For medical students counting down the hours to Match Week—first to find out if they’ve matched on Monday, March 17, then to find out their destination on Friday, March 20—there’s an air of ambiguity surrounding the final few strides in a marathon process. Instead of allowing uncertainty to become a stressor, applicants should know that data from the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) offers reason for optimism.
During a recent episode of the “AMA Making the Rounds Podcast,” the NRMP’s chief operating offer, Laurie Curtin, PhD, shared insights on Match data trends. Her message? The Match works, and applicants can rely on the data. Here are a few key takeaways. Here are a few key takeaways.
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Consistent Match rates
Match rates have remained remarkably consistent over many years across all applicant types. The Match rate for senior applicants from MD- and DO-granting medical schools is typically around 90-94%, Curtin said.
In 2024, U.S. MD senior applicants matched at a 93.5% clip, while DO seniors matched at a 92.3% rate, an all-time high. Since 2019, the DO senior match rate has risen by 4.2 percentage points.
Among applicants who graduated from international medical schools (IMGs), U.S. citizen IMGs tend to have a stronger Match rate than noncitizens. In 2024, U.S. citizen IMGs registered a 67% match rate while non-U.S. citizen IMGs realized a 58.5% match rate.
"Getting ready for the Match, moving through the Match, submitting those certified rank-order lists works well at getting applicants into training programs for residency," Curtin said.
New placement rate metrics provide deeper insight into training
In its analysis of 2024 data, the NRMP added placement-rate metrics that encompass the results of the matching algorithm as well as the numbers of applicants who accepted offers through the Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program (SOAP). The latter is a vehicle through which eligible unmatched and partially matched applicants can apply for and are offered positions that were not filled when the matching algorithm was initially processed.
The placement-rate data from 2024 revealed a 79.7%, match rate for registered applicants with an increase to 85.1% for applicants who submitted a rank-order list for the Main Residency Match. Between both the Main Residency Match and SOAP, the placement rate for U.S. MD seniors who certified a Match rank-order list was 97.9% and for U.S. DO seniors, it was 98.5%.
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Specialties have outlier years
The field of available positions through SOAP may be affected by specialty-specific trends.
"In 2023, emergency medicine had a little bit of a hiccup in the Match,” Curtin said. “The fill rate that year was 81.5%, down from 92.5% the year before. Moving into 2024 Match, there was a sizable rebound with a fill rate of 95.5%."
Conversely, pediatrics saw an unexpected decline in fill rate in 2024. At 92%, the fill rate for pediatric positions remained high, but that figure also represented a drop of 5 percentage points from the prior year.
While specialties may experience short-term fluctuations, often driven by changes in the landscape such as increased demand on physicians during COVID, long-term trends are stable and predictable.
“There are ebbs and flows during each Match season,” Curtin said. “Some are more pronounced, like with emergency medicine back in 2023. But we certainly do see ebbs and flows, even if you look at a broader sort of scope or scale, a five or a 10-year trend."
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Stiff competition exists
In some specialties, the demand for positions simply outweighs the number available. A group of specialties Curtin dubbed “the perennials”—which includes most surgical subspecialties, obstetrics and gynecology, dermatology and otolaryngology, among others—remain highly competitive on an annual basis.
Still, not finding a match in one of those specialties doesn’t mean there are no options for applicants. In the 2024 Main Residency Match, the average number of specialties ranked for matched U.S. MD and DO seniors was 1.2., which indicates consideration of more than one specialty of interest when exploring options for training.
That type of strategic applying yields benefits, Curtin said.
"When the number of applicants interested in a specialty exceeds the number of available positions ... we certainly would encourage them to have another specialty [in mind],” she said. “Hopefully, there's something else that sort of lights a fire for them, and they're willing to apply and interview with those programs as well so they can make more well-rounded choices when it comes to submitting that rank list."
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An IMG uptick in primary care
Match rates among IMGs tend to see more fluctuation than those for U.S. medical school senior applicants. Still, data consistently point to IMGs continuing to be a crucial part of the primary care workforce, particularly in internal medicine.
"In 2024 alone, more than 40% of the categorical—those first-year full-course training internal medicine positions—were filled by international medical graduates," Curtin said. That is especially true for non-U.S. IMGs, for whom the share matched to categorical internal medicine programs rose from 24.3% in 2020 to 30.3% last year.
“We see year over year in the data that international medical graduates are an important piece of the primary care landscape, certainly true for internal medicine but also family medicine and pediatrics. In recent years, the numbers of IMGs matching to other specialties like emergency medicine and neurology has also grown. NRMP data offers great insight into applicant composition in specialties, how that evolves over time, and what that may mean for community access to care.”
Curtin concluded, “We know that the transition to residency is a stressful time, and we hope applicants confidently rely on NRMP data to better understand specialty outcomes in the Match and inform their own choices and strategies. We were excited to introduce placement rate metrics last year, and we remain committed to evolving our data offerings as needed, continually bringing primary source data and perspectives about the Match to the UME and GME communities.”
