‌At noon on March 16, students, faculty and staff from the School of Medicine gathered for Match Day 2012, the annual day when fourth-year medical students learn where they will go for residency training in their chosen specialties.

Of the 175 students who participated in the Match, 99 percent have secured positions. Of particular interest, 97.1 percent of VCU’s medical students matched prior to the Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program, once again above this year’s national average of 95.1 percent.

Primary care specialties proved attractive this year with 38 percent of the students matching into Internal Medicine (33 students), Family Medicine (24 students) and Pediatrics (11 students).

Other programs attracting high interest include Obstetrics and Gynecology with 18 students matching, Diagnostic Radiology with 15, Anesthesiology with 11 and seven students into Emergency Medicine, which was popular nationwide: all the specialty’s residency spots have been filled.

Students also succeeded in placing into this year’s most competitive specialties: Dermatology, Orthopaedic Surgery, Otolaryngology, Plastic Surgery and Radiation Oncology. They have also claimed spots at prestigious academic medical centers across the country including Johns Hopkins’ Anesthesiology and Psychiatry programs, Yale’s Pathology and Ob-Gyn programs, the Internal Medicine programs at Duke and Brown universities, NYU Plastic Surgery and UC-Davis Neurosurgery.

The VCU Medical Center also had a very strong match, fully filling all its residency slots for the fourth year in a row. Thirty-one of those new residents are VCU School of Medicine students who have chosen to stay on the MCV Campus for their post-graduate training. The medical center's residency programs drew heavily from the southern and northeast regions of the country.

Read more about Match Day