In the 2026-2027 Postdoctoral Dental Matching Program Match, 440 applicants competed for 260 oral and maxillofacial surgery (OMS) residency positions, and 243 were matched.
That's the whole published picture — applicants, positions, matched — and this article works from those numbers rather than a computed acceptance rate, for reasons the "Why there's no honest OMS acceptance rate to quote" section below explains in full.
The 2026 match, by the numbers
The Postdoctoral Dental Matching Program (National Matching Services, natmatch.com/dentres) runs the annual match for OMS residency alongside eight other post-dental program types.
In the 2026-2027 Match, 440 applicants ranked OMS programs, 260 positions were offered, and 243 were matched — leaving 17 of the 260 offered positions unfilled.
Those three figures are what the source publishes for OMS specifically.
It doesn't report a per-specialty acceptance rate, and this article doesn't compute one either — see below for why that number would misstate an applicant's real odds.
The five-year trend: applicants roughly flat, positions growing
Across five Matches, OMS applicant numbers barely moved: 450 in 2022 to 440 in 2026.
It wasn't a straight line — the count dropped sharply to 384 in 2024 before recovering over the following two cycles.
No cause for that dip is published anywhere in the Match results, and this article doesn't guess at one.
Positions moved the other direction, growing from 242 in 2022 to 260 in 2026.
So over five years, OMS is a specialty where the number of seats grew while the applicant pool stayed roughly where it started — a different shape from some of dentistry's other residency matches, where applicant counts have climbed faster than seats over the same span.
Why there's no honest OMS acceptance rate to quote
It's tempting to divide 243 by 440 and call it a rate.
Don't — the Match's own numbers show why that would be wrong.
Applicants can rank more than one program type on a single application (OMS alongside a GPR or AEGD as a backup, for instance), so the per-specialty applicant counts overlap rather than represent distinct people.
Add every program type's applicant count together in the 2026 Match and the total comes to 3,554 — more than the actual pool of 3,213 people who applied.
That overlap means one applicant's real odds depend on every program type they ranked, not OMS in isolation — exactly what the aggregate numbers can't show.
Reporting "440 applicants for 260 positions, 243 matched" is accurate.
Turning that into a single match percentage is not, and this article won't do it.
What the match numbers do — and don't — tell you about getting in
These figures describe demand for OMS residency, not what makes one applicant's file stronger than another's.
The Postdoctoral Dental Matching Program doesn't publish grade cutoffs, letter-of-recommendation weight, or how individual programs rank candidates.
What the accrediting standard does spell out is how long the training runs once you're matched: a minimum of four years, per CODA's floor for OMS — longer than any other CODA specialty standard sourced on this site.
See the OMS residency length requirement for exactly what that standard says, or how to become an oral surgeon for the full path from dental school through licensure.
For how the match and board certification work across all 12 dental specialties, not just OMS, see dental residency & board certification.
What's still unverified here
What matching into OMS residency leads to
Matching into OMS residency is the entry point to the highest-paid specialty tracked in dentistry.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks oral and maxillofacial surgeons under their own occupational code, SOC 29-1022, with a national median of $352,220 a year (OEWS, May 2025).
See the oral surgeon salary guide for the percentile breakdown, or oral surgeon vs. general dentist for how that residency changes day-to-day scope once you're practicing.
For how OMS compares to the other five specialty Match programs, see which dental specialty is hardest to match into.
This article reports 2026-2027 Match figures published by the Postdoctoral Dental Matching Program for general information; it is not admissions advice. Match results and program capacity change year to year — confirm current figures directly at natmatch.com/dentres.