<Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This article needs additional citations for verification . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed . (March 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> </Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This article needs additional citations for verification . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed . (March 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> <P> Match Day is a term used widely in the graduate medical education community to represent the day when the National Resident Matching Program or NRMP releases results to applicants seeking residency and fellowship training positions in the United States . Match Day for the NRMP Main Residency Match is on the third Friday of March each year, and Match Day ceremonies occur at many of the 155 medical schools in the United States where those results are announced . Match Days for the NRMP Fellowship Matches occur throughout the year because each Fellowship Match has its own schedule of dates . Other national matching plans like the American Osteopathic Association (AOA), American Urological Association, and the San Francisco Match (Ophthalmology and Plastic Surgery) have dates on which they release their results . By participating in a national matching plan, applicants contractually agree to attend the residency, internship or fellowship programs to which they match . The same agreement applies to the programs; they are obligated to train the applicants who match to them . In 2017, Match Day hit a record - high as 35,969 U.S. and international medical school students and graduates vied for 31,757 residency positions . </P> <P> In the United States, applicants and programs that register with the NRMP participate in a process known as "the Match ." Applicants for the NRMP Main Residency Match usually begin the application process in the summer, and programs review applications and invite selected candidates for interviews held between October and February . After the interview period is over, applicants submit to the NRMP a "rank - order list" of programs where they wish to train . Similarly, residency programs submit a rank order list of applicants they prefer to train . The process is blinded so that neither applicants nor programs see each other's rank order lists . Aggregate Match results can be found on the NRMP public website . </P>

What does it mean to match in medical school