AOA/CORD 2025-2026 Residency Recruitment Recommended Guidelines

Below are the 2025-2026 residency recruitment guidelines at-a-glance, established by the AOA’s CORD/Academics Committee. For more information, AOA/CORD publishes these orthopaedic surgery guidelines as part of the Organization of Program Director Associations (OPDA)’s Guide for Residency Applicants.

2025-2026 Guidelines At-A-Glance

AOA/CORD recommends:

  • Programs include information about their programs in ORIN® to serve as a repository for accurate and transparent residency program information.
  • A limit of 4 medical student rotations, inclusive of all rotations (home and away).
  • Programs participate in Universal Interview Offer Day on Monday, November 17, 12:00pm ET, according to the published guidelines.
  • Both applicants and programs opt-in to Preference Signaling as part of the AAMC ERAS participation agreement.
    • Each applicant will be allotted 30 signals.
    • Orthopaedic surgery has selected to opt out of geographic signaling. Applicants to orthopaedic surgery will not have the option to select a geographic signal.
  • Programs should carefully consider eliminating the requirement for a Chair letter as part of the holistic review, recognizing that applicants are from differing types of institutions.
  • Virtual or In-Person Interviews
    • Programs should make their own individual decisions about whether to host virtual or in-person interviews for the 2025-2026 cycle.
    • Programs should not offer hybrid interviewing (i.e. some interviews held virtually and some in-person within the same program’s match cycle) for the main applicant pool (non-home students and non-rotators).
    • If a program chooses to conduct in-person interviews, a virtual format should only be considered for interviewing home students or those who have done an in-person rotation.
    • Programs should publish their decision to proceed with virtual or in-person interviews on the program’s website and in the program’s profile in ORIN®.
  • Programs encourage all applicants/recommendation writers to use the eSLOR.