Seventy-four eager Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine students celebrated Match Day by opening letters that revealed where they will be spending the next four years for graduate resident training. Each year on the third Friday of March, the nation’s future doctors come together alongside peers, family and their mentors to open personalized letters from the National Resident Matching Program. This year’s Match Day celebrated the third graduating class of medical students eager to begin the upcoming stage of their journey in becoming the next generation of medical professionals.
Having achieved a 100 percent match rate for its first two graduating classes, the School of Medicine’s national rankings have risen faster in one year than any other school in history. Each year, the U.S. News and World Report ranks medical schools in two categories: primary care and research. Hofstra’s medical school is currently ranked No. 55 for primary care and No. 71 in research, jumping more than 10 points compared to last year’s rankings. A university official would not comment on Hofstra’s match rate this year.
Medical students participate in “The Match” by submitting their top three choices of medical institutions in which to carry out their residencies. If that institution also picks that student to welcome into their program, it’s a match. Of the 74 students who matched, 22 percent were matched at Northwell hospitals while the remaining 78 percent will go elsewhere, representing 15 different states and 20 different specialties.
Dr. Lawrence G. Smith, the dean of the School of Medicine, spoke of the school’s success and his hopes for the future. “With this class, we will have a significant body of people out in the teaching hospitals saying, ‘We are graduates of Hofstra Northwell and this is how we learned.’ I want to prepare you for being those ambassadors and thank you for all the hard work you’ve done,” he said.
“The mission of the School of Medicine is to teach students to be patient-centered and patient-driven in all that they do. It means being able to communicate well, to be able to relate to the patient, to be empathetic and to see the patient as more than just the illness,” said Adrienne Stoller, the School of Medicine’s communications manager.
The institutions students were matched with this year include the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, University of California Irvine Medical Center, Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Baylor College of Medicine. With this year’s graduating class of medical students, the School of Medicine have placed residents in training into 28 of the 30 top ranked teaching hospitals in the United States.
With a family of smiling faces surrounding him, Alex O’Connell described the excitement he felt upon finding out he matched with his first choice institution, the Weill Cornell Medical Center, for internal medicine. “It feels incredible, it’s come so quickly these past four years. I’ve done a lot of work, and it just came out of nowhere. It really just feels so incredible.”
Brittany Davis hugged a fellow student tightly as she revealed she would be traveling to Connecticut to begin her residency at Stamford Hospital-Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons for general surgery.
“This is a huge relief, I’d say a giant relief,” Davis said. “It’s been four years of really building up a lot of anticipation and a lot of doubts about your own ability to do something, so it’s an affirmation that what we learned took us to where we needed to be.”