Advice for applying to anesthesiology for Match 2024 [and beyond]

Today’s inane image of the day:

A blast from the past. This was taken in the MGH Ether Dome in the summer of 2016 when I started as an anesthesiology resident. I was so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed back then!

A glimpse into competitiveness through Match data

It has been almost a decade since I applied to anesthesia residency. It’s crazy how time flies. When I applied to the specialty back in 2014, anesthesiology was a somewhat competitive specialty – for the 2015 match, there was a total of 1,859 applicants for the 1,094 PGY-1 positions offered in through 120 anesthesiology programs [of note, back in my time, there were many more advanced spots available, so of note, there were also 1,581 applicants for the 506 PGY-2 anesthesiology positions; for the sake of consistency to compare between 2014 and currently, I’m going to only focus on the PGY-1 positions]. In the 2023 match, there were a total of 2,959 applicants for the 1,609 PGY-1 positions offered through 172 anesthesiology programs [and there were 2,006 applicants for 301 PGY-2 positions].

If we only look at PGY-1 positions and assume that everyone who applied could occupy a spot, back in 2015, the match rate would be 1,094/1,859 = 58.8% while in 2023 the match rate would be 1,609/2959 = 54%.

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