I'm an MS4 at Texas A&M, going through this match cycle myself (applying ophtho). I'm not a company and I'm not selling anything - I built a free tool because the real numbers on signaling were either paywalled or did not exist anywhere, and I needed them for my own list.

Short version: if you matched derm this cycle, 5 minutes on a free anonymous form rebuilds the signal data the 2026 class plans with - rezumab.app/share-data. No email, no account. The why is below, but that's the ask.

Think back to building your program list - refreshing spreadsheets at 1am, trying to work out which signals were actually worth spending. Whatever data you leaned on came from the people who matched the year before you. This cycle, that's you.

Here is the part that matters: your signal outcomes can't come from anyone else. NRMP won't publish them. No spreadsheet has them. The only record of which of your signals converted and which didn't is in your head. If you don't enter it, that data point does not exist for the 2026 class. It's not that someone else will cover it - no one can.

Why it's worth 5 minutes: derm splits 28 signals into 3 gold + 25 silver - and the gold/silver split is exactly what shifts year to year. Last cycle unsignaled programs invited at 15%, signaled at 45% (a 2.9x swing). Next year's class is deciding how to spend gold vs silver on year-old numbers unless this cycle refreshes them.

Specialty	No signal	Signaled	Multiplier
Orthopaedic Surgery	6.7%	37.4%	5.6x
Otolaryngology	10.6%	51.4%	4.8x
Plastic Surgery (integ.)	11.5%	54.6%	4.7x
Ophthalmology	13.2%	62.1%	4.7x
Urology	14.2%	54.2%	3.8x
Dermatology	15.3%	44.6%	2.9x
Anesthesiology	27.8%	71.3%	2.6x
Internal Medicine	38.9%	66.5%	1.7x
Emergency Medicine	52.8%	77.1%	1.5x

It asks what you signaled (Gold/Silver, per program), which converted to interviews, where you matched, plus the basics - Step 2, # pubs, # programs applied/ranked. Your entry posts to a live wall the moment you submit.

It stays free. No paywall, no account, no email, ever - I think this data should belong to applicants. Five minutes, and the next person building their list at 1am gets a real number instead of a guess.

-> rezumab.app/share-data

https://preview.redd.it/dc0vtfg8r92h1.png?width=1343&format=png&auto=webp&s=583f5090d2142c33d0da729ccf164b49b75d42a6

Ortho had the steepest signal effect of any specialty last cycle: 7% invite rate unsignaled, 37% signaled. A 5.6x swing on the same applicants.

Matched ortho this cycle? Take 5 minutes: rezumab.app/share-data - anonymous, no email needed, and it rebuilds the signal-lift data next year's class plans with. The why, below.

Specialty	No signal	Signaled	Multiplier
Orthopaedic Surgery	6.7%	37.4%	5.6x
Otolaryngology	10.6%	51.4%	4.8x
Plastic Surgery (integ.)	11.5%	54.6%	4.7x
Ophthalmology	13.2%	62.1%	4.7x
Urology	14.2%	54.2%	3.8x
Dermatology	15.3%	44.6%	2.9x
Anesthesiology	27.8%	71.3%	2.6x
Internal Medicine	38.9%	66.5%	1.7x
Emergency Medicine	52.8%	77.1%	1.5x

Same applicants, same year - the only difference is whether they signaled that program. But that is the 2024-25 cycle. Program counts, gold/silver splits, and applicant behavior shift every year. The only people who can refresh it are the ones who just went through it.

The form asks what you signaled (Gold/Silver, per program), which converted to interviews, where you matched, plus the basics - Step 2, # pubs, # programs applied/ranked.

-> rezumab.app/share-data · 5 minutes · you used last year's data, pay it forward.

Signal Lift Graph

Hi! M3 here applying for residency this year and a data geek. Spent the last few weeks pulling 4 cycles of applicant-level EM data (68k applicant-program rows, 2023-2026) plus this cycle's program reality across all 306 programs. Also built a live away tracker + sortable per-program view so future applicants don't have to navigate thousands of cells in a community spreadsheet to make heads or tails of the residency matching black box. See EM data here: https://rezumab.app/emergency-medicine/aways/community

What moves the match needle

Cycle	Signaled	Not signaled	Lift
2023	8.6%	1.5%	5.6x
2024	9.4%	1.2%	8.1x
2025	8.4%	1.9%	4.4x
2026	9.6%	1.8%	5.5x

Cycle	Rotated there	Didn't rotate	Lift
2023	14.0%	1.7%	8.2x
2024	18.6%	1.7%	11.0x
2025	15.9%	1.9%	8.5x
2026	13.5%	2.1%	6.6x

Signal: 5x to 8x lift, stable. Away: 7x to 11x, narrowing in 26-27 (more applicants chasing the same slots).

