Top 10 specialties with the most medical residency positions

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

1.  Internal medicine –12,846 first-year residency positions 

2.  Family medicine – 5,596 first-year residency positions

3.  Pediatrics – 3,388 first-year residency positions

4.  Emergency medicine – 3,167 first-year residency positions

5.  Surgery-general – 3,109 first-year residency positions

6.  Psychiatry – 2,335 first-year residency positions

7.  Transitional year – 2,163 first-year residency positions

8.  Anesthesiology – 1,935 first-year residency positions

9.  Obstetrics and gynecology – 1,600 first-year residency positions

10. Cardiovascular disease (internal medicine) – 1,261 first-year residency positions