Visa sponsorship at US residency and fellowship programs
As of October 30, 2026, 4,093 of 14,749 US residency and fellowship programs say on their own website whether they sponsor visas or consider international medical graduates. 2,030 accept J-1 physicians and 563 sponsor H-1B visas; of the 2,061 that address H-1B, 73% say they do not sponsor it.
- 14,749Websites read
- 4,093State a policy
- 2,030Accept J-1
- 563Sponsor H-1B
Key findings
72%
of program websites say nothing about visas or international graduates: 10,656 of 14,749. Silence is not a no; it means the applicant has to ask.
3.6×
as many programs accept J-1 physicians (2,030) as say they sponsor H-1B (563). J-1 is the usual route into US training.
73%
of the programs that address H-1B say they do not sponsor it (1,498 of 2,061). When a website mentions H-1B, it is usually to rule it out.
83%
of the programs that address J-1 accept it (2,030 of 2,459).
482
programs say they offer both J-1 and H-1B, the widest choice an international applicant gets.
746
programs state an eligibility screen outright: 390 a limit on years since graduation, 242 a minimum USMLE score and 306 exams passed on the first attempt. A screen on the website is the cheapest one to find before applying.
J-1 and H-1B at a glance
Among the programs whose websites answer the question. The other 10,656 say nothing either way, which is not a no: ask them.
J-1
2,459 programs say
- Accept
- 2,030 (83%)
- Say no
- 429 (17%)
H-1B
2,061 programs say
- Sponsor
- 563 (27%)
- Say no
- 1,498 (73%)
482 programs offer both visas. 1,231 say they consider international graduates without naming a visa.
By specialty
Every specialty in which at least one program says something about visas, most statements first. “Programs” is every open program in the specialty; a linked name opens its list of IMG-friendly programs.
147 more specialties
Where H-1B is offered most
Across all programs, 27% of those that address H-1B say they sponsor it. These specialties do better, among those where at least eight programs address it.
| Specialty | Address H-1B | Sponsor | Share that sponsor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pediatric Endocrinology fellowship | 10 | 6 | 60% |
| General Surgery fellowship | 21 | 12 | 57% |
| Pain Medicine fellowship | 9 | 5 | 56% |
| Pediatric Infectious Diseases fellowship | 9 | 5 | 56% |
| Thoracic Surgery fellowship | 9 | 5 | 56% |
| Anesthesiology fellowship | 14 | 7 | 50% |
| Nephrology fellowship | 41 | 20 | 49% |
| Critical Care Medicine fellowship | 18 | 8 | 44% |
| Allergy and Immunology fellowship | 9 | 4 | 44% |
| Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry fellowship | 9 | 4 | 44% |
By state
Every state in which at least one program says something about visas. A linked state opens its IMG-friendly programs.
| State | Programs | Say anything | Accept J-1 | Sponsor H-1B | No H-1B |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New York | 1,595 | 551 | 343 | 209 | 173 |
| California | 1,423 | 369 | 141 | 23 | 143 |
| Texas | 1,056 | 331 | 174 | 2 | 191 |
| Florida | 906 | 229 | 90 | 30 | 75 |
| Ohio | 817 | 224 | 86 | 33 | 59 |
| Illinois | 601 | 196 | 102 | 22 | 83 |
| Pennsylvania | 875 | 192 | 96 | 46 | 43 |
| Massachusetts | 566 | 146 | 82 | 40 | 4 |
| Michigan | 632 | 144 | 82 | 12 | 66 |
| Missouri | 384 | 131 | 88 | 15 | 29 |
| North Carolina | 435 | 119 | 48 | 2 | 61 |
| Arizona | 292 | 95 | 38 | 4 | 44 |
| Minnesota | 311 | 87 | 27 | 10 | 37 |
| New Jersey | 270 | 84 | 53 | 5 | 30 |
| Maryland | 386 | 75 | 40 | 7 | 25 |
33 more states
| State | Programs | Say anything | Accept J-1 | Sponsor H-1B | No H-1B |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Connecticut | 259 | 75 | 44 | 6 | 42 |
| Washington | 246 | 73 | 17 | 14 | 30 |
| Virginia | 277 | 70 | 58 | 0 | 19 |
| Georgia | 311 | 66 | 36 | 12 | 14 |
| Wisconsin | 262 | 60 | 14 | 5 | 16 |
| Tennessee | 238 | 54 | 34 | 4 | 28 |
| Alabama | 206 | 52 | 42 | 7 | 31 |
| Oregon | 133 | 52 | 3 | 4 | 15 |
| Utah | 138 | 48 | 9 | 0 | 9 |
