent ranking, IMG applicants must demonstrate:

• Proficiency in spoken and written English, with advanced level or higher documented in ERAS and university-level technical proficiency as assessed during the interview
• Proficiency in the use of electronic medical record systems
• At least 2 months of hands-on clinical experience in the U.S. Please see our Recruitment FAQ for more details.

We accept applications solely via the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS) and use Thalamus for interview scheduling.

Recruitment Committee members will begin reviewing applications that meet minimum eligibility criteria immediately once they are released to our program though the ERAS system. We will not review any applications until they are complete. Please see our Recruitment FAQ for additional details.

We will extend interview invitations on a rolling basis starting in early October until our schedule is fully filled. We will maintain a waitlist and may offer a few additional invitations later in the season in case of cancellations. We will not review any application materials that arrive after October 31 other than updated USMLE or COMLEX transcripts providing Step 2 or Level 2 scores.

For the 2024-2025 recruitment season, we will be holding all interviews virtually. Interviews will be scheduled through Thalamus. The interview day itself will consist of a welcome and program overview from the PD followed by individual interviews with 4 faculty members. Applicants will also have question-and-answer sessions in smaller groups with individual residents.

We also offer optional opportunities for interviewees to learn more about our program via invitations to attend our weekly morning report conferences virtually as well as invitations to resident roundtables and our ‘virtual second look’ at the end of the recruitment season. The UW Health institutional GME office will also be holding more general informational sessions for all applicants to UW Health GME programs. Participation in one or more of these sessions is entirely voluntary; attendance will not be recorded or considered during ranking. The Neurology Department is unfortunately unable to accommodate in-person ‘second look’ visits.

It is axiomatic that applicants and programs need complete and reliable information about each other to best construct their respective rank lists. There is also ample literature showing that both applicants and residency programs exaggerate their interest in one another, at times to each other’s detriment.

In order to promote the most fair and transparent matching process possible, our program has chosen to limit post-interview communication.

• We request that post-interview communications to faculty/program administration from applicants be limited to requests for objective information. These communications should ideally be directed to the PD or Program Administrator, who will then either provide the information themselves or direct the email to appropriate other faculty or department personnel.
• Our faculty and staff will not personally respond to correspondence expressing thanks or volunteering ranking preferences. We very much appreciate your interest, generally and specifically! We do also, however, want to minimize the possibility of misleading communication by limiting correspondence to the exchange of objective information.
• To further ensure transparency in our process, the program administrator and/or program manager will log all post-interview communications.