Residency in the United States will be the most challenging part of your medical career. For recent medical graduates, residency in the United States is a dramatic change from student to practicing physician. For many international medical graduates, a residency in the United States will be like a “repeat” of a residency in their home country, but with the need to adapt to the specific procedures and culture in teaching hospitals in the United States. In any case, it will be helpful to learn more about residency in the United States.

Figuring out the Residency Match process (choosing and applying for residency in the U.S.) can be quite complicated and time-consuming. To that end, we have prepared this page for you on the U.S. residency process to help you gather information and prepare for this difficult step with more confidence.

Finding Residency Programs in the United States

After applying to residency programs through the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS), applicants should search for residency programs in different fields on their own.

If you are currently enrolled in a U.S. medical school, you should meet with your residency counselor to determine a few options for your residency that will meet your career goals and strengths.

Start your search with your residency placement results, which will show you the remaining openings after placement. Keep in mind that the more attractive a program is, the more likely it is that there will be no openings in popular programs. Residency positions in programs with attractive internships, high acceptance rates for students with fellowships, high pass rates on specialty exams, and strong, friendly supervisors, and a balance between teaching and working during residency usually fill up each year.

Each year, residency programs determine quotas for positions scheduled to close through the National Resident Allocation Program. ERAS receives documents from applicants, from ECFMG, and from medical schools in the United States, and from the USMLE. These documents are formatted, scanned, and assembled into individual packets that are sent electronically to all of the programs that candidates have selected in their applications.

Programs evaluate candidates’ applications and determine which candidates they want to interview during November, December and January.

List by ranking.

After interviews, programs create a list of candidates by preference (ranked list). At the same time, candidates submit their list by program ranking. Candidates are electronically allocated to programs that are ranked high on their list and who have also offered candidates a place in the program.

Students who do not receive a place after placement are usually informed the day before the results are announced. Then the students and their universities begin to look at the remaining vacancies for residency. And for the best ones, the competition immediately becomes a rush.

How to effectively write a motivation letter for a residency?

A letter of motivation certainly does not guarantee that you will be invited to an interview or that you will get a place in a program after placement, but a poorly written letter will definitely have a negative impact on your chances. So how do you write a motivation letter that reads well and clearly conveys your preferences, your qualifications, and your plans for the future?

Anatomy of a motivational letter

A personal motivational letter should not be a biography. It should have three main parts. First, it should explain what attracts you to your major. Second, it should present information about you that verifies you have the skills, qualities and abilities you need for your chosen occupation. Third, it should convey specific aspects of what you expect from the residency, a short description of your goals and a summary of your strengths that you use in the residency. And at the end, you should be sure to thank them for reviewing your application and your credentials.

Any writer will tell you that any text goes through several draft stages that need to be rewritten before it actually conveys what you want to say. You have to work with the text, deleting what’s unnecessary and picking the right words to emphasize the important points in your essay. In the final version, the text should be no more than one page long and clearly convey why you would be like a resident position in your chosen specialty.

How to prepare for an interview?

Many residency programs receive many more applications than the number of available interview slots. Receiving an invitation to an interview means that you have passed the first screening stage.