A survey conducted by National Residency Match Program of Residency Program Directors across USA revealed that most programs didn’t ranked or gave importance to an applicant’s “involvement and interest in research”.

The National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) conducted a survey of program directors of all programs participating in the first quarter of 2012.

“The primary purpose of the survey was to shed light on the factors that program directors use in both selecting applicants to interview and ranking applicants for The Match,”  quoted the report.

The survey was fielded during the 19 days between the rank order list deadline and Match Week so that “Match” would not influence respondents’ answers.

Importance of research publications is many times debated among medical students during school but their role in residency match cannot be denied totally, but the survey revealed that it is not one of the top priority criteria for ranking an applicant.

Some of the top factors which are taken in consideration revealed in the survey are enlisted here.