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, 2023. 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 2023, FREIDA users tallied nearly 2 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 2023
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Internal medicine –12,846 first-year residency positions
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Family medicine – 5,596 first-year residency positions
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Pediatrics – 3,388 first-year residency positions
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Emergency medicine – 3,167 first-year residency positions
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Surgery-general – 3,109 first-year residency positions
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Psychiatry – 2,335 first-year residency positions
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Transitional year – 2,163 first-year residency positions
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Anesthesiology – 1,935 first-year residency positions
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Obstetrics and gynecology – 1,600 first-year residency positions
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Cardiovascular disease (internal medicine) – 1,261 first-year residency positions
