The National Resident Matching Program (NRMP), also called The Match,[1] is a United States–based private non-profit non-governmental organization created in 1952 to place U.S. medical school students into residency training programs located in United States teaching hospitals.
From shortly after the first residency programs were formally introduced in the 1920s, the hiring process was "characterized by intense competition among hospitals for (an inadequate supply) of interns.
The combination of those factors led to offers being made for positions up to two years in advance of the start of postgraduate training.
[4] In 1945, medical schools decided not to release any transcripts or permit any letters of recommendation to be written until a particular date.
In that way, they managed to move the date of residency selection back to the fourth year of medical school.
In October 1951, student representatives from 79 medical schools formed the National Student Internship Committee (NSIC) to discuss the findings of the NICI trial Match and consider an NICI proposal to replicate the Boston Pool Plan at the national level.
The organization, known as the National Intern Matching Program (NIMP), was established in 1952 at the request of medical students.
[7] Modifications to the algorithm proposed by students in 1951 were based on concerns that the matching process favored hospitals over applicants.
[12] Lloyd Shapley along with Alvin Roth, would go on to win the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics for their work on stable allocations.
[17][18] However, Fuhito Kojima and Parag Pathak in 2009 demonstrated that if the market is large and the fraction of couples is small, then a stable matching exists with high probability.
[19] A new applicant-proposing algorithm was adopted in May 1997 and has been in use since its first application in March 1998,[19] although the study showed that the net effect of the change on actual matches has been minimal.
To understand how the current NRMP algorithm works, it is helpful to begin by considering the simpler case where there are no couples or secondary programs.
"Stability" in this case means that there is no applicant A and program P such that both of the following are true: It can be shown that for any instance of the problem, there is at least one valid solution.
[27] Also, while there is no randomization in the NRMP algorithm—so it will always return the same output when given exactly the same input[28]—different outcomes can be produced by changing trivial features of the data such as the order in which applicants and programs are processed.
[29] Testing also showed that "none of [the trivial] sequencing decisions had a large or systematic effect on the matching produced"—the maximum number of applicants ever observed to be affected in a single run was 12 out of 22,938.
Applicants then applied en masse to programs that had unfilled positions, frequently having to change their preferred specialty in the process.
[34] After the 2010 Main Residency Match, the Scramble was replaced by the Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program, or SOAP.
[38] IMGs must not be completely ECFMG certified but many programs require USMLE Step 2 before "Rank Order List Submission Deadline".
The provision was sponsored by Senators Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire.