Purpose
Guiding students toward successfully matching with their preferred specialty is one of the most important markers of success for a medical school institution. Our institution has sought to develop a personalized approach for student success. This work revealed the popularity of programs dramatically varies between cohorts. The inability to anticipate fluctuation of career interests hinders intentional paring of advisors and allocation of clinical electives.

Methods
We developed an internal tracking process that allows students to declare specialty interest. Data is posted on student dashboards to allow easy accessibility. Students are required to update declarations at key academic touchpoints. All historic responses are stored for student self-reflection and retrospective study. Aggregate data is provided via an administrative dashboard or exported for analysis (IRB# 2023-191).

Results
Specialty popularity per cohort was consistent between cohorts for primary care specialties. Interestingly, each cohort had a unique "popular" specialty, all of which were niche or competitive fields. The largest shifts in career interests were at the end of the 1st year of medical school and directly after Step 1. Trends remained consistent at the start of their M4 year leading into the match application season.

Conclusions
Our method of tracking residency interest via our learning management system allows for intentional career guidance. Aggregate reports of student career interests allowed our institution to focus on expanding electives catered to the individual cohort. A key example was a recent spike of interest in Anesthesiology. Student interest in Anesthesiology quadrupled for the 2024 cohort directly following Step 1 results. This knowledge allowed our institution the time to augment our offerings of home anesthesiology electives. Our study presents a proof of concept for a residency tracking dashboard that tailors curricular and career needs per cohort.