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Offices of Medical Student Education

Couples Matching

Important Contacts

Kenan Penaskovic
Assistant Dean for Student Affairs
kenan@med.unc.edu

FAQs/Course Recommendations/Additional Info

Entering the Match as a couple adds complexity to the process, and students should discuss their plans with their College Advisor and career Goal Advisor, then schedule a meeting with the Assistant Dean for Student Affairs. The Assistant Dean for Student Affairs will meet with you and your partner even if the partner is at another medical school. It is important to note that in general, the pair will be only as competitive as the lesser competitive of the two applicants and that means applying to many more programs than either partner would if they were applying individually. For most couples, the highest priority is to live in the same geographic area as their partner during residency.

One of the best sites to identify programs in the same geographic area

As you can see, on the East Coast there are a lot of programs in big, cold cities in the Northeast that allow for multiple programs to overlap. Big cities often contain multiple training programs allowing for various permutations on your rank order list. It is important to remember the best predictor for a successful match both individually and as a couple is obtaining enough interviews.

Couples can designate their status as a couple in ERAS (the application portal) under the Match information tab. Programs can identify the applicant as part of a couple’s match from the onset. The advantage here is the couple may be able to advocate for their partner to get an interview if one partner gets an interview at a specific program. I do know that some partners entering highly competitive fields elect not to designate their status on their application as to have it potentially limit their interviews and rather only designate their couple status in the NRMP (not visible to programs) via their rank order list. To couples match, two applicants must link their rank order list via the NRMP R3 (Registration, Ranking, and Results) system. Applicants must be participating in the same Match as a couple. Of note, couples have an option to rank “No Match” for one partner at the bottom of their rank order list to allow the other partner to match if ranked.

Suggest Resources:

  1. Find multiple mentors/residents (at least one in each of your specialties if not more to give guidance about good locations/networking/application strength/number of locations to apply to) and then meet with the match team about your application strengths/weaknesses and number of schools to apply to.
  2. Be very organized when going through the process including: making a list of schools and locations, every possible match combination and the distance between each so you have no surprises, and a map of all locations so you know where they are about each other because it’s good to know and may come up during interviews and have a good schedule system to keep up with interviews and ensure you don’t miss any events.
  3. Tell the programs you are couples matching and what your future plans are for practice, so they know you are mature, organized, and serious.
  4. For couples matching into the same specialty, students recommend being forward about how serious you both are about being good members of the program. Also, look for bigger programs so that they are more likely to take you as opposed to smaller programs that may not want you to make up half of the entire residency class.