Residency application timeline: ERAS, interviews, and Match Day

When should you start preparing for the residency application?

Start during your third year of medical school (MS3): the ERAS season opens in early June, so the months before it are for settling on a specialty, planning away rotations, and lining up letter writers. Most U.S. MD and DO students submit applications in September of their fourth year (MS4), interview that fall and winter, and start residency the following July.

Use MS3 rotations to test your specialty choice, find an advisor in that field, and read your specialty organization's recommendations for the cycle. Those documents, posted in May and June 2026 for this cycle by groups such as APGO (OB-GYN), CORD (emergency medicine), and APPD (pediatrics), set interview release dates, letter expectations, and signal rules.

Plan your board exams around the same calendar. Expectations differ by specialty: pediatrics guidance, for example, says programs should not require USMLE Step 2 or COMLEX-USA Level 2 to be completed by the time of initial application review, but should tell applicants the deadline for submitting scores to be eligible for a rank list.

If you want a mentor to keep this calendar with you, ProMed United's Residency Accelerator covers rotations, ERAS, interviews, and the rank list in one guided path.

1. Fall and winter of MS3: confirm a working specialty and shortlist programs where an away rotation could help.
2. February to April of MS3: apply for away rotations through VSLO as host catalogs open.
3. Spring of MS3 into summer: ask letter writers, draft your personal statement and experiences, and research programs.
4. June: start the MyERAS application and send letter requests through it.
5. September of MS4: submit applications and register for the NRMP Match; interviews follow in fall and early winter.

When should you apply for away rotations through VSLO?

Apply in the late winter and spring of MS3, as soon as each host's catalog opens. The AAMC reports that in the most recent academic year, most host institutions opened their VSLO catalogs in February and student application activity peaked in March. Each host sets its own dates, listed in the Important Dates section of its Institution Summary page in VSLO.

Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO) is the AAMC's application service for away electives. It is open year-round, but you can use it only after your home school invites you, and it charges $15 for each elective you apply to. Hosts can open and close catalogs at any point, so save the electives you want and VSLO will email you when they open.

Away rotations are not expected in every field. Pediatrics guidance for this cycle, for example, says programs should not require an away rotation for an applicant to be considered seriously. Where aways are common, scheduling them for the summer and early fall of MS4 gives each rotation a chance to produce a letter before programs begin reviewing in late September. The AAMC suggests signaling the programs you are most interested in, whether or not you rotated there.

When should you ask for residency letters of recommendation?

Ask writers in the spring of MS3 or early in MS4, soon after you have worked closely with them, so letters are uploaded before programs begin reviewing on September 23. Give each writer your CV, a draft personal statement, and the date you plan to submit.

For the 2027 season, you request letters in MyERAS and writers submit them through the new AAMC Letter Writer Portal, which replaced the ERAS Letter of Recommendation Portal. Letters uploaded before June 1, 2026 carried over, but incomplete requests had to be generated again. You can assign up to four letters to each program, and a letter assigned to a program you have applied to cannot be replaced.

You can submit before every letter arrives and assign letters later, but the AAMC notes that programs are not guaranteed to review letters assigned after your initial application to them. Decide carefully whether to waive your right to see each letter: the AAMC says applicants who waive cannot view or obtain that letter under any circumstances.

Some specialties expect a specific letter. OB-GYN applicants include one Standardized Letter of Evaluation (SLOE), completed by the writer inside ResidencyCAS, plus two to three traditional letters based on each program's requirements, and pediatrics guidance asks programs to require only one pediatrics-specific letter.

When does ERAS open, and when should you submit?

For the 2027 Match, the ERAS season opened at 9 a.m. ET on June 4, 2026, applicants could begin submitting to programs at 9 a.m. ET on September 2, and programs could begin reviewing MyERAS applications and MSPEs at 9 a.m. ET on September 23, 2026. Aim to have a complete application submitted before September 23.

Because programs see nothing before September 23, applications submitted between September 2 and September 22 arrive together; submitting a few days early mainly leaves time to fix payment or document problems.

The MSPE (Medical Student Performance Evaluation, often called the dean's letter) is written and uploaded by your medical school, not by you. Programs can view it from September 23, and your school sets its own internal schedule for drafting, review, and upload, so ask your dean's office for those dates.

ERAS charges $11 per program for the first 30 programs in each specialty and $30 per program after that, plus an $80 COMLEX-USA transcript fee charged once per season, and it does not offer refunds. For this cycle, USMLE transcripts are ordered and paid for through the FSMB instead of in MyERAS: $70 once for the 2026-2027 cycle, non-refundable, covering both ERAS and ResidencyCAS. ERAS does not register you for any match: NRMP registration opened at noon ET on September 15, 2026, and the standard deadline is 11:59 p.m. ET on January 29, 2027, with a $50 late fee after that.

• Most specialties: apply through ERAS and match through the NRMP Main Residency Match.
• Emergency medicine and obstetrics and gynecology: apply through ResidencyCAS, then match through the NRMP. The OB-GYN application deadline for this cycle was September 17, 2026.
• Ophthalmology: apply and match through the SF Match. For the 2026-2027 cycle, applicant rank lists are due at noon PT on January 14, 2027, and full results are released January 25, 2027.
• Urology: apply through ERAS but match through the AUA Urology Residency Match, with a rank list deadline of December 28, 2026 and results on February 1, 2027.

