This Friday, medical students at the University and around the country celebrated Match Day — the day they find out to which residency programs they’ve been accepted.
At 10:30 a.m., fourth-year medical students and their friends, families and teachers gathered in McLeod Auditorium. They heard speeches from class president Lye-Ching Wong, School of Medicine Profs. Bob Bloodgood and Wendy Golden, School of Medicine Dean David S. Wilkes and Senior Assoc. Dean for Education Randolph Canterbury.
Golden announced the nominees for the Medical Student Teaching Award, including a team of students who wrote a new review book that includes information on cardiovascular and pulmonary systems. The review book explains the anatomy of different organ systems and then asks readers to use that information to solve practical, clinical problems.
The winner of the award was , the teaching assistant for the cardiovascular system.
After announcing Malik as the winner, Golden read part of his nomination in which his mentor said he would normally include several quotes from the student evaluations, but in Malik’s case, he had included all of them, because they were “so extensive and superb.”
Then, the students were called up one at a time to receive their residency acceptance letters, which had all been kept together in a canvas sack. Wilkes pulled each student’s acceptance letter out of the bag and handed to their associate dean when their name was called.
“And I was asking Dr. Canterbury the history of this bag, which looks like it’s decorated with Winnie the Pooh figures, and there’s a history that’s 20 years old, but he said that it’s too long to explain, so I’ll just accept it,” Wilkes said.
At 12 p.m., students at medical schools throughout the country all opened their letters together, and may have even celebrated with a champagne toast.
Graphic by Kevin Wan and Kriti Sehgal
“It’s a lot of nervous anxiety leading up,” fourth-year Medical student Lexi Wang said. “Monday was a big day for me, cause that’s when I found out that I did match, cause I thought I might not match. But then, it’s just been so great — like all of our class is together, and my best friend and I found out we’re going to the same place, and we’re just super excited.”
Though 25 graduates will be staying at the University Health System, others will complete their residencies in a total of 31 different states, and Washington D.C. They will perform their residencies in 18 different specialties, the most popular of which is internal medicine.
Students found out on Monday whether or not they had been matched. According to Internal Medicine Assoc. Prof. John Densmore, students who didn’t match on Monday were matched with residency programs that hadn’t been filled throughout the week, through a supplementary matching program.
“The first two years [of medical school] aren’t that different from undergraduate school, in that it’s a lot of classes and a lot of that stuff, but then over the third year, when they do all their clerkships in the hospital, they turn into new people, and become the professionals that just got jobs, and it’s incredibly gratifying,” Densmore said. “As a parent, I’ve gotten to see it in my kids over a long period of time. Here I get to see the same maturation in a period of four years, and to see them all so happy is very gratifying.”
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