Among the factors that can contribute to medical specialty choice is the magnitude of opportunity. This unique view of program data reveal which specialties offer the greatest number of first-year residency positions. 

To get you started within a specialty, each link takes you to a list of the 10 programs offering the most first-year positions for that specialty.  

Rankings are based on FREIDA™ data updated from Jan. 1–Dec. 31, 2022. FREIDA™, the AMA Residency & Fellowship Database®, allows medical students to search for a residency or fellowship from more than 13,000 programs—all accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.

In 2022, FREIDA users tallied more than 6 million views of residency programs. With this collection, we draw from more than 60,000 first-year residency positions to share the 10 specialties that offer the most first-year medical residency positions. 

Most first-year medical residency positions of 2022

1. Internal medicine –12,475 first-year residency positions (including preliminary positions)

2. Family medicine – 5,487 first-year residency positions

3. Pediatrics – 3,317 first-year residency positions

4. Surgery-general – 3,145 first-year residency positions (including preliminary positions) 

5. Emergency medicine – 3,094 first-year residency positions  

6. Psychiatry – 2,177 first-year residency positions 

7. Transitional year – 2,103 first-year residency positions

8. Anesthesiology – 1,883 first-year residency positions 

9. Obstetrics and gynecology – 1,608 first-year residency positions 

10. Radiology-diagnostic – 1,231 first-year residency positions