About the Data
Reason for Creation
Like many other vet students, I'd say that I like numbers and data in general more than the average person. Seeing the boring presentation of the match numbers, and an interest in learning how to program, I saw an opportunity to make an improvement to this niche issue that maybe a handful of other people might be facing. I wanted to see historical trends without having to just copy paste a bunch of tables, and so this became a side project of mine. I learned how to use Next.JS as the backbone and had fun learning how to design and create a website and I encourage other students to do the same.
Data Source
The data presented on this site is compiled from the publicly available PDF summary reports published annually by the Veterinary Internship & Residency Matching Program (VIRMP).
Data Processing
Each PDF was processed using a script to extract the tabular data into a structured JSON format. This process allows the data to be easily filtered, sorted, and visualized in ways that are not possible with the original static documents.
A Note on Normalization
To enable historical trend analysis, some specialty and program names have been standardized or "normalized" across different years. The VIRMP has occasionally used slightly different terminology for the same program in different years.
For example:
- A program called "Small Animal Medicine/Surgery" in 2015 and a program called "Rotating - Small Animal" in 2021 are treated as the same category for the purpose of tracking long-term trends.
This normalization is a necessary step to compare data across years consistently. While every effort has been made to group categories logically, this is an interpretive process.
Limitations
This is an independent project and is not affiliated with the VIRMP. All data is provided "as-is" based on the public reports, and while efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, minor transcription errors may exist.
Contact & Feedback
Feel free to reach out to me if you have a suggestion for a new chart or notice an error?