Historically, in order to fill slots, medical residencies began to recruit earlier and earlier in medical school. In addition, there was also an “arms race” by residency programs to obtain commitments from medical students in a completely disorganized system. In order to better regulate this process, the idea of having a third party to handle the “matching” of medical students to residencies came about. Here is a great telling of the history in more detail.

Residency applicants will receive an email on Monday of Match Week from the National Resident Match Program (NRMP) letting you know if you matched, but not where you matched.

Residency applicants will receive an email on Friday of Match Week from the National Resident Match Program (NRMP) telling them what program they matched into.

Medical residency programs will find out their Match Day results on Monday of Match Week.

SOAP is the Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program that provides a systematic and organized way to fill unfilled residency slots following The Match. This is an improvement and evolution of “The Scramble”. This process, exactly as it sounds, was a sub-optimal way to fill unfilled residency slots.

All is not lost! Far from it. Depending on the program, up to 10% of slots can be filled during SOAP. Talk to your mentors, talk to your dean, and put a plan in place on the Monday of Match Week. You will go through a rapid-fire cycle of applications, and interviews which will require energy you didn’t think you previously had. You can do this!