Applying for residency
The last stage on this side. You are choosing where to spend three to seven of the hardest years of your life, mostly on information the programmes control.
What the cycle looks like
Applications go out through ERAS, interviews run through the autumn and winter, you submit a rank order list, and the NRMP algorithm matches you in March. Unmatched applicants go through SOAP in the same week.
Programme signalling — telling a limited number of programmes you are particularly interested — is now part of the process in many specialties, and how many signals you get and what they are worth differs by specialty. The NRMP and the specialty societies publish the current rules each cycle; do not run on last year’s.
How to actually compare programmes
The part where the available information is worst.
You will be shown a curriculum, a list of faculty, and a recruitment day. What decides whether those years are survivable is almost none of that. It is: how many residents left before finishing, whether duty hours are reported honestly, whether the programme director backs residents when something goes wrong, and where the graduating class actually matched for fellowship.
Programmes do not publish attrition. Ask anyway — on interview day, of residents, without faculty in the room. “Has anyone left in the last five years, and why?” is the single highest-yield question you can ask, and the way it is answered tells you as much as the answer.
Programme data from the people who trained there
Coming
On the physician side, MD-Universe collects exactly this — anonymous, structured reports from verified physicians about the programmes they trained in: how many started versus finished, fellowship match outcomes, whether duty hours were reported honestly, programme director turnover, ACGME actions.
Those reports were given under a members-only promise, so they are not published here yet. Working out what can be shared with applicants without breaking faith with the residents who reported it is a decision in progress, and this page will say plainly what the answer turns out to be.
For international medical graduates
- Certification first. ECFMG certification is the gate; its requirements and timelines are published and change, so work from the current version.
- Visa status shapes your list more than your scores do. Programmes differ in whether they sponsor, and which visa. Filter on it early rather than discovering it at interview.
- Programme history is public. Which programmes have taken IMGs before is one of the few genuinely reliable signals available to you.