National Resident Matching Program® Releases the 2025 Main Residency Match® Results, Celebrates the Next Generation of Physicians

WASHINGTON, March 21, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Resident Matching Program® (NRMP®) proudly announces the results of the 2025 Main Residency Match® ("the Match"), the largest in its 73-year history. A total of 52,498 applicants registered for the Match, an increase of 2,085 (4.1 percent) over last year, and 47,208 of those applicants submitted a certified a rank order list ("active applicant"). This year's active applicant pool competed for 43,237 positions, an increase of 1,734 (4.2 percent) from 2024. Today at 12:00 pm ET, matched applicants learned where they will begin their medical training.

"This year's Main Residency Match marks a milestone of continued success for the graduate medical education community as a record number of applicants and residency training programs matched," said NRMP President and CEO Donna L. Lamb, DHSc, MBA, BSN. "The NRMP continues to be a service that welcomes all who wish to participate, capably advocating for and supporting the aspirations of young physicians and the priorities of residency training programs to collectively address the varied health needs of communities across the nation."

Record Breaking Program Participation. This year the NRMP welcomed two new specialties to the Match; Public Health and Preventive Medicine and Occupational and Environmental Medicine. All told, the 2025 Main Residency Match included 6,626 certified program tracks, an all-time high and increase of 231 programs over last year. Of the 43,237 training positions offered, 94.3 percent (40,764) filled when the matching algorithm was processed.

Multiple Application Service Providers. In response to the changing landscape of graduate medical education, the 2025 transition to residency cycle included for the first time multiple application services for applicants to secure residency positions. The NRMP played a pivotal role in fostering collaboration among application service providers, namely working to streamline processes, improve transparency, and fortify data integrity for a more efficient transition experience for applicants.

Performance in the Match. As the primary source of data on physician matriculation into the national pipeline, the NRMP informs constituents, health policy experts, and stakeholders within and outside the medical education community about trends, noting changes over time in match rates among distinct applicant groups, program fill rates, and applicant interest in specialties.

For the 2025 Main Residency Match:

I. Applicant Participation and Match Rates. Among all registrants, 47,208 applicants certified a rank order list of program preferences, an increase of 2,355 or 5.3 percent over last year. Of the applicants who certified a rank order list, 37,667 matched to either a categorical or preliminary (both post graduate year-1 or 'PGY-1') position, an increase of 1,683 (4.7 percent) from 2024.

• There were 8,392 active Osteopathic (DO) seniors in the 2025 Main Residency Match, an increase of 4.5 percent over last year. DO seniors achieved a 92.6 percent PGY-1 match rate, an all-time high, and an increase of 0.3 percentage points. DO senior PGY-1 match rates have grown 3.5 percentage points since 2021.
   
• U.S. MD seniors are the largest applicant type in the Match with 20,368 active applicants. At 93.5 percent, their PGY-1 match rate remained unchanged from last year, despite an increase of 3.1 percent (613) in active applicants. The U.S. MD senior PGY-1 match rate remains within the 92 – 95 percent range that has been steady since 1982.
   
• There were 4,587 active U.S. citizen international medical graduates (IMGs) in the Match, a decline of 3.5 percent, with a PGY-1 match rate of 67.8 percent, which represents a 0.8 percentage point increase over last year.
   
• Non-U.S. citizen IMGs saw a large increase in participation this year with 11,465 active applicants, up 14.4 percent over 2024. The marked increase in participation served to push the PGY-1 match rate down but only slightly, 0.5 of a percentage point, to 58.0 percent.

II. Primary Care Positions Continue to Increase. The NRMP routinely reports on the primary care specialties that provide the full training required for board certification in Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, Internal Medicine-Pediatrics, and Pediatrics.

This year's Match saw continued strength in filling primary care specialties, with 20,300 categorical positions offered, an increase of 877 positions over last year and a new high. Overall, primary care specialties earned a 93.5 percent fill rate.

