Match Day 2025: Radiology programs offer more positions while applicant pool shrinks

Training programs have expanded the number of radiology positions offered while the applicant pool has contracted, according to the results from Match Day 2025, released Friday. 

A total of 52,498 applicants registered for the latest match, a 4.1% increase and the highest in the program’s 73-year history. Diagnostic and interventional radiology continue to see small but steady growth in the number of new positions offered to medical trainees each year, coupled with a high rate of filled roles (at 98%, plus). 

“Growth in positions while maintaining a high fill rate is one way to examine the perceived competitiveness of a specialty,” the National Resident Matching Program said in a statement sent to Radiology Business March 21. “Both diagnostic and interventional radiology have maintained this pattern over time, suggesting they remain competitive and of strong interest in the eyes of applicants.”

All combined radiology programs offered a total of 1,451 positions, an all-time high for Match Day and 5.2% increase over the 1,379 offered last year. However, radiology applicants are dropping, notes Francis Deng, MD, a Baltimore-based radiologist, researcher, former NRMP board member and match expert. There were 1,759 applicants—defined as individuals who interviewed and ranked a program in the match—to postgraduate year 2 (PGY-2) diagnostic radiology programs. This represents a 6.4% decrease from 2024’s match total of 1,880. 

Deng said this is the second year in a row that the total tally of applicants to radiology has dropped, falling from a peak of 2,014 in 2023. The number of radiology applicants who are U.S. MD students—the most prevalent applicant type—fell 4.4% year-over-year to 1,038 in 2025 and down from a peak of 1,175 in 2023. 

Meanwhile, match success for radiology applicants is at its highest point in the last five cycles, Deng added. He estimated a radiology match rate using the number of all matches to radiology programs divided by the number of applicants to advanced diagnostic radiology programs. The specialty’s match rate this year is 81%, which is an increase from 2024’s 73% and the highest in the last five years, Deng estimated. For U.S. MD students—the most successful applicant type—the match rate was 93%. This represents an increase from 87.3% last year and is, again, the highest mark in five years. Deng said this represents a rebound from the super-competitive cycle of 2023, when the match rate was 67.2% for all-comers and 81.1% for U.S. MD students. 

“Fill rate” represents the number of positions filled in the match divided by the number of positions offered. As noted by the NRMP, this rate is typically seen as a marker of each specialty’s competitiveness. Radiology’s fill rate this year was 98.2%, with 26 unfilled positions. Many will likely get filled by unmatched applicants through the Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program (SOAP). 

“Bottom line: Radiology programs significantly expanded this year and radiology applicants significantly dropped, resulting in greater match success for applicants than in recent years of high competition,” Deng, a neuroradiologist and assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told Radiology Business by email. 

As for why the number of radiology positions is rising, Deng offered two possible reasons: “(1) There is a radiologist shortage now and in the foreseeable future in many areas of the country, so programs feel the impetus to train more radiologists. And (2) there is increasing radiology utilization, so programs feel they have adequate case volume to support more trainees.”

On the other side, Deng speculated that radiology’s strong competitiveness the last few years, along with artificial intelligence, may have discouraged trainees. 

“I would guess one factor is that some applicants who are less competitive or would have applied to radiology as a backup specialty are deterred by the relatively low match rates in the past three years or so,” he said. “There are ebbs and flows to this phenomenon that can account for some of the year-to-year variation. Once the next crop of applicants recognizes that radiology is no longer extremely competitive, there will be a reversal in trend. Another factor is that medical students continue to have uncertainty as to whether developments in AI will have a negative disruptive effect on the specialty due to the hype on computer vision capabilities, which have further pushed into the popular consciousness in the past two years by advances in multimodal large language models. It remains to be seen whether efficiency gains in the future will be able to catch up on the growth of imaging utilization happening now.”

More match data

An overall total of 47,208 applicants submitted a certified list, ranking their order of preferred specialties to NRMP. Participants competed for 43,237 positions, representing a 4.2% increase from 2024. 

Applicants learned at noon Eastern Time on Friday where they would begin their medical training and took to social media to share the results. Matching is a momentous occasion, marking the beginning of a new chapter after years of study and clinical experience, notes the University of Miami, which had 198 medical students this year.   

“This year’s Main Residency Match marks a milestone of continued success for the graduate medical education community as a record number of applicants and residency training programs matched,” NRMP President and CEO Donna L. Lamb, MBA, said in a statement March 21. 

Two new specialties joined the match this year—public health and preventive care, along with occupational and environmental medicine. Altogether, the Main Residency Match included 6,626 certified program tracks, another all-time high and increase of 231 versus 2024. Out of the 43,237 training positions offered 94.3% filled when the matching algorithm was processed. 

The NRMP reported “continued strength” in primary care, with 20,300 categorical positions offered, an increase of 877 and new high. Applicants demonstrated renewed interest in emergency medicine after a few down years. EM offered a total of 3,068 positions, up 42 spots from last year, and achieved a 97.9% fill rate. This after EM had seen an 81.8% fill rate in 2023 (with 554 unfilled positions) before bouncing back up to 95.5% last year (135 unfilled). The American College of Emergency Physicians celebrated the results in an announcement shared Friday.

OB-GYN also continues to draw interest, despite concerns about how overturning Roe v. Wade could hurt the specialty, the NRMP noted. Only one categorical position and nine preliminary PGY-1 roles remained unfilled out of 1,604 in obstetrics and gynecology. MD seniors accounted for 69.4% of those who matched and DO seniors 19.6%. U.S. MD seniors saw increases in the percent of positions filled in a few specialties including categorical radiation oncology (a 16.7 percentage point increase), anesthesiology (1.8) and psychiatry (1.5). 

More on radiology

Members of the specialty shared excitement about interventional radiology’s results on Friday. IR matched 207 residents this year, the largest class for the profession. It also had the highest number of applicants to date, with 496 individuals applying for open positions. This represents a 3% uptick from 2024 and 48% from 2020. 

“The year-over-year growth in applications to the IR Residency Program shows the tremendous enthusiasm prospective residents have for IR and the promise IR holds for improving patients’ lives,” Saher S. Sabri, MD, secretary for the Society of Interventional Radiology, told Radiology Business March 21. 

You can read much more about Match Day 2025 on the NRMP’s website, which offers advanced data tables, match results by state and specialty, and individual program results. 

Radiology Partners also recently offered advice for individuals entering rad residencies. And the American College of Radiology published a blog March 20, detailing next steps for those who did not find a residency position.  

“Applicants who did not match into radiology this year should consider how they can work with their medical school advisors or mentors to understand why they may not have matched and receive guidance on gaining additional experience in the specialty or ways to improve their competitiveness,” the NRMP told Radiology Business. “In addition, applicants can always rely on the variety of data reports on the NRMP website to inform their conversations with their advisors and mentors about next steps.”

Johns Hopkins’ Deng said his analysis applied to the whole house of radiology including integrated IR, diagnostic radiology programs and DR-nuclear medicine-integrated programs. While the specialty saw a decrease in applicants, interest is strong. 

“Radiology remains a relatively desired specialty,” he said Friday. “There remain several hundred more applicants who want to become radiologists than there are training positions available in the U.S. each year. The vast majority of programs filled their positions in the match, and those few that did not fill probably had no trouble finding qualified candidates in the Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program during Match Week.”