March 16, 2018—(BRONX, NY)—At the stroke of noon today, fourth-year medical students at Einstein began celebrating another successful Match Day, ripping open their personalized envelopes that reveal where they will begin their next phase of medical education as resident physicians at hospitals around the nation.

“I’ve attended many Match Day ceremonies—including my own—and every time it is a thrill,” said Allison Ludwig, M.D., associate dean for student affairs. “The Match is the culmination of years of hard work and dedication, and our students do very well every year. It’s a time to toast their achievements and celebrate their futures as physicians.”

The top residency match for the class of 2018 was internal medicine, with 45 students going into the field. Rounding out the top ten specialties are pediatrics (21), emergency medicine (16), obstetrics and gynecology (11), anesthesiology (11), surgery (9), psychiatry (8), radiology-diagnostic (8), family medicine (7), neurology (7) and orthopaedics (6). Of the 174 students who entered the match, 98 percent matched. Forty-two will be joining an Einstein-affiliated residency program, including those at Montefiore, the University Hospital for Einstein.

At noon, a gong’s toll in Einstein’s Lubin Dining Hall was the signal for excited students to open the envelopes containing a letter from the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP), which conducts the annual Match. Soon the room erupted in cries and cheers as classmates jumped up and down, exchanged bear hugs, phoned loved ones, and took selfies with their letters.

The NRMP reported that 2018 was the largest Match on record, with 37,103 applicants submitting choices for 33,167 positions.

NRMP, a private, not-for-profit organization, was established in 1952 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 residency training positions available at U.S. hospitals.

Residency training will begin about seven weeks after Einstein’s May 24 commencement ceremony.

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