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Medical School Welcome Newsletter

Dear Medical School Officials and Administrators,

The National Resident Matching Program® (NRMP®) is pleased to welcome you to the 2026 Main Residency Match®! Registration opens at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, September 15. Below is information on getting started as well as links to important resources. 

The NRMP is looking forward to a great Match!

Match Calendars and Resources

Review the 2026 Main Residency Match Calendar to keep track of Match deadlines for you and your students throughout the process. Match Week and the Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program® (SOAP®) will be March 16-20, with Match Day on March 20, 2026. 

The Match Week and SOAP schedule can be found on the NRMP website along with FAQs, step-by-step support guides, and Match checklists to help you navigate the Match process.

Educational Webinars

The NRMP hosted an Introduction to the 2026 Main Residency Match for Medical Schools webinar on Tuesday, September 9. The webinar provides school officials and administrators an overview of the Match process, important policies, responsibilities, and resources available as you move through the Match process.

The NRMP also released an Introduction to the 2026 Main Residency Match for Applicants webinar. The webinar provides an overview of Match processes and policies to assist your students as they prepare to register for the Match along with important information on applicant eligibility requirements, various application services, and NRMP’s Program Directory.

Getting Ready

On September 15, school officials and administrators will receive an email with instructions for Match registration. The NRMP’s Registration, Ranking, and Results® (R3®) system is used by school officials to verify students’ and graduates’ credentials, monitor Match participation status, and obtain Match results and statistics. Once registered, school officials should get started on the Medical School Match Checklist. 

Below are links to other resources to prepare you for the Match.

IMPORTANT! The AAMC ID is highly recommended, but not required, for applicants to register for the Main Residency Match. Encourage your students to enter their AAMC ID in their Match registration, if they have one.

Program Directory for Applicants

In light of the various application services being used by some specialties and programs, there is a requirement for programs to disclose to applicants, at the start of recruitment, the application service or process their program will require applicants to use for both the matching algorithm and SOAP.

The NRMP maintains a Program Directory for applicants, displaying participating program information and the application service programs are using, where provided, for over 6,600 PGY-1 and PGY-2 programs. The directory has been updated since May 1, when residency programs began updating their application service and program information in the R3 system. We encourage you to share the Program Directory with your students.

IMPORTANT! NRMP and the different application service providers (AAMC’s ERAS® and ResidencyCAS) are separate organizations and applicants must register for both the NRMP and the application service required by the program(s).

Voluntary ROL Lock Pilot for Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and Vascular Surgery

In fall of 2024, the NRMP announced the Voluntary Program Rank Order List (ROL) Lock Pilot initiative in partnership with the Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and Vascular Surgery specialties. This pilot will make it possible for a participating program to voluntarily locks its ROL prior to the certification deadline and then provide applicants with the opportunity after interviewing to attend—or not—post-interview visits so that applicants can be better informed in creating their own ROL without impacting their ranking by the program. Applicants will be able to search R3 to see if programs signed up for the pilot in the fall of 2025 and if programs locked their rank order lists in February 2026. 

Policies

During registration, medical school officials and administrators will be asked to read and electronically sign the Match Participation Agreement (MPA) for Medical Schools. The MPA outlines the rights and responsibilities of medical schools that participate in the Main Residency Match.

Every medical school official and administrator should read the MPA thoroughly because it is binding. That said, here are some important considerations:

Communicate With Clarity! At all times, medical school officials must be transparent with programs and convey all information related to an applicant’s medical school experience.

  • Be sure the Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE) contains complete and accurate information about an applicant’s journey, highlighting all academic and personal events that could bear on a program’s consideration of the applicant’s candidacy.
  • Create and upload an addendum to an MSPE if the school has confirmed knowledge the MSPE, as written, is no longer accurate.
  • Contact a program, even after a student has matched, if there is something about the student’s status (e.g., delayed graduation, transfer) that will impact the student entering the program. 

Accurate information must be maintained and communicated, verbally and in writing, throughout the application, interview, ranking, matching, and onboarding processes!

  • Respect Boundaries! Medical school officials may not request, require, or pressure an applicant to disclose their rank order lists or SOAP preferences. School officials may offer to review rank order lists or SOAP preferences to support the applicant in the matching process.
  •  Accelerated Three-Year Students Use the Match! Medical schools offering a 3-year medical education curriculum track must ensure that the school and any affiliated Match-participating programs are not entering into agreements with students regarding training positions outside the Match.

To foster and provide clarity on Match etiquette, the NRMP has a Match Code of Conduct for Medical Schools. In addition to language codified in the Match Agreement, the NRMP expects every medical school official, staff, and faculty member to:  

  • Refrain from inappropriate Match Week communication – do not share the List of Unfilled Programs with ineligible applicants and do not engage unfilled programs until programs initiate contact with eligible, unmatched applicants.
  • Respect the binding nature of the Match commitment – encourage applicants to honor their commitments and do not support their seeking alternate training without first obtaining a waiver from NRMP.

Don’t hesitate to reach out to policy@nrmp.org with any questions. We are here to help you throughout the transition. 

Access Match Data and Your New Medical School Report

The NRMP has a variety of data and research reports available to assist Main Residency Match participants. The Match Data section features curated, timely content and offers a filter option to help you find current and previously archived data reports by various reports, topics, themes, and years.

NEW CUSTOM REPORT! Charting Outcomes™: Medical School Report for the 2025 Main Residency Match® is a report uniquely tailored to each Match-participating medical school and is designed to improve transparency and foster deeper insights about senior students as they navigate the transition to residency. Tables in the report provide school-specific profiles of seniors’ Match and SOAP outcomes, specialty preferences, demographic characteristics, and ranking preferences as well as benchmarks comparing each school’s senior students’ outcomes against national data. 

How to view your custom report? To view your Charting Outcomes™: Medical School Report, log in to NRMP’s R3 system with your username and password, select “Reports” under the Options menu, and click on the report name.  

Applicant Advising Videos

The NRMP has a series of short advising videos to assist applicants in navigating the application, interview, and matching process. We encourage you to watch the timely videos and share them with your students.

Medical School Match Fees

NEW THIS YEAR! To ensure continued, comprehensive support placing students into residency and new and expanded reporting to medical schools and their students, the Board of Directors has implemented a Medical School Registered Applicants fee beginning with the 2026 Main Residency Match. 

The tiered, flat fee structure is based on the number of senior students from each school/campus who register to participate in the Match. Since the fee is based on the number of senior students from each school/campus, please email us at support@nrmp.org before the Match opens for registration on September 15 if you would like to discuss how your schools/campuses are set up in the R3 system.

At the conclusion of the Match Residency Match, the school official, school administrator, and billing contact, if one has been designated, will receive an invoice through the R3 system.

IMPORTANT! It is requested that you enter billing contact information when you log in to the R3 system to ensure receipt of the invoice. To enter a billing contact, log in to the R3 system with your username and password and click the “My School” option in the “School” dropdown menu. Billing contact information can be added under the resulting “Billing Contact” tab.

Visit the Match Fees page to learn more about preferred payment methods and applicant fees.

Support Services

Assistance is available from the NRMP support staff Monday – Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Eastern Time by emailing support@nrmp.org or calling 866-653-NRMP (6767).