There are conflicting reports on the number of applicants to ENT residencies. Some sources say the number of aplicants has been declining since a peak in 2014. Culminating in an all time low in 2017 and >10 positions going unmatched. Others say the number of applicants continues to rise and ENT is a more competetive match than it has ever been. This reportedly culminated in a “bloodbath” in the 2018-2019 match with over 30% of US senior who applied to an ENT residency not matching.
To make things even more confusing, the official organizations of the match, the AAMC and NRMP seem the have conflicting numbers about the number of applicants and match rates. Lets go through these numbers and see if we can gain some clarity on the ENT match.
ERAS (AAMC)
Stats (2014-2019)
| Year | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 |
| USMG | 482 | 494 | 445 | 463 | 563 | 570 | 467 | TBD |
| IMG | 67 | 79 | 62 | 107 | 153 | 160 | 65 | TBD |
NRMP
Main Residency Match Data and Reports
2013 (courtesy of the Internet Archive)
2014 (courtesy of the Internet Archive))
2015 (courtesy of the Internet Archive)
2016 (courtesy of the Internet Archive)
2017 (courtesy of the Internet Archive)
2018 (NRMP)
http://www.nrmp.org/main-residency-match-data/
Applicant Dataa per NRMP
| NRMP | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 |
| Positions | 292 | 295 | 299 | 304 | 305 | 315 | 328 | TBD |
| Total Matches | 290 | 295 | 298 | 302 | 291 | 303 | 328 | TBD |
| Unmatched Positions | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 14 | 12 | 0 | TBD |
| US Senior Applicants | 387 | 376 | 375 | 314 | 303 | 299 | 398 | TBD |
| Total Applicants | 442 | 443 | 430 | 370 | 331 | 333 | 462 | TBD |
Still not totally clear on why ENT has so many more applicants in ERAS than people that submit rank lists via NRMP.
The biggest factor was probably people that wanted to apply to ENT and sent in an ERAS application. But once they saw that they had to write 50+ PSP’s (started 2015-2016) and do the ORTA phone survey (started 2016-2017) they gave up and applied to another field. Thus they never sent in a ranklist with ENT on it and didn’t show up in the NRMP numbers. With an unprecedented number of unmatched spots in 2017 and 2018, the PSPs were no longer required in 2018-2019. ORTA was still strongly suggested to those that matched.
Number of applicants ranking at least one ENT program came back up to 2013/2014 levels according to NRMP. This makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is the decline in ERAS. Was there some kind of price per application or price per specialty change that year?
Anyway, enough speculation for now.