Match Day 2022 has come and gone. Parsing through the latest data from NRMP, it's astonishing how competitive anesthesiology residency has become. Even with an ever increasing number of residency positions, medical students hoping to get into anesthesiology have their work cut out for them.
This year, there were 1,509 PGY1 anesthesiology spots available across 165 residency programs. That is up from 1,460 last year and only 1,253 as recently as 2018. The incredible part is that, even with so many more positions, only a single one did not get filled. That's a match rate of 99.9%! That's the most competitive residency of any large specialty with more than 1,000 spots available. In fact, of all residencies with more than 500 spots available, only orthopedic surgery is more competitive, with all their PGY1 positions filled.
There were a total of 2,691 applicants for those anesthesiology residencies. Of those, 1,489 were MD Seniors. Another 505 were DO Seniors. The number of MD Seniors who matched were 1,054 or 69.8% of all who matched. DO Seniors were successful in 263 instances, or 17.4%.
Anesthesiology has become more popular over time as more medical students decided they want to get on the ROAD to riches. In 2022, anesthesiology was chosen by 5.7% of all MD Seniors. This is up from 5.6% last year. In 2018, only 4.9% of MD Seniors chose anesthesiology.
Congratulations to all the students who are now going to be anesthesiologists. You've successfully come through the gantlet of medical school and match day. Your future is brighter than ever and I can't wait to meet our new class soon.
Filling nearly all positions is a very poor metric for determining competitiveness. Given the average mean step scores per applicant, low mean number of publications per applicant, and relatively average applicant-to-position ratio (per NRMP), anesthesia is most certainly not one of the most competitive specialties, albeit one of the most beloved by medical students and physicians alike.
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