Einstein Celebrates Another Successful Match Day

March 16, 2012 — (BRONX, NY) — Members of Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University's graduating class celebrated another strong year for residency placements in competitive specialties and prestigious programs at this year's Match Day. Representing the culmination of their medical school education, Match Day marked the transition of Einstein's class of 2012 into the post-graduate phase of their training — when they will practice medicine in a clinical setting under the supervision of fully licensed physicians.

Match Day is the much-anticipated annual event at medical schools around the country during which fourth-year medical school students learn where and in what specialty they will spend the next three to seven years of residency training. The “match” ultimately determines the course of their medical careers. After a ritual opening ceremony involving the clanging of a brass gong, personalized envelopes were distributed to students at high noon. What followed was a catharsis of emotion as students tore open the envelopes containing the match to their future professional paths.

In an increasingly competitive matching environment — due to the number of residency slots not keeping pace with the growing number of American medical graduates in recent years — Einstein's 165 graduating medical students displayed a strong showing in completive specialties, including anesthesiology, dermatology, ophthalmology, radiology and orthopedics. Among the highlights were three matches in radiation oncology — a specialty with only 150 spots in the country — and fourteen matches in emergency medicine, a field that has proved extremely popular this year. In residencies with a high number of offered spots, such as pediatrics and internal medicine, Einstein students secured positions at top institutions, including Yale, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Cornell and Columbia.

Einstein's M.D./Ph.D. program, one of the first three established in the U.S. and still one of the largest, is graduating 12 students this year. The students placed exceptionally well, accounting for two of the three radiation oncology residencies as well as spots in orthopedic surgery, ophthalmology and research medicine.

The top residency choice for the class was again internal medicine, with 46 students going into the field. Rounding out the top ten were pediatrics (24), radiology-diagnostic (16), emergency medicine (14), obstetrics and gynecology (11), anesthesiology (8), surgery (8), orthopedics (6), psychiatry (6) and family medicine (6).

As reported by the Association of American Medical Colleges, more than 95 percent of U.S. medical school seniors — the highest rate in 30 years — have matched to residency positions according to new data released today by the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP). These individuals make up the nearly 16,000 U.S. medical students who learn today in Match Day celebrations across the country where they will spend the next three to seven years in residency training.

The number of applicants in this year's Main Residency Match rose by 642 for a total of 38,377 participants, an increase of more than 2,400 over the last five years.

Match Day is conducted annually by the NRMP, a private, not-for-profit organization established at the request of medical students to provide an orderly and fair mechanism to match applicants and open residency positions. It uses a computerized mathematical algorithm to align the preferences of applicants with the preferences of residency programs in order to fill the training positions available at U.S. hospitals.