The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and Thalamus are excited to announce continued growth of their collaboration, following a successful 2025 residency and fellowship application and selection season, with significant achievements for both applicants and programs in the areas of cost reduction, improved application volumes, interview management, and data insights.
During the 2024-25 Electronic Residency Application Service® (ERAS®) recruitment season, the AAMC, in collaboration with Thalamus, introduced major enhancements to application, selection and interview management tools, as well as provided participants with novel and comprehensive data analytics, and incorporated research-validated products to support holistic review. The result: applicants and programs were able to make better strategic decisions that lowered costs for applicants and saved time applying to programs. Collectively, these efforts will continue to strengthen the physician workforce by ensuring that residents end up in training programs where they will thrive.
More than 8,000 residency and fellowship programs across 800+ institutions opted in to the complimentary offerings provided through the collaboration. This includes 90% of all residency programs adopting application, selection tools, and other resources jointly supported by the AAMC ERAS program and Thalamus.
“The AAMC’s commitment to improving the transition to residency is evident across our programs and investments — through our collaborative partnerships, ERAS program innovations, advocacy priorities, workforce research analyses, and commitment to learners throughout their career journey,” said David J. Skorton, MD, AAMC president and CEO.
Key Innovations That Drove Results This Season: Better Tools, Better Decisions
Significant upgrades to AAMC tools and resources helped drive better decisions this season, including:
- A new tiered price structure for ERAS applicants saved most applicants up to 36% and expanded access to the AAMC Fee Assistance Program (a 60% discount for eligible applicants), resulting in lower costs for applicants.
- Enhancements to the Residency Explorer™ tool provided applicants and advisors with new program-level data on interviews, program signals, and geographic alignment to be used in application strategy development -- making it the “most useful resource” for 70% of individuals surveyed.
- The integration of the ERAS platform with Thalamus streamlined workflows for programs, simplified interview scheduling for applicants, and provided student advisors with better visibility into the applicant experience. Over 750,000 interviews were scheduled through Thalamus this season, demonstrating an increase of 85% over last year.
“The evolution of the AAMC ERAS system over the last couple of years shows how we are thoughtfully approaching growth and innovation in a way that meets the needs of applicants, schools, programs, hospitals, health systems, and specialties,” said Patrick Fritz, AAMC senior director of admissions and selection application services. “And with so many programs embracing Thalamus to manage their interview processes, the overall experience for applicants has greatly improved. Beyond our successes in delivering decision-support tools and data to nearly the entire graduate medical education (GME) community this season, we are most proud to be making meaningful change to the transition to residency through initiatives such as program signaling.”
The AAMC and Thalamus provided data analytics and insights to support better decision-making this season, including:
- Interview data added to the Residency Explorer tool and the ERAS Dean’s Office WorkStation provided metrics
- Specialty data packages prepared by the AAMC for specialty societies provided trend analyses, benchmarks, and results from program signaling and geographic preference data.
- Access to Thalamus Cerebellum dashboards for institutions and programs provided an aggregate view of application and interview data, including specialty-specific benchmarking, to better guide recruitment goals.
The collaboration between the AAMC and Thalamus has achieved broad adoption and streamlined integration across the GME community.
“I am most excited about the amount of data we can now provide to the community,” said Jason Reminick, MD, MBA, MS, CEO and founder of Thalamus. “With 90 percent of residency programs participating, we have near population-level distributions on interview data which will allow for real-time analysis and better guidance to applicants, advisors, programs and specialties. There is a lot more to come from this collaboration.”
Program Signal Success
One of the most powerful, research-backed features of the AAMC ERAS program is the opportunity for program signaling. For the second consecutive year, sending program signals resulted in more targeted applications and a decrease in the number of applications per applicant. More than 90% of all ERAS-participating residency programs chose to receive programs signals during the 2024-2025 application season.
What’s Ahead for the 2026 ERAS Season
The AAMC and Thalamus have outlined a list of new features and enhancements for the upcoming 2025-2026 ERAS recruitment season:
- Thalamus Cortex will be offered as a complimentary benefit to all ERAS-participating programs to facilitate technology-assisted holistic review, including a new sandbox environment to assist with change management and program/faculty learning.
- Program signaling will continue for residency programs and expand with new functionality for fellowships.
- Specialty-specific MyERAS application enhancements will include pilots of short-answer questions, customized personal statement prompts, and program signal statements.
- Improved dashboards and AI tools will enhance data analytics and institution-level dashboards and will further refine transcript analysis and normalization tools.
- Holistic review training will include new sessions to help programs integrate selection science and use data tools effectively.
- Applicant–program fit development research will create decision aids that help programs identify well-matched candidates more efficiently.
- Strengthened AAMC-specialty partnerships will optimize recruitment strategies and improve specialty dashboards to better understand application trends.
The 2026 ERAS application season opens on June 4, 2025.
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Thalamus is a public benefit corporation and the premier, cloud-based interview management platform designed specifically for application to graduate medical education (GME) training programs. The software streamlines communication by eliminating unnecessary phone calls/emails allowing applicants to book interviews in real-time, while acting as a comprehensive applicant tracking system for residency and fellowship programs. Thalamus provides comprehensive online interview scheduling and travel coordination via a real-time scheduling system, video interview platform, AI application screening/review tool (Cortex) providing technology-assisted holistic review, and first-in-class analytics dashboard (Cerebellum). Now featured nationally at over 800+ institutions and used by nearly all applicants, Thalamus is the most comprehensive solution in GME interview management. For more information on Thalamus, please visit https://thalamusgme.com or connect with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), or YouTube.