What doesn't move the needle (2026 cycle, per-app match rates)

Compare the highest and lowest buckets for each applicant attribute. If a factor mattered, we'd expect a wide gap between high and low. Field-wide baseline: 2.7% match per application.

Factor	High-bucket rate	Low-bucket rate	Spread
AOA membership (Y vs N)	2.9%	2.7%	+0.2pp
Research experiences (4 vs 0-1)	2.7%	2.7%	0pp
Peer-reviewed pubs (6+ vs 0)	2.6%	2.9%	-0.3pp
First-author pubs (3+ vs 0)	2.9%	2.4%	+0.5pp
Gold Humanism (Y vs N)	2.7%	2.7%	0pp
Honors clerkships (6+ vs 0-1)	2.7%	3.7%	-1.0pp
Class rank (1st vs 4th quartile)	2.7%	2.3%	+0.4pp
Degree (MD vs DO)	2.8%	2.5%	+0.3pp

Every spread is within 1pp of zero. Research, AOA, Gold Humanism, class rank, degree — all noise. Honors clerkships 0-1 actually beats 6+ (small sample, n=627), but the direction is consistent across DO/MD splits.

AOA does not advantage you in EM. AOA-tagged applications match at 2.9% vs non-AOA at 2.7%. Per-applicant numbers are unknowable from this dataset (no applicant ID), but at the application level the lift is ~0.2pp, basically zero. If you're banking on AOA in EM, the data says don't.

Step 2 CK reality (current cycle, 249 programs reporting)

Median 10th-percentile across programs: 227. Median 90th-percentile: 262.

Top 5 programs by 10th-percentile of interviewed applicants:

Program	State	Step 2 range
Beth Israel Deaconess (Harvard)	MA	242–269
UTHealth Houston	TX	241–268
UT Memphis	TN	240–264
Carolinas Medical Center	NC	239–267
Dartmouth-Hitchcock	NH	238–267

Bottom 5:

Program	State	Step 2 range
BayCare St. Joseph's	FL	215–255
Merit Health Wesley	MS	215–248
Hospital Episcopal San Lucas	PR	215–244
Magnolia Regional Health	MS	216–252
Memorial Health System	OH	216–253

The full distribution: only 3 programs sit at 240+ for the 10th percentile, and zero above 250. There is no "elite scores" tier in EM. ~225 is the floor at most academic programs, ~240 is the ceiling.

Application math + visa

Stat	Value
Programs in match	306
Total intern positions	3,254
Median apps per program	800
Median spots per program	10
Median apps per spot	75
In-state share of all invites	71%
Programs that don't sponsor visas	42%
3-year programs	81%
Programs accepting Step 1 failures	53%

71% in-state share is the under-appreciated stat. Geography is huge in EM. Apply heavily in your training region; use aways and signals to break out.

Bottom line

1. Two things move the needle in EM: signaling (5x) and aways (7-11x). That's it.
2. Research, pubs, AOA, Gold Humanism, honors clerkships, class rank · all flat. Stop optimizing.
3. Geography matters more than scores. 71% of invites go to in-state schools.
4. There is no 240+ tier. 3 programs sit above 240 at the 10th percentile. The rest score ceiling out around 232-238.

Sortable per-program data + the live away tracker: https://rezumab.app/emergency-medicine/aways/community

If a number looks wrong, comment and I'll fix it.

Quick note on who’s posting this before anything else. I’m an MS3 at Texas A&M applying into ophtho next cycle. I’m not a startup, not affiliated with a program or society, and not selling anything. I built this because being in medicine should mean more than just getting through your own cycle and moving on. We are in this profession to help people, and the applicants coming up behind us are some of the easiest people for us to help in a practical way. Instead, every year the wheel gets reinvented: a new class loses time to scattered spreadsheets, dead links, and half-preserved advice, only for that knowledge to disappear again when the cycle ends. This is my attempt to stop that. It’s a free site. The only ask is your feedback and your data so the next class gets a better starting point than we did.

