Students Celebrate Match Day at IU School of Medicine

INDIANAPOLIS -- Four years of medical school all lead up to Match Day, the day seniors learn where they’ll spend their first few years as doctors.

Figuring out where to send these 300 students at the Indiana University School of Medicine — and all the others around the country — it’s a process, one that starts with interviews.

“Anywhere from five to 20, as ambitious as you wanted to be,” says Chris Merchun, who will graduate this year from the IU School of Medicine. He says students rank each program they interviewed for, each program ranks the students, and it all gets figured out by an algorithm.

“They won’t tell us for a couple weeks. And now today, we all get to open an envelope together and see where we’re going.”

After everyone gets their envelopes, I find Jenna Voirol in a circle with her friends. Students aren’t allowed to open their envelopes until noon. Waiting for the countown is tense. 

“It’s like getting ready to see your test grade, but 20 billion times worse,” she says. “I have a little nervous sweating happening right now.”

I’m sweating, too, out of sympathy. Some people don’t match at all. Others might get their last choice program, or close to it. There will be tears, happy ones and sad ones.

When the clock strikes noon, Jenna opens her envelope. She’ll be a staying in Indiana as a resident at the IU School of Medicine, in obstetrics.

“I am an Indiana lifer,” she says. Happy tears.