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Residency Match Day 2016

News March 18, 2016

 

By its very nature, Match Day is all about the unknown. The day when fourth-year medical students in the United States simultaneously learn where they will be doing their residencies, Match Day is one of the most important milestones for seniors on their way to becoming physicians. 

It made sense, then, that just before the clock struck noon in the Maurice J. Stone, MD Commons of the Medicine Education and Research Building at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine (LKSOM) at Temple University, a group of students broke into a flash mob and performed a choreographed dance to Andy Grammer’s “Good to Be Alive (Hallelujah).” 

As the music began playing, a handful of students started to dance, making room for themselves in the center of the crowded room. With hundreds of smartphones and cameras held aloft, friends and family watched as the students channeled their excitement into a two-minute routine and gradually added more students until they had created a small swarm of matching red shirts dancing in joyous sync.

The excitement held even after the song ended and the students dispersed to meet up with friends, family and fellow students and wait for the moment they would be able to open their envelopes. With 10 seconds to go until noon, Larry Kaiser, MD, FACS, LKSOM Dean and President & CEO of Temple University Health System, began counting down to zero. As the clock struck 12:00, there was a beat of muted energy as envelopes were torn open, and the tightly-packed room erupted into cheers, laughter, smiles, hugs—even a few tears—as the students learned where they would spend the next several years of their lives.

The matching process has been compared to “rush week” for fraternities and sororities: students and teaching hospitals first try to impress each other, then they rank each other in order of preference. A computer sorts through tens of thousands of preferences and makes the matches. Then, on the same day and at the same hour, tens of thousands of students throughout the United States find out if they matched with one of their top choices.

The National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) reports that total Match registrants topped 42,000 this year, making it the largest Main Residency Match in history. The number of available positions rose to an all-time high of 30,750. 

The NRMP further reported that U.S. medical school seniors made up 17,057 of the 26,836 applicants who successfully matched to first-year residency positions, and nearly 80 percent of U.S. seniors who matched obtained one of their top three choice programs. 

After the moment of truth at noon, students began trickling over to a large board that held a map of the United States. Each grabbed a small star sticker and placed it on the city where they will perform their residencies, ready and eager to begin thanks to their hard work and perseverance at Temple. 

2016 Residency Match Results 

Top Specialties

  • 48 - Internal Medicine
  • 19 - Emergency Medicine
  • 19 - Pediatrics
  • 15 - Medicine-Preliminary
  • 15 - Radiology-Diagnostic
  • 14 - Anesthesiology
  • 13 - Family Medicine
  • 10 - Surgery-Preliminary
  • 8 - General Surgery

Download the complete residency match results sort by specialty (PDF)

Top Institutions

  • 26 - Temple University Hospital
  • 9 - Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
  • 8 - Thomas Jefferson University
  • 7 - University of Maryland Medical Center
  • 5 - Abington Memorial Hospital
  • 5 - Crozer-Chester Medical Center
  • 5 - Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center
  • 5 - Pennsylvania Hospital
  • 5 - St. Luke's University Health Network

Download the complete residency match results sorted by institution (PDF)