Match Day is a day aspiring medical students anticipate. Students from all around the country gather with their family and friends to see what the next step will be.
Match day, a day medical students work many long hours for. Students all around the country opened up their match letter, which determines the next step in their career.
“Match day is my favorite part of my job, because these guys have worked eight hard years in college and post-college to be able to find out where they’re going and where their dream starts,” said Nicki brown, Students Programs Administrator.
Michigan State University Medical Student Dennis Boynton, from Harbor Springs, is a first-generation college student who matched to study internal medicine at Henry Ford in Detroit. He says he could not have made it through this journey without his parents.
“My parents have been my biggest cheerleaders along the way. My mom actually passed away a few months ago,” Boynton said. “So I know she’s looking down on me. I’m proud to know that I’m in this position. She wanted to be a doctor, so. But never was able to. So, it’s such a privilege to really be in this position today, and it can feel like a weight at times. But it’s wonderful.”
Michigan State’s College of Human Medicine Traverse City Campus is at Munson Medical Center.
The 3rd or 4th year medical students spend 26 weeks rotating around northern Michigan in different specialties. They then submit their top choices and find out their match. Gabe Meriwether, who matched for family medicine in Jacksonville, Florida, through the Navy, talks about his reason for pursuing medicine and the military.
“I had rotated down in Jacksonville, Florida. Prior to this. And I love the people. I love taking care of, you know, our veterans, our active duty, giving back to the people that, you know, make this country safe. I think that’s my biggest why for doing the military.”
MSU Student Program Administrator Nicki Brown says watching students find their passion is her favorite part of the job.
“I start with them and they don’t know what kind of doctor they want to be yet. And then they just go through all of these different four clerkships, and then all of a sudden it just you’ve seen them glow.”