Emergency Medicine is one of 8 specialities that had 100% fill in the 2012 match. Of the 1,668 positions available, all of them filled. This means you couldn’t scramble into a position if you didn’t match. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible to get a position in an EM residency, but you got to play it smart. Let’s look at the numbers.
Of US Seniors ranking only Emergency Medicine in their rank list, 5% didn’t match. Of those that had a backup specialty, 12.6% didn’t match.
Summary statistics
This table summarizes a lot of the data we are about to look at. The average Step I score for someone matching in EM is 223. For step II it is 234. The average number of programs someone ranked is 10.8.
How many places should I rank?
The way to look at this chart is the bottom shows how many places a student ranked, the blue line represents US Seniors (ignore the green one). The more places you rank, the more likely you are to match (obviously) People ranking 16 or more programs all matched.
How good do my Step I scores have to be?
This graph shows probability of matching against USMLE Step I scores. So you can see, that even with a score of 200, you have an 80% chance of matching SOMEWHERE. Maybe not where you want, but somewhere.
How good do my Step II scores have to be?
For Step II, they don’t have a similar probability graph but a chart. Still you can see the same information here. If your Step II score is between 181-190, you have more of a chance of not matching than matching. Between 191-200, you have a 66% chance of matching. Obviously the higher your score, the more likely you will match.
If you want the full data, you can look at the Emergency Medicine relevant data at this link.
my peripheral brain 