• Internal Medicine increased the positions placed in the Match by 679 to 11,750, a 6.1 percent increase over 2024. The specialty filled 11,379 positions, up 7.6 percentage points, giving them a fill rate of 96.8 percent.
• Last year, the fill rate for Pediatrics declined from 97.1 to 91.8 percent. This year, Pediatrics offered 3,193 categorical and primary positions, an increase of 54 from 2024, and filled 3,043 for a 95.3 percent fill rate.
• Family Medicine saw a lower fill rate this year, filling 85.0 percent of their 5,357 positions compared to 87.8 percent last year, largely due to the increase of 144 positions placed in the Match.

III. Renewed Interest in Emergency Medicine. In 2025, Emergency Medicine offered 3,068 positions, an increase of 42 positions from 2024, and achieved a 97.9 percent fill rate, an increase of 2.4 percentage points. The specialty had experienced a decline, with an 81.8 percent fill rate in 2023 before climbing back up to a 95.5 percent fill rate in 2024. This year's performance edges Emergency Medicine even closer to its pre-Covid fill rate of 98 to 99 percent. There were 3,003 applicants who matched to the specialty, a rebound from 2023 which saw 2,456 applicants obtaining PGY-1 positions. The increase in matched applicants to Emergency Medicine is due primarily to increases in DO seniors and IMGs matching to the specialty.

IV. OB-GYN Remains Competitive. Obstetrics and Gynecology continues to be a specialty of interest as national conversations about reproductive healthcare persist in light of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization Supreme Court decision in 2023. Despite the changing policy landscape, interest in the specialty remains strong. In the 2025 Main Residency Match, only one categorical position and nine preliminary PGY-1 positions remained unfilled out of 1,604 Obstetrics and Gynecology residency positions offered. MD Seniors accounted for 69.4 percent of those who matched, while DO Seniors accounted for 19.6 percent, up from 18.9 percent in 2024. International medical graduates accounted for 6.0 percent of matched applicants in the specialty.

V. Applicant Impact on Specialty Fill Rate. Data also can be examined to assess how various applicant groups impact specialty fill rates, offering a glimpse into shifts and changes in the landscape over time of applicant and specialty preference.

Of note this year:

• U.S. DO seniors increased the percent of positions filled in several specialties including categorical Child Neurology (4.9 percentage point increase), Medicine-Pediatrics (2.9 percentage point increase), and Orthopedic Surgery (1.3 percentage point increase).
• U.S. MD seniors saw increases in the percent of positions filled in a few specialties including categorical Radiation Oncology (16.7 percentage point increase), Anesthesiology (1.8 percentage point increase), and Psychiatry (1.5 percentage point increase).
• Non-U.S. citizen IMGs saw increases in primary care, filling 33.3 percent of categorical Internal Medicine positions (a 1.9 percentage point increase), 20.4 percent of categorical Pediatrics positions (a 2.0 percentage point increase), and 17.6 percent of Family Medicine positions (a 2.2 percentage point increase).

Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program^® (SOAP^®). The NRMP's Match Week Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program (SOAP) affords eligible applicants who did not match to a residency position the opportunity to try to obtain positions that went unfilled after the matching algorithm was processed. A total of 2,521 positions were placed in SOAP, including positions in programs that did not participate in the algorithm phase of the Match. The number of available positions in SOAP represents a decline of 54 positions (2.1 percentage points) compared to last year, despite an increased number of positions in the Match, a further indication of the success of the NRMP's Matching Program for placement of young physicians in training programs.

Detailed SOAP results will be available in the Results and Data: 2025 Main Residency Match Report, which is published in the Spring.

View the Advance Data Tables, Match by the Numbers, and Match infographic for additional data and information.

About NRMP 

The National Resident Matching Program® (NRMP®) is a private, non-profit organization established in 1952 to oversee The Match®. The Match was established at the request of medical students to provide an orderly and fair mechanism for matching the preferences of applicants for U.S. residency positions with the preferences of residency program directors. In addition to the annual Main Residency Match® for more than 50,000 registrants, the NRMP also conducts Fellowship Matches for more than 75 subspecialties through its Specialties Matching Service® (SMS®).

SOURCE National Resident Matching Program