2015 Match included largest number of registrants on record; all-time high in terms of positions offered
MONDAY, March 30, 2015 (HealthDay News) — About 6.1 percent of U.S. allopathic medical school seniors in the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) were not placed into first-year residency positions, with a higher percentage of unmatched seniors than in 2014, according to a report published by the American Medical Association.
According to the NRMP, the 2015 Match included 41,334 total registrants, of whom 34,905 were active applications. An all-time high of 30,212 positions were offered in the 2015 Match. About three-quarters of applicants were matched into first-year positions. About 93.9 percent of the 18,025 active U.S. allopathic medical school seniors were matched into first-year programs. The match rate was about 79.3 percent for the nearly 3,000 osteopathic medical school students and graduates.
According to the report, more than half of the more than 600 new first-year positions were in primary care specialties, such as family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics. Internal medicine programs offered 6,770 positions, with 98.9 percent of positions filled, nearly half with U.S. seniors. Applicants who did not match to a residency program were offered unfilled positions; 1,193 of the 1,306 unfilled positions were offered during the NRMP Match Week Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program.
“Medical education experts are concerned that the number of residency positions isn’t keeping pace with growing medical school enrollment, prompting groups to release their ideas for how to strengthen the country’s graduate medical education system,” according to the article.
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