How to Find the Most IMG Friendly Residency Programs

Since its inception in 2004, Match A Resident has been the pioneer of IMG Friendliness and IMG Friendly Residency Lists.

Because IMGs are faced with additional and often difficult barriers to getting into residency programs, IMG friendliness has been an extremely important factor when it comes to finding and applying to residency programs.

Match A Resident has been an integral player in making residency in the USA a viable option for IMGs from all over the world - as can be seen by the increasing number of IMG residents year after year.

As an IMG, finding these programs can be critical to a successful residency Match.

Part of Match A Resident’s program criteria - which is updated each and every year - is IMG Friendliness. We determine the relative ratio of IMGs for every program that discloses this information.

Match A Resident’s IMG Friendly Residency Program Ratings

Programs are split into 3 IMG Friendly ratings -

• High - 50% or more IMGs
• Medium - 11%-49% IMGs
• Low - 10% or less IMGs

Additional IMG Friendly Factors

Our Update Team is trained to gather as much information regarding IMG Friendliness as possible. For example, a brand new program may not yet have IMGs but is very open to IMG applicants. In this case, IMG Friendliness would appear as: “Program does not currently have IMGs, but will accept applications from IMG candidates”.

Additionally, another program might have IMGs, yet not wish to disclose the exact number or ratio. IMG Friendliness would appear as: “Program is IMG friendly and has an undisclosed number of IMGs”.

Finally, programs that do not accept IMG applicants are not included in Customized Lists for International Graduates.

This way, residency applicants are able to determine not only IMG friendly residency programs, but also the most IMG friendly programs.

Filtering IMG Friendly Programs

Do you want to avoid applying to any programs that currently do NOT have any IMG residents? Easy!

Simply open the Additional Filters from your Match A Resident specialty list and choose to “Hide programs that have no IMGs but accept IMG applications”.

IMG Friendliness is an Important Residency Program Criteria

Residency applicants do not want to waste time, money, energy, and effort on programs that are unlikely to consider their application or will not consider them whatsoever. IMG Friendliness is a program criterion that can help IMG applicants further refine their residency application targeting.

Combining IMG Friendliness with Match A Resident’s other core features like Interview-Link and Compatibility Scores makes your Customized List even more accurate, powerful, and effective.