West Virginia University School of Medicine graduating medical students learned Friday where they will spend the next several years training as resident physicians.
Match Day, the national day when medical students find out if they matched with their first-choice hospital, took place locally at the Erickson Alumni Center in Morgantown.
WVU med students in Charleston celebrated at Soho’s Garden, Capitol Market. Those at the Eastern Campus were at Purple Iris in Martinsburg.
For medical students nationwide, Match Day is the culmination of many years of hard work. Many students consider it the most exciting day of the medical school experience — learning where they’ll complete their residency training.
Up until Match Day, final-year medical students complete numerous applications and interviews at specialty residency programs of their choice.
Students rank the places where they would like to continue their medical training. The residency programs, in turn, rank the applicants. The information is entered into the National Resident Matching Program, which uses a Nobel Prize in Economics algorithm to produce a list of “matches.”
The WVU Match Day Celebration allows the graduating class to be joined by family, faculty, staff, administrators and fellow students to share in the excitement.
At noon, envelopes were unveiled and drawn randomly, and each student had the opportunity to step to the podium — some with families in tow — and open their envelope to share the news in real time as to where their residency program will start.
