The number of U.S. medical students applying to psychiatry training programs has grown every year over the past decade. Often it’s their third-year clerkship that proves crucial.
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For fourth-year medical students Jamie Levin and Jeffrey Hauck, both applying to psychiatric programs to begin training in 2026, the third-year psychiatry clerkship was crucial in convincing them that psychiatry was the field for them. While both arrived at medical school with some inclination toward the profession, the experience of actually spending time with psychiatric patients was formative.
“When I went to medical school, I wanted to be a doctor to connect with people and build on that relationship,” said Levin, a fourth-year student at Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS), which is part of Macon and Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences at Old Dominion University.
Psychiatry was Levin’s first rotation when she entered her third-year clerkship, and she went into it with a degree of trepidation. “It was a little intimidating, just because of the perception people have about inpatient psychiatry,” she said. “But I really enjoyed it.
“Later I wondered if I liked it so much simply because it was my first rotation and my first encounter with patients,” Levin said. “But on my other rotations, I found myself drawn to working with the patients who were ‘psychiatry adjacent’—women with post-partum depression on the family medicine or ob-gyn rotation, or internal medicine patients with depression or dementia or catatonia. That really reinforced my belief that psychiatry was the field I wanted to enter.”
Hauck, a fourth-year student at Baylor Medical College, went through something similar. “The clerkship year was really formative,” he told Psychiatric News. “I loved the clinical aspects of caring for patients. In your first two years you learn a lot, but being able to really spend time with patients and their families is such a powerful experience.”
A Genuine Interest in Mental Health
Levin and Hauck are part of a surge in medical student interest in psychiatry that began a decade ago and has only accelerated in recent years. A total of 1,823 U.S. medical school graduates matched into psychiatry residency programs as part of the 2024 National Resident Matching Program (NRMP)—the 13th consecutive year that psychiatry’s match numbers have increased.
Even more telling is the steadily rising number of applications to psychiatry programs. The number of U.S medical students seeking to match in psychiatry has grown from 1,618 in 2015 to 2,693 last year, according to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Electronic Residency Application Service. Meanwhile, the number of international medical graduates applying to psychiatry training programs in the United States has dropped dramatically as the specialty has become more competitive domestically (see chart).
Educators say that in part these numbers reflect a genuine interest in mental health among younger people, along with their perception that psychiatry offers work-life balance and improved reimbursement (while still remaining among the lower-paid specialties).
“It has been exciting to see medical students embrace the clinical neurosciences and their increased interest in the field of psychiatry,” said Laura Roberts, M.D., M.A., chair and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. “I see this interest as a reflection of the extraordinary growth in knowledge of neuroscience and neurotechnology, the discovery of highly innovative and highly effective treatments, and opportunities for fulfilling professional lives in our field.
“My sense, too, is that this growing interest in psychiatry relates to the sensitivity and values of our early-career colleagues,” Roberts said. “They have lived through a pandemic, have seen the impact of isolation and distress and of mental health and addiction. The medical students I see going into psychiatry want to have meaningful human connection with their patients and want to do something professionally that truly matters.”
Making a Connection With Patients
Lisa Fore-Arcand, MEd., Ed.D., professor of psychiatry and assistant dean for continuing medical education at EVMS, agreed. Her school’s psychiatry department has had to add new advisers due to the growing number of students seeking to enter the field. “We have as many as 19 senior applicants whose first choice is psychiatry,” Fore-Arcand told Psychiatric News, “and some end up going into other specialties because of the competitiveness of psychiatry.
‘I Was Able to Help Change the Trajectory of This Patient’s Life’
“If they have weaknesses in their resume, we often advise them to apply as well to family or internal medicine, as a back-up,” said Fore-Arcand, a past president of the Association of Directors of Medical School Education in Psychiatry. “Other students come into medical school thinking they want do something else, until they get to their psychiatry clerkship.”
She continued: “Students tell me they are excited about the field and the ability to treat patients who are often in drastic need of help. When they encounter patients on their rotation who are severely depressed or catatonic and are able to witness them getting better, it makes an impression. … They are drawn to the human connection and making a meaningful difference in patients’ lives.”
A Path to Psychiatry
It’s not unusual for medical students who are interested in psychiatry to have had personal experiences that prepare them for the field. “In high school, I wrote a senior thesis on Alzheimer’s, and as an undergraduate at the University of Texas, I enrolled in Medical Healthcare Studies, a pre-medical bachelor’s degree for people who wanted to apply to medical school,” Hauck said. “I wanted to be a neurologist and work with people having neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s.”
That was partly informed by Hauck’s volunteer work at a memory-care center, where he formed relationships with patients. “There was one older woman I became friends with,” he recalled. “We would have these great conversations about her life and her kids. If someone played a piano, it would stir up memories about songs from her past.”
The following week, they would have the same conversation all over again, because she had forgotten all of it. “It really struck on my heartstrings,” Hauck said.
He thought he might pursue research in neurodegenerative disease and worked for a period in a lab focused on Smith-Megenis Syndrome (SMS), a rare neurodevelopmental disease that affects cognition. At an annual conference on SMS, Hauck encountered a psychiatrist who suggested that if he was interested in treating the behavioral aspects of such disorders, he might think about pursuing a career in psychiatry. “I had never considered that before,” he said.
Another source of inspiration was his volunteer work in the Big Brother-Big Sister program. “I was paired with a second-grade boy from an underprivileged household who was diagnosed with ADHD,” Hauck said. “He had trouble focusing in school, was getting into trouble, and the condition affected his family relationships.
“But after receiving medication, I saw this dramatic improvement,” Hauck said. “That really impressed me.” ■
Author: Mark Moran
Published online 10/31/2025
