What are the residency prospects for graduates of offshore medical schools? 2016 update

Since I blogged about this two years ago, there is new data that may help clarify the situation for those who graduate from non-US medical schools. That post has had over 44,000 page views and 91 comments, some of which are responses from me to reader questions.

The National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) has published a 290-page summary [Characteristics of Applicants Who Matched to Their Preferred Specialty in the 2014 NRMP Main Residency Match (5th edition)] of the 2014 match, the latest year for which complete information has been analyzed.

The number of US graduates participating in that year's match was 17,374 compared to 16,896 graduates of other schools including non-US IMG's (7334), US IMGs (5133), DOs (2738), US graduates from previous years (1662), fifth pathway students (15), and Canadian grads (14).

From the Main Match Results Data for categorical general surgery in 2014:

One way to look at these numbers is that if you are US senior applying for a categorical surgery position, you have a 922/1274 or a 72% chance of matching. If you are in the "others" category, it's 283/1108 or a 25.5% chance of matching.

What are the residency prospects for graduates of offshore medical schools?

Note: I updated this information in a new post on 7/26/16.

A year ago in a post about law school applications decreasing, I speculated about whether a similar phenomenon would occur with medical schools.

In that post, I commented on the impending problem of too many medical school graduates and not enough residency training positions. I cited an article that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2011 in which the CEO of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education predicted that by 2015 or sooner there would be more graduates of US medical schools than residency positions leading to specialty certification.

The data for the 2014 residency match have not been released publicly so the outcomes for graduates of US med schools are unknown.

However, the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates says [here] that of the 26,678 residency positions offered, only 53% of US citizen graduates of offshore medical schools (US-IMGs) and 49.5% of non-US citizen offshore grads matched.