Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges
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The National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) was established in the early 1950s to bring order and fairness to a previously chaotic application process for internship and residency positions. Over the years many reservations were raised about the fairness of the process, specifically, that hospital programs are doing better than students are (i.e., programs obtain preferred residents more often than students receive preferred programs). This paper presents an analysis of the results of the 1986 Match. ⋯ In fact, in 20 of 22 specialty programs, the students' degree of success was greater than or equal to the success of the programs. This finding raises the question of fairness toward programs rather than students. The authors analyze factors that affected both the hospitals' and the students' degrees of success in the 1986 Match and suggest strategies for improving the Match results.