| Kentucky | 150 | 47 | 14 | 1 | 21 |
| Louisiana | 161 | 44 | 30 | 0 | 20 |
| Nebraska | 108 | 38 | 19 | 11 | 11 |
| Colorado | 174 | 37 | 6 | 4 | 6 |
| Indiana | 161 | 36 | 18 | 0 | 27 |
| Kansas | 101 | 36 | 27 | 6 | 9 |
| Vermont | 44 | 36 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| West Virginia | 89 | 35 | 28 | 0 | 28 |
| Arkansas | 79 | 35 | 22 | 8 | 16 |
| District of Columbia | 174 | 34 | 29 | 2 | 22 |
| Mississippi | 73 | 31 | 19 | 0 | 13 |
| South Carolina | 141 | 29 | 13 | 3 | 10 |
| Oklahoma | 58 | 22 | 14 | 2 | 6 |
| New Mexico | 69 | 18 | 5 | 0 | 7 |
| Nevada | 42 | 14 | 2 | 0 | 6 |
| Rhode Island | 90 | 11 | 6 | 3 | 4 |
| Delaware | 59 | 11 | 2 | 0 | 1 |
| Idaho | 21 | 11 | 1 | 0 | 8 |
| South Dakota | 18 | 11 | 6 | 6 | 1 |
| Hawaii | 34 | 10 | 7 | 0 | 6 |
| North Dakota | 20 | 10 | 7 | 3 | 1 |
| Iowa | 152 | 7 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| Maine | 45 | 5 | 3 | 0 | 1 |
| Wyoming | 2 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 |
Graduation year and USMLE
The screens a program states on its website, which an applicant can check before paying to apply. 306 programs also ask for every exam passed on the first attempt.
Years since graduation, at most
Minimum USMLE score
Counts of programs. Step 1 has been pass/fail since January 2022, so a minimum stated now usually refers to Step 2 CK. The median stated minimum is 220.
J-1 and H-1B compared
Why one is so much more common than the other, in the terms that decide which to aim for.
| J-1 | H-1B | |
|---|---|---|
| Who sponsors it | ECFMG, for every physician in clinical training. The program only agrees to take a J-1 physician. | The hospital or institution that employs the resident, which files and pays for the petition. |
| Exams first | ECFMG certification. | ECFMG certification and USMLE Step 1, Step 2 CK and Step 3 passed, and the state's training licence. |
| Paperwork | A statement of need from your home country's ministry of health. | A labor condition application and petition, filed by the employer. |
| How long | The length of training, generally up to seven years. | Up to six years in total, including any earlier H-1B time. |
| After training | Two years in your home country before an H-1B or a green card, unless waived, usually by working in an underserved area (the Conrad 30 program) or for a federal agency. | No home-country requirement, and you can apply for permanent residence while on it. |
| In this study | 2,030 programs say they accept it. | 563 programs say they sponsor it. |
- Who sponsors it
- J-1 ECFMG, for every physician in clinical training. The program only agrees to take a J-1 physician.
- H-1B The hospital or institution that employs the resident, which files and pays for the petition.
- Exams first
- J-1 ECFMG certification.
- H-1B ECFMG certification and USMLE Step 1, Step 2 CK and Step 3 passed, and the state's training licence.
- Paperwork
- J-1 A statement of need from your home country's ministry of health.
- H-1B A labor condition application and petition, filed by the employer.
- How long
- J-1 The length of training, generally up to seven years.
- H-1B Up to six years in total, including any earlier H-1B time.
- After training
- J-1 Two years in your home country before an H-1B or a green card, unless waived, usually by working in an underserved area (the Conrad 30 program) or for a federal agency.
- H-1B No home-country requirement, and you can apply for permanent residence while on it.
- In this study
- J-1 2,030 programs say they accept it.
- H-1B 563 programs say they sponsor it.
A summary, not legal advice. Confirm the current rules with ECFMG and US Citizenship and Immigration Services. A new fee on some H-1B petitions was announced in September 2025, so a program's website statement written before then may not reflect what it does now.
Using this when you apply
01
Start from the programs that say yes. The IMG-friendly programs search lists every program above by specialty and state, H-1B sponsors first, and each program's page quotes its sentence.
