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24th April 2023
During your Medical School research, you may be wondering: What is the “Match”? Read on to learn all about it!

The path to becoming a doctor in the US is filled with notable milestones – firstly, getting accepted into Medical School. During Medical School, you will need to pass important exams and interview for residencies. Eventually, you will need to land a postgraduate residency position during the “Match”, which will provide you with the hands-on clinical training you need to begin practicing as a licensed doctor in the US.

Simply put, the ‘Match’ is the process of securing a residency placement, which permits you to become a licensed doctor. It’s completed using the National Resident Matching Program’s (NRMP) Main Residency Match. This system places medical students into US residency programs based on a litany of criteria.

Match Week takes place during the third week in March each year. On Monday of that week, students learn whether they’ve matched with a residency program—but they don’t yet find out where they have matched until the Friday of Match Week.

If you’re currently researching Medical Schools, it’s a good idea to always consider your next goal: securing a medical residency. This is why residency placement rates should be on your list of criteria for choosing a Medical School. While your match day may not be for another few years, it’s important to understand how your chosen Medical School could equip you for a range of different post-graduate training options in the future.

St. George’s University (SGU) School of Medicine shares three considerations to look out for when it comes to assessing residency opportunities.

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* As the Medical School graduating the largest number of students annually, SGU places the largest number of graduates into residency programs each year, based on internal SGU graduate and residency placement data as of July 2022.

1. The residency placement rate

Most Medical Schools talk about residency placement rates as opposed to the total number of residencies secured, which makes it easier to compare programs of different sizes. For example, SGU has a 94% US residency placement rate for graduates over the last three years*.

2. The rate of graduates securing highly competitive residencies

While many SGU graduates pursue primary care medicine, there are certainly those who gain acceptance to residencies for some of the most competitive specialties.

On Match Day 2023, SGU students and graduates matched into 970+ first-year US residency positions across more than 20 specialties including internal medicine, orthopedic surgery, pathology, anesthesiology, and child neurology*.

SGU graduate Dr. Andrew Roorda, now a gastroenterologist, is a shining example. “SGU made me resilient,” he says. “In your clinical years, you get to go to a lot of different hospitals. It taught me how to adapt quickly to new settings.”

3. Where residency positions are secured

Becoming a doctor is important to you, but so is where you become a doctor. It’s worth noting that some US states offer many more residency slots than others, so it makes sense that a significant number of graduates would attend residencies in those locations.

SGU residency positions are secured all over the United States.

The 2023 SGU match list includes placements across 42 US states and the District of Columbia, from California to New York. To see this information for yourself, you can browse SGU’s residency placement information as far back as 2001.

Medical School can be tough at times, but obtaining a residency will make all of the effort worth it.

*Average of 2021, 2022, 2023 residency placement rate. Residency placement rate is defined as the total number of students/graduates who obtained a US residency divided by the total number of students/graduates who applied to a US residency program in a given year as of March 2023.

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