The NRMP Reports Sitting in Your Inbox Are Telling You More Than You Think
In July, two NRMP reports land in GME offices and instituions inboxes across the country.
And honestly, they land at the worst possible time. New residents just started. Orientation is wrapping up or still going. J-1 paperwork is still moving. Everyone who was supposed to be on vacation is still answering emails. The reports get downloaded, maybe briefly opened, and the filed away for alter.
Later almost never comes. By September, recruitment season is already back. By March, last year’s data feels ancient. And the program walks into another interview cycle on the same general impressions it always had, instead of the specific picture of its own competitive position that was sitting in that report since July.
I have been in this field long enough to watch this happen repeatedly. And I get it. July is not the month for data analysis. But August is. And that window, between when the dust settles and when ERAS opens, is exactly when this work is most useful.
What These Reports Actually Give You
There are two worth knowing about ,and they work best together.
The Charting Outcomes Institution Report is relatively new. NRMP began providing it to institutions in 2025. It gives you a five-year picture of your programs. Fill rate by year. Applicant pool trends over time. The breakdown of who is matching - US MD seniors, DO seniors, US IMGs, non-US IMGs. Step 2 score medians compared against national averages. Demographic data on your incoming residents compared to the national cohort. And the number of residents who listed your specialty and your institution as their first preference when they submitted their rank list.
The Ranked Applicant Report shows every applicant your program ranked, in the order you ranked them, alongside where they actually matched. This one is where the real intelligence lives.
Together they answer questions most programs have never sat down and formally asked.
The Questions Worth Asking
How deep did we go to fill?
The Ranked Applicant Report shows exactly how far down your own list you had to go to fill your positions. If you matched your last resident from rank position 67, that tell you something real about where you sit in the applicant preference hierarchy. A program that fills from its top 30 is in a different competitive position than one filling from its top 70, even when both end the day with a 100% fill rate.
The fill rate will never show you that. This report will.
Who chose us first, and who landed here?
The Charting Outcomes report shows how many of your matched residents listed your institution as their actual first preference. If 25 residents matched and only 8 ranked you first, that means 17 came here hoping to be somewhere else. That is not necessarily a crisis, but it is information worth having. It tells you something about how your program is perceived and what your yield risk looks like if the applicant pool shifts.
Where did we lose people, and to whom?
This is the question I find most useful. The Ranked Applicant Report shows you exactly which programs captured applicants who also ranked you. If a single competitor program shows up 10 times in that column, that is not a coincidence. That is a pattern worth investigating. What do they offer that you do not? Is it research? Location? Salary? Fellowship placement? A reputation that is simply more visible in the applicant community?
You cannot close a gap you have not identified. This report indentifies it.
Is our pool growing or shrinking?
The five-year trend data in Charting Outcomes is probably the most underused section. A program whose applicant pool dropped 15% over five years is dealing with a different problem than one whose pool grew. A program whose Step 2 median is quietly declining while the national median rises is losing ground even if nothing looks alarming in any single year.
Patterns take years to see. The data lets you see them.
Are we interviewing the right people?
The reciprocal rank rate in Charting Outcomes tell you what percentage of your ranks were reciprocated- meaning the applicant also ranked you back. A high rate, somewhere around 95 to 98%, tell you that the people you are choosing to rank are genuinely interested in your program. A lower rate suggest you and the applicants are not finding each other as well as you could be, which is something you can actually do something about before the next interview season .
What Can You Do With It
Reading the data is only useful if it changes something.
If you are consistently losing applicants to the same programs, find out what those programs are dong. You many not be able to build a research division or change your geography. But you can look honestly at where the gap is and decide whether is something you can address, or something you can differentiate around. Sometimes programs lose applicants because of something real they cannot change. Often they lost them because their identity is not clear enough to the applicant on the other side of the rank list.
If your applicant pool is narrowing to a single pipeline, that is a vulnerability worth taking seriously. It is not just a diversity issue, though it is that too. It is a stability issue. What happens to your fill rate if that pipeline shifts? Building a more varied applicant pool takes years, but you have to start somewhere, and starting here is a starting with actual data about where you are now.
If your Step 2 scores are trending in the wrong direction, that is a signal to look at your interview criteria and your rank list construction. Not to screen people out arbitrarily, but to make sure the decisions you are making during recruitment season are producing the outcomes you want at the match.
And if your reciprocal rate is strong? Lead with that. It means the people who know your program want to be there. The work is getting more of the right people to know it.
What the GME Office Can See That Programs Cannot
I want to say something specific here because it matters how this analysis gets used.
Individual programs see their own data. The GME office sees across all of then at once.
That perspective is genuinely valuable. That pattern that looks like a program-specific issue often look different when you can see it showing up in multiple programs at the same time. A competitor program that shows up repeatedly across your ranked applicant data is not just one program’s problem. It is an institutional one. A diversity gap that exists in Internal Medicine and Radiology is not a coincidence. It is a pipeline question that requires an institutional response.
This is also where the documentation argument lives. If you want to make the case to senior leadership for investment in recruitment, in marketing, in research infrastructure, in faculty development, you need data behind that conversation. These reports give you that data. The ask lands differently when it is grounded in five years of applicant pool trends than when it is grounded in a feeling that things have been getting harder.
Where to Start
Pull the Charting Outcomes Institution Report and the Ranked Applicant Report from this past match cycle and sit with them together.
Look at your fill rate trend across five yeas not just this one. Look at where your Step 2 medians are going. Check your reciprocal rate. See how many of your matched residents listed you first.
Then open the Ranked Applicant Report and look at how deep you went to fill. Look at which programs kept showing up int he column where you were hoping to see your institution’s name.
Ask your program director do they same thing independently. Then compare notes.
That conversation, built on actual data instead of general impression, is where something useful can happen.
The reports are not hard to read. They are just easy to set aside, and July gives everyone a very good reason to do exactly that.
But it is August now. The new residents are finding their footing. Orientation is behind you. And ERA opens sooner than it feels like it should.
This is the window. The reports have been waiting since July.