STAT

Opinion: Ideas for easing medical students’ Match Day ‘frenzy’

The Match, the brilliant algorithm that pairs medical students with residency programs on #MatchDay, is being jeopardized by the growing number of programs students apply to.

Friday, March 15, is Match Day. It’s a big deal in the medical community: At schools across the nation, fourth-year students who will get their medical degrees in a few short weeks learn their hospital assignments for the next three to seven years.

The National Residency Matching Program is an admirable invention. Now more than 30 years old, it is the system through which medical students get their first paid, professional positions. It corrected past abuses that took advantage of students, often pressuring them to accept binding offers within 24 hours of a residency interview. The Match is sufficiently noteworthy that its creator, Alvin Ross, won a Nobel Prize in economics for his work on matching theory. His algorithm continues to place half of U.S. medical school graduates in their first-choice programs. Other professions and selection processes could be improved by using a similar matching system.

Yet the Match and what leads

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from STAT

STAT2 min read
STAT+: Pharmalittle: We’re Reading About FDA Dithering On Pharma Patents, WHO Pandemic Talks, And More
When it comes to a crucial controversy over patents for drug-and-device combination products, the FDA has been MIA.
STAT1 min read
STAT+: Element Biosciences, An Illumina Rival, On Its Genomics Ambitions — And Why It Hasn’t Gone Public
Element Biosciences' modest growth comes at a time when some other players are struggling in a sequencer market dominated by Illumina.
STAT2 min read
STAT+: Pharmalittle: We’re Reading About A Boy Dying In Pfizer Trial; AstraZeneca Yanking Covid Shot, And More
A young boy died in a clinical trial for an experimental Pfizer gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, about a year after receiving the therapy.

Related Books & Audiobooks