On Friday, March 16, graduating medical students at EVMS joined other medical students across the nation in celebrating Match Day by opening their envelopes and learning where in the country they will spend their residency.

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, 33,167 U.S. and international applicants matched to residency training positions at the nation's teaching hospitals this year. A total of 141 students participated in the Match Day event at EVMS and are headed to several of the nation’s most prestigious residency programs, including Cleveland Clinic, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and Stanford Health— just to name a few.

“While I am nervous, I am also very excited,” says Eric Lehrer, who will be doing his radiation oncology residency at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “I am honored to become a part of a field that is dedicated to caring for cancer patients and is on the cutting edge of research and discovery."

“This is an exciting time in the lives of our medical students,” says Ronald Flenner, MD (MD ’89), Vice Dean of Academic Affairs. “We are very proud of the work and dedication our students have put forth to get to this point in their medical school careers.”

The top represented specialties were internal medicine at 23 percent, emergency medicine and pediatrics at 12 percent and surgery at 10 percent.

The matching process is organized by the National Resident Matching Program, which uses an algorithm to pair medical students and residency programs. Fourth-year medical students across the nation apply to residency positions in their chosen specialty, such as pediatrics or surgery. After hitting the interview trail, the students rank the programs according to those they would prefer to join. The programs, in turn, rank the students they feel will make the best fit. Nearly all applicants learned the results of that ranking process at the same time.

Photos and videos from this year's Match Day ceremony are available here.