Match Day (medicine)

Match Day is a term used widely in the graduate medical education community to represent the day when the National Resident Matching Program or NRMP releases results to applicants seeking residency and fellowship training positions in the United States.

In 2017, Match Day hit a record-high as 35,969 U.S. and international medical school students and graduates vied for 31,757 residency positions.

[1] In the United States, senior medical students (both MD and DO) applicants and residency programs that register with the NRMP participate in a process known as "the Match."

Similarly, residency programs submit a rank order list of applicants they prefer to train.

Although the majority of U.S. medical school seniors match to one of their top three program choices, applicants may match to programs lower on their rank order list, especially when their preferred specialty for training is among competitive specialties such as Plastic Surgery, Dermatology, Neurosurgery, Ophthalmology, Urology, Orthopedics, Otolaryngology, and Radiation Oncology.