A residency match occurs when a medical resident is successfully placed in a training program under the American system for getting doctors into advanced training. Students interview with residency programs in their areas of interest at the end of medical school. Students and programs create ranked lists based on their preferences, and an automated system tries to match every student with a residency program. Students who do not match can apply for open residency positions later.
The residency match process is highly competitive, and some critics have claimed that it is unfair in some cases. Unmatched students may find themselves applying to programs in which they were previously uninterested, or even changing specialties in some cases. This is especially true for people pursuing highly competitive medical specialties such as plastic surgery, where there are frequently insufficient spots available for all graduating doctors, forcing residents to wait or change specialties.
The residency matching process begins in late medical school with applications and interviews. Students will be required to travel to a variety of programs in order to interview. Travel expenses may be covered for elite medical students, and programs may entice applicants with free lodging and other perks like meals during the interview process. Students must submit a ranked list to a matching service by a certain date each year. The same is true for all residency programs. These records are kept private.
The goal of a computer algorithm is to fill as many match requests as possible. This can be simple in some cases, such as when a student and a program both rank each other first. In other cases, the computer may have to search through a long list of students and programs to find the right match. Doctors are contractually obligated to attend the programs they matched into once the residency match information is released — an event known as “Match Day” — and programs cannot refuse the doctors assigned to them.
Students are usually told whether or not they matched several days before Match Day, but they are not told where they matched. The medical school holds a ceremony where the information is formally released. Students who did not receive a residency match should look through lists of open programs to see if there are any other opportunities. A graduating doctor is rarely unable to match into any residency program. People who don’t initially match go to different programs with the hope of later applying to transfer, or they change specialties and apply to programs with more openings.