Medical students learn their fates at Match Day
MARCH 16, 2007--More than 180 UTMB graduating medical students--and more than 15,000 of their peers at the nation’s 125 medical schools--learned Thursday where they will spend the next 3-6 years for their residency training. Match Day is an annual tradition in which medical students across the country learn simultaneously the results of the National Residents Matching Program (NRMP), which pairs graduating medical students with residency programs throughout the country.
Of the UTMB SOM Match Day participants, 155 are Texas residents, four are homegrown docs born and raised in Galveston County, and 20 percent are underrepresented minorities. Of the 192 students matching Thursday, 35, will be staying here in Galveston at one of UTMB’s 33 residency programs.
Shannon Hardy is among them. She celebrated turning 25 Thursday with her birthday wish come true--she will be joining the residency team here at UTMB’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, her top choice. Her husband is a first year resident in Pathology. Hardy also is one of the two medical students responsible for organizing and planning the Galveston County Health Fair, a large community health event that reaches about 1,000 residents.
There to share in Hardy’s joy were the family and friends of she and the 192 medical students being matched, all cheering and applauding at each match.
Mary Zelime Ward, a Fort Worth native and seventh generation Texan, matched at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital – her first choice. There she will train in pediatric neurology--“my dream,” she said.
Colleague Justin Fields, with wife Kristine and eight-month-old daughter Addison, accepted hugs with a broad grin. He matched for a dual residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at the University of Oklahoma, his first choice, and close to his hometown of Norman.
Class president Jeffrey Cones opened his envelope flanked by his father who held Jeffrey’s nine-day-old son. A sigh of relief followed: Jeffrey earned a position in plastic surgery at the University of South Florida School of Medicine.
Tan Huaiyu, matched for his first year at UTMB for an internal medicine residency and the remainder at Baylor in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Tan is an M.D./Ph.D. student at UTMB who is studying spinal cord injury and also is the Texas State Champion in power lifting. “It’s a happy day,” he said, “a very happy day.”
Conducted annually by the National Residency Matching Program, the match uses a computer algorithm to align the preferences of applicants with the preferences of residency programs in order to fill the available training positions at U.S. teaching hospitals. The match has a very high success rate - 93.7 percent of U.S. medical school seniors matched to a first-year residency position. Of those students, 84.6 percent matched to one of their top three program choices.
Click here to view all student matches.