One number that decreased this year was the number of specialty applicants who stated they preferred to be in a rheumatology program, which decreased to 335 applicants in the 2020 appointment year from 358 in the 2019 application year. Of the 335 applicants that stated rheumatology as the preferred specialty, 239 received fellowships in rheumatology, 2 were matched to other specialties, and 94 did not match into any program.
The decrease in applicants did not concern Dr. Jonas.
“It is still pretty robust and our match rate is in the low 70s, which makes it one of the most competitive subspecialties in internal medicine, up there with cardiology and gastroenterology,” she said. “It doesn’t really worry me.”
She opined that the reason could be that the “people who might have been not strong candidates might have just not applied because it is so competitive now,” but she cautioned that it is just musings with no specific data to say exactly what is causing the decrease in applications.
She also was not concerned that the number of unfulfilled slots increased this year compared with the previous 2 years.
“The programs that did not fill tended to be the ones that were highly focused on research,” she said. “It is not surprising that there were a couple of slots left empty. We know for certain that of all of the people who applied to rheumatology fellowships, the vast majority are interested in clinical rheumatology, in clinical care, so there are fewer applicants out there that are really interested in research slots.”
Overall across all specialties, there were 6,286 applicants with rank for 5,576 positions in appointment year 2020, of which 4,909 were matched to a specialty program. The fill rate increased slightly to 88% from 87.8% in the previous year, when there were 5,881 applicants for 5,125 program slots with 4,579 positions filled.
SOURCE: National Resident Matching Program.