Medical Students Match 100 Percent for Residencies

The soon-to-be graduates in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine participated in “Match Day” to learn where they will be spending the next several years of medical training as residents.

For the second consecutive year, results from Match Day revealed a 100 percent match for the student body. The inaugural class of FAU’s College of Medicine received their medical degrees (M.D.) last April.


By gisele galoustian | 3/18/2016

The soon-to-be graduates of the class of 2016 in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine at Florida Atlantic University participated in a “rite of passage” at the institution’s “Match Day” to learn where they will be spending the next several years of medical training as residents.

For the second consecutive year, results from Match Day revealed a 100 percent match for the student body. The inaugural class of FAU’s College of Medicine received their medical degrees (M.D.) last April.

“This is a very proud day for our newest physicians at Florida Atlantic University and for their families, colleagues and our faculty,” said Arthur J. Ross, III, M.D., M.B.A., interim dean and professor of FAU’s College of Medicine. “To achieve a 100 percent match two years in a row for a new medical school is a significant achievement and a testament to the quality of our program, our teaching faculty and our outstanding students.”

The 61 medical students placed in top institutions such as Massachusetts General Hospital (Harvard University), Emory University Hospital (Emory University), Northwestern Memorial Hospital (Northwestern University), New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai, Children’s National Medical Center (George Washington University) and the William Beaumont Army Medical Center.

“Our students vied for extremely competitive positions such as anesthesiology, otolaryngology,  neurosurgery, pediatrics, surgery, ophthalmology as well as other specialties,” said Stuart L. Markowitz, M.D., senior associate dean of student affairs and admissions in FAU’s College of Medicine. “They have worked extremely hard during the past several years and we look forward to watching them all succeed as physician leaders.”

Match Day occurs on the third Friday of March each year at allopathic (M.D.) medical schools in the United States where the results of the National Resident Matching Program are announced. The 2016 National Match Day was the largest ever, with more than 18,000 U.S. allopathic medical school seniors and 17,000 other applicants competing for more than 30,000 positions at more than 4,800 residency programs across the country.

Promptly at noon on Friday, March 18, during a ceremony at the Live Oak Pavilion on FAU’s Boca Raton campus, the students opened their sealed envelopes containing their residency match results at the same time as all other graduating medical students across the country.

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. The National Resident Matching Program then 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.  

FAU’s College of Medicine is one of 145 accredited medical schools in the U.S., and admitted its inaugural class of 64 students in 2011. In July 2014, FAU welcomed its charter class of 36 residents in its first residency program in internal medicine.

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