How does residency program signaling work, and how many signals do you get?

Program signals let you tell a limited number of programs that you are especially interested in them, and they are sent with your application. Each participating specialty sets its own number, and some use two tiers: gold for your most preferred programs and silver for preferred programs. The AAMC requires each specialty to agree to take part and describes a signal as one data point among many that programs use when deciding whom to invite to interview. Some specialty guidance goes further: emergency medicine's CORD tells programs to use signals only when considering interview offers and encourages them not to use signals in final rank decisions.

Only programs that you both signal and apply to see your signal; programs you do not signal receive no information about it. Not every program in a participating specialty takes part, and MyERAS will not let you signal a program that does not, so check the AAMC's list of participating programs before you choose.

Treat your signals as final when you submit. Signals saved to programs are not final until they go out with an application, the AAMC's applicant guide says signals to applied programs can no longer be edited once programs open at 9 a.m. ET on September 23, and a signal to a program you later withdraw from cannot be reassigned.

Signal counts for the 2027 season in several large specialties:

• Internal medicine: 3 gold and 12 silver.
• Family medicine and pediatrics: 5 each.
• Psychiatry: 10. General surgery: 15.
• Anesthesiology: 5 gold and 10 silver. Diagnostic radiology: 6 gold and 9 silver.
• Orthopedic surgery and urology: 30 each. Dermatology: 3 gold and 25 silver.
• OB-GYN, through ResidencyCAS: 18 signals, 3 gold and 15 silver.

When are residency interviews, and how do invitations work?

Residency interviews take place throughout the fall and early winter, and several specialties now set a common date before which programs should not send invitations. Invitations usually arrive by email with a limited window to respond, so watch your inbox once your specialty's release date passes.

Expect many interviews to be virtual. The AAMC continues to recommend virtual interviews for residency programs, the pediatrics, OB-GYN, and ophthalmology guidance for this cycle calls for virtual interviews for all applicants, and emergency medicine guidance names all-virtual as the strongly preferred option.

Accept only interviews you intend to attend, and cancel early if your plans change; pediatrics guidance asks for at least two weeks' notice. After interviews, the NRMP advises applicants not to ask programs how or whether they will be ranked, and pediatrics guidance discourages post-interview communication beyond an optional thank-you note, specific follow-up questions, or application updates.

Examples of 2026-2027 interview dates by specialty:

• Pediatrics: programs should send invitations no earlier than October 5, 2026, allow at least 48 hours on first-round invitations before offering a spot to someone else, and tell applicants their status by December 1.
• Ophthalmology: invitations are released in two batches, on October 13 and October 20, 2026, and the all-virtual interview period runs from October 26 to December 19, 2026.
• OB-GYN: offers are released October 27, 2026, applicants get at least 48 hours to respond, interviews begin no earlier than November 1, and programs give final status by November 25.
• Emergency medicine: programs should allow at least 48 hours to respond and tell applicants their status (interview, waitlist, or rejection) by December 18, 2026.

When is the residency rank order list due, and how does the Match work?

Your NRMP rank order list must be certified by 9 p.m. ET on March 3, 2027. Ranking opens in the NRMP's R3 system at noon ET on February 1, 2027, and a list counts only after you certify it; you can edit and certify again before the deadline, but the NRMP will not enter or change a list for you.

Rank programs in order of your true preference, not where you think you will match, as the NRMP advises. The matching algorithm is applicant-proposing: it tries to place you in your most preferred program first and moves to your next choice only if that placement fails.

The $85 NRMP registration fee covers up to 20 programs on your primary rank list. Each additional program costs $30, up to 300 ranks; lists of 100 or more ranks also carry a length fee of $50 to $200; and extra fees are due when you certify and are not refundable.

A match is binding. Under the Match Participation Agreement, you must be willing to start training where you match, and you need an NRMP waiver to do otherwise. In internal medicine, pediatrics, and vascular surgery, some programs take part in an NRMP pilot that lets them lock their own rank lists, and you can see in R3 whether a program in the pilot has locked its list.

What happens during Match Week and SOAP?

Match Week for the 2027 Main Residency Match runs March 15 to 19. At 10 a.m. ET on Monday, March 15, you learn by email and in R3 whether you matched, and at noon ET on Friday, March 19 (Match Day), you learn where.

Eligible applicants who are unmatched or partially matched take part in SOAP, the Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program. SOAP begins at 10 a.m. ET on Monday, when eligible applicants can see the List of Unfilled Programs in R3; from 11 a.m. ET they can prepare applications in the application service each program uses, and programs begin reviewing SOAP applications at 8 a.m. ET on Tuesday. Applicants cannot contact a program until that program contacts them.

On Thursday, March 18, offers go out in four rounds, released at 9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m., and 6 p.m. ET, with two hours to accept or reject each one. SOAP ends at 9 p.m. ET with a final List of Unfilled Programs, after which applicants may contact any remaining unfilled program. An accepted SOAP offer is binding, just like a match.

In the 2026 SOAP, ERAS allowed applications to a total of 45 Match-participating programs, so sketch a focused backup plan with your advisor before Match Week. Matched applicants typically start residency on or around July 1.