E-Advising FAQs for Advisors

Thank you very much for agreeing to serve as an Eadvisor for medical students in need. We have created this site to hopefully allow for minimal stress on your part. Once you sign up, it is completely up to the student to contact you and lead the relationship over email. 

What is EAdvisor?

EAdvisor is the latest revision of the virtual advisor program. The program began as a means of providing students at medical schools without an EM program a way to find mentorship as they sought a position in an EM residency. The program was well received and the goal is to now open up the experience to students at any school.

How do I become an advisor?

All you need to do is go to the following link and sign up: Create Faculty Profile. Once you fill out and submit the faculty profile form you’re entered into the database of advisors. Please see below for a detailed list of instructions.

What are the expectations?

We hope that any interested advisor will be willing to mentor 1-3 medical students through their application and interview process. The amount of advising needed will be determined by the mentee. In general, you will likely need to help the students decide clerkships and away rotations, answer questions to help them succeed in a clerkship, and mentor them through the match process.

How many students will I receive?

You get to pick! Once your faculty profile is created, an account will be created for you that will allow you to update your availability. Too busy for a couple of months? Simply return to your profile and select “no” for the question about accepting new students and you won’t be bothered with inquiries.

How do students contact me?

Students will not initially contact you directly. Students will be able to search faculty profiles for advisors based on geography, degree, or training. They will review the available advisors in the eAdvising Directory that meet their desired criteria. Students will then fill out a request form that will be submitted to SAEM. You will then receive a notification email through SAEM letting you know that the student would like to start an advising relationship. The contact form will list their name, email, school, and year in school. Only once you agree to accept a student then you will be able to contact the student and share any desired contact information.

How do I refuse students?

If you’re not interested in advising a particular student, you will respond “no” to the initial inquiry.

Steps to obtain a student:

1. Fill out the Faculty Profile Form and hit submit. (Note: you will have to be logged in using your SAEM login and password to fill out a profile)  Important note here: no student will be able to view your email address until you accept them as an advisor. They will be able to search for an advisor using the fields MD/DO, state, region, and fellowship (if applicable). Then they will be able to view available advisors that have the fields they requested. Students then will be able to fill out a student request form and send a request to you (indicating what year of medical school, school attending, email) via SAEM. They will not get your email address until you accept them.
2. Wait until a student contacts you through SAEM. This might take a while as we are going to advertise to students though SAEM, EMRA and EMIG groups. You should get an email through SAEM with the student profile (name, email, school, MS year) asking for you to be their advisor.
3. Once a student emails you through SAEM, please respond to them Yes or No. That way if the answer is no they can find another advisor. If the answer is Yes, you then can give the student your email of choice and set up a Eadvising relationship with them.
4. If you have already obtained as many students as you would like, please go back onto the Faculty Profile page (where you initially signed up -- put the link in here) and unclick "accepting new students". You can then again go into the site once your current student has graduated to “accept new students” again.

If you have further questions or have comments about the site, please email Megan Fix at meganfix@gmail.com or Rob Cooney at cooneyrr@comcast.net. Happy Eadvising and thank you all for your time!