Residency program research FAQs: How to get key information

A successful Match begins with a comprehensive application strategy through which a residency applicant identifies the residency programs that align with their goals and values. The first step in that process is conducting extensive physician residency program research.

The AMA helps medical students master the residency-application process so you can make the right decisions about your career, prepare for a knockout interview, explore residency opportunities—all so you can successfully match.

Here’s a look at some of the key questions that might arise as medical students conduct research of residency programs.

Narrowing down the type of program you want to work in is about researching your options and understanding your own wants and needs. You can begin gathering specialty information long before you apply from FREIDA™. Then, when you have more context for your career path, you begin a deeper dive. 

FREIDA is the AMA’s comprehensive residency and fellowship database and captures more than 13,000 Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)-accredited residency and fellowship programs. 

One major benefit of FREIDA is that it includes a personalized search experience, with more than 35 filters that allow users to sort programs by location (either list or map view), program type, application information, demographics, benefits, osteopathic recognition, child care availability, special tracks and more. Users can personalize and access unlimited program views, save favorite custom searches and nickname favorites to reuse with a free AMA account.  

AMA members can do even more—save programs, take notes, rate and download programs with an easy-to-use dashboard. Compare and analyze program attributes with a side-by-side tool. Calculate and prepare for residency application expenses with FREIDA’s residency calculator.

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Finding physician residency programs that align with your career ambitions and allow you to navigate life goals is not going to be a task that you complete by perusing a website or looking at a program’s Instagram account. As an applicant, you are going to be measuring where you fit best throughout the entire Match process.

In determining where to apply, David Lee, MD, offered that a very simple question—“can I see myself in this program?”—is a good starting point.

“When I began looking at residency programs, I started with looking at where I applied for medical school,” said Dr. Lee who completed his ob-gyn residency training at Beaumont Health System in Royal Oak, Michigan, which is affiliated with Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine in Auburn Hills. “A lot of that process was asking: Can I see myself being here? And when I say that I’m thinking about what the environment is like physically, socially and academically. Are their values compatible with mine?”

For medical students applying to obstetrics and gynecology, the Alignment Check Index allows ob-gyn residency applicants to compare their experiences and characteristics to the domains that residency programs consider in their own assessment of their program’s values and interests. 

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While the Match process has moved to a more holistic evaluation of applicants in recent years, there are still some metrics that residency programs may use to sort and filter applications. A student’s score on Step 2 of the United States Medical Licensing Examination is among the key metrics as are extracurricular experiences in research, leadership and community service.

When trying to determine your competitiveness for a program, one helpful method can be to solicit opinions from your network.

“It is important to find out from your mentors, not only how competitive are you, but what are the highly competitive programs, what are the middle programs and what are the safety schools or less competitive programs so that you can apply across the range of programs,” said Deborah Spitz, MD, director of residency training in the department of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at University of Chicago Medicine. “It would be a mistake if you really want to get into orthopedics to only apply to the most competitive programs, even if you are a highly competitive applicant because we know there are so many applicants. So I think that one needs to be realistic about the field, how competitive is it.”

Dive deeper:

• When it comes to submitting residency applications, cast a wide net

When determining your application strategy, mentors within the specialty you are applying to can be helpful as can speaking with residents who were formerly peers at your medical school. Beyond that, all medical schools have staff members who are experts in the Match process.

Mark Meyer, MD, senior associate dean for student affairs at the University of Kansas Medical Center is one of those experts.

“Every school in the country has an office of student affairs with a person like me there to really help, guide, shepherd and support every medical student applying to the Match,” Dr. Meyer said. “We want our students to be successful. We want them to achieve their dreams. And so, we are clearly advocating for our students.”

Dive deeper:

• Meet your Match: Perfecting your application packet  

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While the research phase of your residency selection is months before rank-order submission, considering the factors applications weigh most heavily when ranking programs might inform how you go about the research process.

Among the data, reports and research produced by the National Resident Matching Program is a survey that aims to weigh the factors to which applicants give strongest consideration when applying to and ranking programs.

Among active U.S. allopathic senior medical students ranking residency programs across all specialties in 2023, their top five considerations were: overall goodness of fit (cited by 78%); interview day experience (75%); desired geographic location (75%); work-life balance (64%); and quality of residents in program (64%).

Dive deeper:

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A relatively new offering due to interviews going online, virtual residency program open houses—taking place before the application-submission deadline—offer medical students another way to ask questions and determine their fit with a program.Leigh Eck, MD, is the internal medicine residency program director at the University of Kansas Medical Center. She said one of the advantages of open houses is they offer students the chance to speak with residents.

“When you're spending time with resident physicians, I’d recommend asking questions about the nuts and bolts of the residency program, so you better understand schedules, duty hours, work-life balance,” she said. “It’s also a chance to get an understanding of camaraderie among resident physicians. Do residents interface outside of work? How much bandwidth do residents have to be engaged in priorities outside of work like relationships and hobbies? Those are the types of questions you’ll want to ask.”

Dive deeper:

• Physician residency virtual open houses—what M4s should know

While interventions such as preference signaling aim to make the application process less cumbersome and reduce application volumes, the number of applications submitted per applicant remains high. According to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges, the average number of applications submitted by medical students from US MD-granting medical schools in 2023—the most recent data available—was about 70. The figure was greater than 90 for applicants from DO schools.

It's worth noting that figures vary widely by specialty, and that the goal is to land residency interviews. Historically, if you are able to garner invitations to around 10 residency interviews you have a strong chance of matching. Dr. Spitz cautioned that more applications doesn’t necessarily mean more interviews.

There’s data for obstetrics and gynecology that says “if you apply to 20 programs and you get 12 interviews, you will likely match. That's pretty true in psychiatry too, but I know that there are people in psychiatry that apply to 50 programs. So how to understand that? First of all, maybe they're applying to a lot of reach programs. I'm not sure that's worth their while. Secondly, maybe they're afraid, but the data suggests that if you are realistic about the 20 programs that you choose, you don't need to apply to 50 programs.”

When deciding where to apply, Dr. Spitz offered that you shouldn’t only apply to top programs.

“If you're going to apply to 15 or 20 or 30 programs, apply to a third of them that might be challenging for you to get in, apply to a third that are quite realistic based on what you know and apply to a third that are easy,” she said. “That gives you a cushion. That means even if for some fluky reason you don't get into a reach program and you don't even get into a middle program, there'll be a cushion where you'll get into a program in your field that was less competitive.”

Dive deeper:

• Meet Your Match: A realistic approach to applying
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