Match Day 2024: Pritzker's 'COVID class' takes the next step forward

Ida Noyes Hall fell silent at 11 a.m. on Friday as 91 students at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine simultaneously tore open their envelopes to learn which hospitals they matched with for their residency training.

The room, heavy with nerves, erupted with joyful screams.

Students popped out of their seats and shouted in excitement. Some raised their fists in the air and tearfully hugged friends and family in attendance, many of whom took videos and brought flowers to mark the occasion.

Match Day at UChicago is part of a national tradition where medical school students — who have spent months on residency applications and interviews — learn their fates. Roughly 40,000 students participate nationally. The Pritzker celebration includes speeches, senior superlatives, photo montages, prize giveaways and, finally, a countdown to the big reveal.

This Pritzker group was informally nicknamed “the COVID class” because they started medical school in 2020 with masks, face shields and social distancing, said student Melinique Walls Castellanos, one of the Pritzker Chiefs.

Leslie McCauley cried after seeing she’d matched with her first choice, Northwestern Medicine’s OB-GYN program. Her father wept as well.

“I’m just so proud of my daughter,” said Peter McCauley, a 1986 Pritzker graduate. “Watching her go through all of this, and seeing this day, is such a sense of relief and pride.”

Romy Peña joked that her mind went blank as she stared at the paper saying she’d matched with the University of Chicago Medical Center for internal medicine.

“When I saw U of C, I was just so relieved and so happy,” she said. “I did my undergrad here, too, and I just love the patients we serve.”

Rita Khoury held up a sign that said “Where am I going?” in Arabic, a long-running joke she had with her nephew, Sharbel Romanos. It's something he always said as a child when people left the house.

“He was asking the same thing today,” Khoury said. Romanos matched with Northwestern University for neurosurgery.

Where Pritzker students are headed for 2024 residency match

 

Among the 91 students who matched Friday, the five most popular specialties were:

• Internal medicine (22)
• Anesthesiology (12)
• Family Medicine (11)
• General surgery (6)
• Psychiatry (6)

Nearly half the class (44 students) will stay in the Midwest. The five most popular institutions were:

• University of Chicago Medical Center (12)
• University of California system (9)
• Northwestern University programs (7)
• Harvard University programs (6)
• Five-way tie with five students each: New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center; University of Illinois College of Medicine; and Washington University in St. Louis.

Some fun facts about this Pritzker class:

• They come from 21 states
• 14 of them were born outside the U.S.
• 24 people in this class — an unusually high number — took a year off during their medical school education.

“All of you going through this are ready and poised to make the world a better place,” said Mark Anderson, MD, PhD, Dean of the Pritzker School of Medicine and the Division of Biological Sciences. “For those of you leaving, you’ll always be part of the Pritzker family.”

Nationally, there was a record high number of applicants to residency programs, according to the National Resident Matching Program. That number is largely attributed to an increase in non-U.S. citizen international medicine graduates and osteopathic (DO) seniors.