Charleston Campus students and families enjoy Match Day Celebration

Medical students at the WVU School of Medicine’s Charleston Campus came together in a Match Day ceremony on March 15 at Edgewood Country Club, where they received and opened envelopes at Noon revealing where they’ll spend the next three to five years of their residency training.

They joined their fellow students at WVU in Morgantown and the WVU Eastern Campus and medical students nationwide, where Match Day is the culmination of many years of hard work. Many students consider it the most exciting day of the medical school experience.

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.”

WVU’s Match Day Celebration allows the graduating class to be joined by family, and live streaming on social media allows friends and family, faculty, staff, administrators and fellow students to share in the excitement.

At noon, envelopes are unveiled and drawn randomly. Each student opens their letter to share the news with family and then, in real-time, has the opportunity to step to the podium and announce where their residency program will begin.

At the WVU Charleston campus, third-year medical students held live-streaming watch parties to join in the excitement for their fourth-year colleagues as they look forward to this important day they will be experiencing for themselves a year from now.