"Match Day" Madness at Temple University School of Medicine

Rich Ronca came to Match Day 2015 dressed to impress, calling it “NFL draft day” for him and his fellow students. He even came prepared with multiple baseball caps to don – one for each of the university hospitals where he might match for his residency.

“My first choice is Miami and my specialty will be neurology…I want to be a brain detective,” said Ronca, who is at the tail end of an 11-year Temple career – four years as an undergrad and seven years in the MD/PhD program.

Ronca was one of 205 Temple medical students taking part on March 20th in this year’s Match Day – when all fourth-year medical students in the US simultaneously open a sealed envelope and learn which hospital they “matched” with for their residencies. It’s one of the most important – and emotional – days in a student’s journey to being a physician.

This year’s Match Day had a surprise visitor in the form of a robust vernal equinox snowstorm. But the rapidly falling flakes outside couldn’t dampen the spirits inside the soaring lobby of the Medical Education Research Building. Here, family members and significant others snapped photos and beamed with pride. Students wore nervous smiles along with white t-shirts emblazoned with “This is my #MatchDay shirt.” Someone even inflated a small beach ball and started it bouncing around the room.

With 10 seconds to go until noon, Larry Kaiser, MD, FACS, Dean of Temple University School of Medicine and President & CEO of Temple University Health System, began counting down to zero. The crowd took a collective breath, envelopes were torn open and then … mayhem! Hugs. Cheers. High fives. Tears. Gasps. Screams. Smiles. Laugher. Disbelief. Fist bumps. All occurred simultaneously in the tightly packed room.

One of the smiling faces belonged to Temple cardiologist James Burke, MD, PHD, whose daughter Megan matched to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania for an Internal Medicine residency. Dr. Burke reminisced about how he used to bring Megan into the hospital with him when the family had no babysitting coverage.

“Some of my earliest memories were being in the control room of the Temple cath lab while my dad worked,” said Megan, who will be a third-generation physician in the Burke family. “I always loved medicine, but those experiences really sparked my interest. It gives new meaning to the ‘Temple Made’ slogan.”

The matching process has been compared to “rush week” for fraternities and sororities: students and hospitals first try to impress each other, they then rank each other in order of preference. A computer sorts through tens of thousands of preferences and spits out the matches.

After the noon envelope-ripping frenzy, the pent-up nervousness in the room had morphed into a million different emotions for Temple’s seniors. Soon, many of them would make their way over to a large board that held a map of the United States.

Each grabbed a small star sticker and placed it on the city where they will spend the next several years of their lives in training. By the time the last person left the room, the map was a virtual galaxy of Temple stars – each ready to make their mark on the world.