02
Check the screens before paying to apply. A graduation-year limit, a minimum score or a first-attempt rule on the website is a no you can find for free.
03
Ask the silent programs. One short email to the coordinator (“Do you accept J-1 physicians, and do you sponsor H-1B?”) costs less than an application and usually gets a straight answer.
04
Want H-1B? Pass Step 3 first. A program cannot file an H-1B for a resident who has not passed it, so take it early.
05
Plan for after training. A J-1 means two years at home or a waiver job, often in an underserved area. Weigh that where you rank.
06
Watch for places outside the Match. Programs fill mid-year vacancies directly. The vacancy search lists them as they are posted, with free alerts.
Method and limits
Sources. Every open program in the ResidencySpot directory: 14,749 residency and fellowship programs at US teaching institutions, from their institutions' graduate medical education directories. For each, we read the program's own web page and, where it links to an eligibility or how-to-apply page on the same site, that page too.
Reading. Written rules, not a language model, read every sentence. A fact is recorded only from a sentence that states it outright, such as “we sponsor J-1 visas”, “we do not sponsor H-1B visas” or “applicants must have graduated within the last five years”. A negation counts only when it governs that statement. Questions, general paragraphs about ECFMG or the State Department, and sentences that disagree with each other leave the fact unknown.
Evidence. Every fact keeps the sentence it came from, and each program's page on ResidencySpot quotes it, so any number here can be traced to a program's own words.
Freshness. Program pages are read again as the directory is refreshed, and linked eligibility pages every two weeks. This page is recomputed several times a day; its date is that of the most recently read page.
Limits. A website can be out of date, and a program can change its policy without changing its page. The rules favour precision, so a hedged sentence (“H-1B may be considered for exceptional candidates”) counts as unknown: the yes and no counts are floors, not estimates for every program. A program that says nothing is unknown, not a no. “Accept J-1” means the program says it takes J-1 physicians, whom ECFMG sponsors. Programs outside the directory are outside this study.
Cite and download
Free to use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence: cite ResidencySpot with a link to this page. Journalists, advisers and program staff who want a cut of the data for their specialty or state can write to us through the contact page.
Citation
ResidencySpot. "Visa sponsorship at US residency and fellowship programs: what program websites say about J-1, H-1B and international graduates." Updated October 30, 2026. https://residencyspot.com/research/visa-sponsorship. Dataset: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23449121
Questions about visas in residency
How many residency programs sponsor H-1B visas?
As of October 30, 2026, 563 US residency and fellowship programs say on their own website that they sponsor H-1B visas, and 1,498 say they do not. 10,656 programs say nothing about visas on their website, so a program missing from the count may still sponsor: ask it before you rule it out.
Is J-1 or H-1B more common in residency?
J-1. 2,030 programs say they accept J-1 physicians, 3.6 times as many as say they sponsor H-1B (563). ECFMG sponsors the J-1 for every physician in clinical training, so a program only has to agree to take a J-1 physician. An H-1B is filed and paid for by the hospital itself, and the resident must have passed USMLE Step 3 first.
Do residency programs accept international medical graduates?
Many do, but most program websites do not say. As of October 30, 2026, 3,546 programs' websites say they sponsor a visa or consider international graduates, 1,231 of them without naming a visa. ResidencySpot's IMG-friendly lists group those programs by specialty and state, each quoting the program's own sentence.
What USMLE score do residency programs require?
Most do not publish one. Of the 242 program websites that state a minimum score, the median minimum is 220. Step 1 has been pass/fail since January 2022, so a minimum stated now usually refers to Step 2 CK. 306 programs ask for exams passed on the first attempt. 183 say they set no minimum score.
What is a year-of-graduation (YOG) limit?
A limit on how many years may have passed since you graduated from medical school when you apply or start. 390 program websites state one; the commonest limits are 5 years (164 programs) and 2 years (105). 23 say they have no limit.
How is this data collected?
From each program's own website. Written rules, not a language model, read every sentence, and a fact is recorded only from a sentence that states it outright, such as "we sponsor J-1 visas" or "we do not sponsor H-1B visas". Sentences that disagree leave the fact unknown. Each fact keeps the sentence it came from, which the program's page on ResidencySpot quotes.
Can I use or cite this data?
Yes. The tables on this page are free to use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence: cite ResidencySpot with a link to this page. Every table is in the CSV download, and the numbers are updated several times a day.