Introduction:

The Society of Urologic Oncology (SUO) developed a national match program for the 2011 match cycle, which is run by the American Urologic Association (AUA).  Despite the creation of a match system, no match data was available to the applicants until recently.  The AUA Residents and Fellows Committee sought to investigate trends in the fellowship match process to improve transparency for applicants.  The SUO has recently allowed the AUA to publish the match statistics beginning in Spring of 2020.

Methods:

We performed a retrospective review of applicants who participated in the SUO fellowship match cycles 2019-2021.  We characterized applicants based on their applicant type and gender.  We were not able to evaluate race/ethnicity as this data is not collected.  We also identified the number of programs participating in the match each year. As a primary outcome we evaluated the match rates by applicant type, gender, and program and evaluated time trends in the data.

Results:

We identified 250 applicants and 52 programs who participated in the SUO fellowship match between 2019-2021.  The match rate declined for US Chief residents from 2019 to 2021, from 92% (33/36), to 89% (39/44) to 80% (33/41).  This decline was observed with an increase in the number of US Chief resident applicants in 2020 and 2021 and an increase in the number of spots from 47 to 52.  The number of matched applicants increased for graduated US Chief residents and Foreign Chief Residents from 2019 – 2021.  There was also an increase in the number of female applicants from 10 to 17, with an increase in the number of matched females from 9 to 12.  We cannot draw strong conclusions from the gender data as a significant number of applicants did not disclose their gender.  Lastly, the match rate for programs increased from 89.36% to 94.23% from 2019 - 2021.

Conclusion:

In this review of the matching statistics from 2019 – 2021 for the SUO fellowship we provide a snapshot of trends in the match.  We identified that the matched rate for US Chief Residents has declined.  This decline is seen despite an increase in the available spots available in the match and with an increase in the number of applicants.  It is the hope of the AUA Resident and Fellows committee to continue to create transparency for applicants.  In the future we hope to increase fellow level participation within the SUO committees and investigate detailed demographic data of our applicants and SUO members.  

Funding: N/a