Matchmaker, make me a Couples Match

BY JOE STERBENC

Nearly 20% of the Pritzker School of Medicine

Class of 2023 an unusually high number applied for the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) Couples Match this year. This includes couples who met at Pritzker and students who want to match with a significant other at another medical school.

They had to navigate a more challenging process, thanks to the new “Program Signaling” feature the NRMP added to the residency application process last year. Medical students indicate their interest by “signaling” on the application which residency programs are their top priorities. It helps the programs know which applicants are genuinely interested and who might just be taking up an interview slot to cover their bases. The aim is to help distribute residency interviews more evenly across medical schools, giving priority to applicants who signal high interest in a program rather than just making space for applicants who are less interested but come from top-tier medical schools.

Last year, program signaling involved three specialties. For the Class of 2023, there are 18, including such competitive specialties as neurosurgery, ENT, OB-GYN and orthopedic surgery. The number is expected to increase in the coming years, said James Woodruff, MD, Pritzker’s Dean of Students.

“The couples at Pritzker are under a bit more pressure now,” Woodruff said. “You have the nexus of the Couples Match, competitive specialties and fewer interviews, meaning fewer chances for couples to overlap. Couples already have a difficult puzzle to solve. Adding another layer to it is problematic.”

MS4s Amrita Mohanty and Eric Arellano, who have been together for three years, matched together in anesthesiology at Stanford University. While being in the same specialty made it easier, Mohanty said applying to the Couples Match still posed a lot of challenges: coordinating interviews at the same programs, deciding which part of the country they want to live in, and being equally impressed with the same program after the interviews.

“Going through those conversations during the cycle is tough, but it made it easier to bounce ideas off of each other and find out what was important,” Arellano said.

“(We were) committed to going to the same program or at least being in the same city,” Mohanty added.

Jamie Bartosch