New York Form 2PGT, the Certification of Approved Postgraduate Training, is the document that verifies your residency to the New York State Education Department (NYSED) when you apply for a medical license. You complete a short identifying section at the top, send the form to the hospital where you trained, and the hospital’s Director of Medical Education or Department Chair fills out the training details and mails it directly to NYSED in the hospital’s own envelope.
If you are routing your credentials through the Federation Credentials Verification Service (FCVS), you can skip Form 2PGT. FCVS handles postgraduate training verification on your behalf, and NYSED will not expect a separate 2PGT from your training hospital.
Do You Need to Submit Form 2PGT
Any physician applying for a New York medical license without using FCVS needs this form. How much training the form has to document depends on your medical school, under 8 NYCRR ยง60.3:
- Graduates of medical schools registered by NYSED or accredited by a recognized organization such as the LCME or COCA need at least one year of postgraduate hospital training acceptable to the department.
- International medical graduates whose schools are neither registered nor accredited by an acceptable organization need at least three years of postgraduate training approved by the ACGME or AOA.
Training approved by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada is also accepted for Canadian graduates. IMGs who fall short of three accredited years may qualify through a “substantial equivalent” pathway evaluated by the Board for Medicine’s IMG Workgroup, but that eligibility question is separate from how the 2PGT itself is filled out.
Filling Out Section I
Download the current Form 2PGT from the NYSED Office of the Professions website. Section I is the only part you complete yourself, and it exists so NYSED can match the certification to your licensure file. You will provide:
- Your Social Security number, or leave it blank if you do not have one.
- Your date of birth.
- Your full legal name, entered exactly as it appears on your Form 1 licensure application. A minor spelling difference can keep NYSED from linking the documents.
- Your medical school name and location.
- Your signature and the date.
Once Section I is done, send the partially completed form to the hospital where you trained. Do not mail it to NYSED yourself.
What the Hospital Fills In
Section II must be completed by the Director of Medical Education or the Department Chair at your training facility. This is the step applicants most often get wrong: NYSED does not accept Section II from a hospital registrar or any other administrative officer. Only the DME or Department Chair qualifies as the certifying official.
For each period of training, the certifying official records:
- The postgraduate year level (PGY-1, PGY-2, and so on).
- The clinical area, such as Internal Medicine, Surgery, or Pediatrics.
- The exact start and end dates, in month/day/year format.
- Whether you successfully completed that segment, yes or no.
The official then confirms the program held active ACGME, AOA, or RCPSC accreditation during your enrollment and signs the certification statement. Vague date ranges or a missing specialty designation are the fastest way to trigger a clarification request from NYSED, which can add weeks.
If You Trained at More Than One Hospital
You need a separate Form 2PGT from each institution where you did residency. NYSED tells applicants to make as many copies of the blank form as needed. Each hospital independently fills out its own Section II for the training you did there and mails its own copy to Albany. Getting the blank form to every institution, and following up to confirm each one has mailed it, is on you.
How the Form Must Be Submitted
NYSED enforces a strict chain-of-custody rule. The completed form has to be mailed directly from the hospital, in the hospital’s own identifying envelope. If you or any third party sends it instead, NYSED will take no further action on the postgraduate training portion of your application until the hospital sends direct verification.
The hospital mails Section II to:
New York State Education Department
Office of the Professions
Division of Professional Licensing Services
Medicine Unit
89 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY 12234-1000
There is no electronic submission option. A trackable mailing method lets both you and the hospital confirm delivery.
Checking Status After Submission
Wait at least six weeks after all your documents reach Albany before contacting NYSED. The Office of the Professions warns that calling earlier can actually extend processing time, because staff have to pull your file to answer. Busy periods run longer.
You can track progress through the NYS License Center portal. Log into your account and check the status column under the “Manage My Licenses” tab. When NYSED finishes reviewing your Form 2PGT, the portal will show the postgraduate training requirement as satisfied. If any fields were left incomplete or the hospital’s envelope was not identifiable as coming from the institution, NYSED will notify you that a corrected form is needed from the training hospital.