One hundred twenty-seven members of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai’s Class of 2014 participated in the nation’s annual Match Day event on Friday, March 21. They gathered in the Annenberg West lobby to open their envelopes en masse and find out which residency programs they would be attending during the next phase of their training.
Addressing the students with words of encouragement and praise, Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and President for Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System, noted that many would be “continuing academic careers at some of the best medical centers in the country.”
Indeed, well more than half of this year’s class matched to the nation’s top 20 academic medical centers, including Boston Children’s Hospital; Duke University Medical Center; the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; Massachusetts General Hospital; Stanford University Medical Center; the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center; and Yale-New Haven Hospital.
Forty-one students will remain at Icahn School of Medicine to pursue further training in anesthesiology, dermatology, internal medicine, neurological surgery, neurology, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, psychiatry, and vascular surgery.
In all, 38.8 percent of the class will receive residency training in primary care; 17.1 percent will enter residency programs specializing in surgical specialties; and 41.1 percent will pursue training in specialties that include emergency medicine, pathology, pediatric neurology, radiology, and rehabilitation medicine.
This year, 17,347 U.S. medical students participated in the Match Day event, which is run by the National Resident Matching Program, a private, nonprofit organization that matches students with residencies in U.S. teaching hospitals based on a computerized algorithm.
For student Pamela Daher, Match Day brought the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. Ms. Daher learned that she will be doing her general surgery training in Austin, Texas, at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. “This is all I ever wanted to do, so it’s a pretty good feeling,” she said as she hugged her friends and began to call her family in Bolivia with the news.
Student John Andrew Wesley beamed and waved his letter, as he shared his excitement with fellow classmates and friends after finding out that he would be continuing his training in Family Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, his No . 1 choice. “I feel blessed beyond belief and so excited about this journey of healing,” he said.
Jeffrey Tai was pleased to be staying at Mount Sinai to receive his residency training in Psychiatry. “I’ll be here for the next four years,” he said. “This is where I want to be.”