While the number of medical students entering psychiatry has increased since the 1990's, little has been written about the program characteristics that draw students to specific psychiatry residency programs. We developed a survey regarding residency program characteristics and distributed it to the chief residents of each psychiatry residency program in the USA. Survey results were tabulated, and the presence of specific characteristics were correlated to the 2003 National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) results. We found that the presence of a substance abuse, geriatric psychiatry or a child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship were all associated with increased NRMP success. Programs with regular resident meetings had significantly higher success in the NRMP than those programs without meetings. Programs that had six or more PGY-I positions available in the NRMP revealed a trend towards higher NRMP success than smaller programs. Finally, in some cases, higher intern salaries were associated with higher NRMP success.