The Residency Application Process: Pursuing Improved Outcomes Through Better Understanding of the Issues.

The residency application process requires that applicants, their schools, and residency programs exchange and evaluate information to accomplish successful matching of applicants to postgraduate training positions. The different motivations of these stakeholders influence both the types of information provided by medical schools and the perceived value and completeness of information received by residency programs. National standards have arisen to shape the type and format of information reported by medical schools about their students, though criticisms about the candor and completeness of the information remain.