Every derm cycle the same thing happens. Someone posts, “Does anyone have the 2024 away spreadsheet?” Someone else replies with an updated 25-26 link. Another version is floating around in a shared drive somewhere. By the time you’re rotating in August, you have four tabs open trying to figure out whether UCSD ghosted everyone last year or just you.

Watching this cycle repeat every year inspired me to build something. One spot, every cycle carried forward, per program views that stitch together what rotators have said across years.

Live at https://rezumab.app/explore/away-rotations/dermatology

It pulls from the 24-25, 25-26, and 26-27 offer trackers plus the 25-26 and 26-27 rotator info sheets. You land on a program page and see offer volume, accept rate, response time, and the paraphrased rotator narrative for each cycle they showed up in. Auto IV programs, rotator mill warnings, hands on vs shadow split, whether people said they'd do it again. No more opening three sheets to piece together whether Northwestern actually interviews their rotators.

Three cycles of data

Pulled from the community spreadsheets for 24-25, 25-26, and 26-27. Here's how they compare side by side.

Stat	24-25 (closed)	25-26 (closed)	26-27 (live)
Programs tracked	104	117	72
Offers reported	442	724	380
Decisions logged	220	239	88
Accept rate	94%	89%	90%
Median response time	28 days	28 days	30 days
Programs hitting full	29	33	14 (still filling)
Peak months	Aug, Sep, Oct	Sep, Oct, Aug	Aug, Sep, Jul

Some honest reads across the three:

The most striking thing is the accept rate drop from 94% in 24-25 to 89% in 25-26, then basically flat at 90% this cycle. That's a 4-5 point shift that probably reflects people getting more strategic about which offers to accept when they have multiple. Response times have stayed dead flat at 28-30 days across three years, so nobody's sped up. The number of programs hitting full went 29 to 33 to 14 (still filling), and 25-26 saw meaningfully more crowding than 24-25.

Peak month shifted from August in 24-25 to September in 25-26, then back toward August in 26-27. If you're planning which months to apply for, the historical data actually lines up on Aug/Sept/Oct as the high-demand window pretty consistently.

Top programs by offer volume each cycle:

• 24-25: UT-Houston (21), Duke (15), UNC (13), UCLA (12), UC-Davis (12)
• 25-26: Emory (31), Tufts (23), UT-Houston (20), Michigan (17), Stanford (17)
• 26-27: Emory (48), Jefferson (25), UCSD (21), Michigan (21), UT-Austin Dell (17)

Emory went from not-in-top-5 in 24-25 to #1 in both 25-26 and 26-27. Different programs dominate each year, which is exactly the kind of thing that's useful for deciding where to actually apply.

60 programs have data in all three cycles, which is where the trend view actually starts to be informative. You can pull one up and see whether its accept rate has drifted, whether response times changed, whether it's trending toward or away from going full. That's the thing that a single yearly spreadsheet can't tell you.

On the narrative side, 25 programs have rotator impressions in both 25-26 and 26-27 sheets. A couple got noticeably less glowing between cycles.

What I need from you

Two asks.

Feedback. The whole point is that this tool is for dermapp and you're the ones using it. So:

• Does a program's data look visibly wrong to you, especially if you rotated there
• Is there a signal or field you wish the per-program page surfaced that it doesnt (peds derm access, mohs exposure, research expectation, whatever)
• Mobile experience ok or broken
• Are the paraphrased narratives too clinical, too loose, or fine
• Is the way I'm splitting by cycle useful, or would you rather see one merged summary

Contributions. The whole thing runs on rotator self reports. There's a "+ Add your own report" button on every program page. Takes about 60 seconds. Anonymous, no signup required. Gets reviewed before anything goes public so you don't need to worry about accidentally outing yourself. The more of you contribute, the less next year's apps need to hunt for the spreadsheets.

Specifically useful contributions:

• If you rotated somewhere in 25-26 or are rotating now in 26-27, even a 2-3 sentence impression helps
• If you got an offer that isn't logged, note the program and decision date
• If a program's narrative is flat out wrong because the source spreadsheet had bad info, flag it and I'll fix the input

Not trying to replace your personal spreadsheet. Trying to make sure next year's applicants don't walk into the same fog we did. A 2-minute contribution from you is a week of stress saved for some MS3 who's about to go through exactly what you just went through.

Happy to answer questions on methodology, what counted vs what didn't, or specific program numbers in the comments. With more data points, I'll be able to update the post once the cycle closes with a real 24-25 vs 26-27 comparison instead of a partial one.