FAU Medical Students Celebrate at ‘Match Day'

Match Day, Residency, Medical Students

Promptly at noon, along with other graduating medical students around the United States, the Class of 2018 opened their sealed envelopes containing their residency match results.


By gisele galoustian | 3/16/2018

The soon-to-be graduates of the class of 2018 in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine at Florida Atlantic University joined thousands of medical students across the country today in a “rite of passage” at “Match Day” to find out where they will be spending the next several years of medical training as residents.

Promptly at noon, along with other graduating medical students around the United States, the Class of 2018 opened their sealed envelopes containing their residency match results. Match Day occurs on the third Friday of March every year where the results of the National Resident Matching Program (NMRP) are announced.

Approximately one-third of the class of 2018 (23 of the 61 medical students) will remain in Florida to do their residencies. In line with the FAU College of Medicine’s mission, one-third of the graduating class will enter primary care specialties. Highly competitive residency programs also are represented such as urology, anesthesiology, dermatology, neurology, orthopedics and surgery specialties.

Among the various Florida institutions are: University of Florida College of Medicine - Shands Hospital, Gainesville; University of Miami Miller School of Medicine at Jackson Memorial Hospital; University of Miami Miller School of Medicine at Holy Cross; University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine, Tampa; Kendall Regional Medical Center, Miami; Orange Park Medical Center,  Orange Park; University of Central Florida, Orlando; and the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine,  Boca Raton.

The class of 2018 also placed in several top institutions nationally including: Harvard/ Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston; Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, New Hampshire; Penn State Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, Pennsylvania; Children’s National Medical Center, Washington, D.C.; Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina; Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia; and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York.

“As you open your envelopes to learn where you will be conducting your next phase of training, you will be a giant step closer toward fulfilling your dream of becoming practicing physicians,” said Phillip Boiselle, M.D., dean of FAU’s College of Medicine as he addressed the class of 2018 during Match Day. “Wherever Match Day leads you for your future training, you will always be part of our  College of Medicine family. We wish you continued success in your future endeavors as residents and physician leaders.”

The NRMP uses a computer algorithm, developed in 1952 by Nobel Prize-winning economist Alvin Roth, to place students in the program that they prefer. Each residency program at a hospital has a fixed number of first-year positions that they can fill each year based on their accreditation. Leading up to the big day, each student lists in order of preference the residency program that he or she seeks to work with and each residency program then ranks its applicants in order of its own preferences.

“Match Day is a momentous occasion for our students and their families, friends, colleagues and mentors,” said Stuart L. Markowitz, M.D., senior associate dean of student affairs and admissions in FAU’s College of Medicine. “Members of our class of 2018 have placed in some of the most prestigious institutions across the country and in some of the most competitive specialties in medicine.”

The NRMP expects the 2018 Main Residency Match to be the largest in history, exceeding the more than 43,000 applicants who registered for the 2017 Match and the more than 31,000 positions offered last year. Results of the Main Residency Match are closely watched because they can predict future changes in the physician workforce.

-FAU-

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