Breaking a downward local and national trend, 45 fourth-year medical students will go on to residencies in primary-care specialties next year. In all, 88 Alpert Medical School seniors were among the 15,000 medical and osteopathic school seniors nationwide to be "matched" March 15 into residency programs for next year.
Each March, the National Resident Matching Program - managed by the American Association of Medical Colleges - assigns graduating medical students to specialty-specific residency programs using a computer algorithm that considers ranked preferences of both applicants and residency programs. 84 percent of applicants from U.S. medical school were placed into one of their top three choices, according to the matching program.
"We always have a lot of students going to other Ivies and to the West Coast" for their residences, said Philip Gruppuso, associate dean of medicine for medical education. "(We had) a lot of students going to Harvard-affiliated programs this year, which is normal."
Eleven out of the 88 Med School seniors will go onto Harvard-affiliated programs this year. Ten out of 78 did last year, and seven out of 66 in 2005.
Nationally, the number of seniors interested in primary care specialties continued to drop this year. Just 15 percent of this year's applicants for residency positions selected primary-care programs in pediatrics, internal medicine or family medicine.
"There is an extraordinary need nationally for primary care physicians as the baby boomers age," Gruppuso said.
Brown has been part of the trend for the last five years but bucked it this year. "There has been a steady decline in the number of Brown students entering primary care residencies in the last five years, which was reversed this year," Gruppuso said. "We don't have a clue why."
This year's class had a spike in the number of seniors going into internal medicine, pediatrics and an increasingly popular combination of the two known as "med/peds," Gruppuso said.
To begin the match process, graduating students submit applications in September to numerous programs. "You spend essentially most of your fourth year applying," said Tamara Chang '03 MD'07.
For some competitive specialties, such as dermatology, students often apply to almost all available programs - as many as 60 in dermatology, according to Bob Dyer MD'07, who was matched to the dermatology program at Rhode Island Hospital. Students don't always apply to programs in just one specialty.
After applying, seniors are offered interviews, which usually occur between early November and late January.
"Not every place offers you an interview. It's a big weed-out process," Chang said. "A lot of people don't go on all the interviews offered."
"It's a scary thing, having no idea where you are going to be living for the next however many years," said Chang, who applied to many residencies and was ultimately matched to the med/ped program at University of Massachusetts Medicine School in Worcester.
Many students apply to programs throughout the country, but the University is relatively unique in the number of students who stay at Brown for their residencies, Gruppuso said. Fifteen seniors were matched with Brown residency programs this year, compared to 10 seniors last year and eight the year before.
For Dyer, a native of Rhode Island who calls himself "quite a bit older than the average student," staying in Rhode Island for his residency was a priority. Dyer's wife works in the state, and his parents and adult children live nearby.
"I had a very unique situation. Most students are willing to relocate for their perfect match. I couldn't," Dyer said.
This year, the match program saw a 9 percent increase in the participation of graduates of non-U.S. medical schools. Only 45 to 50 percent of international medical graduates typically match to a residency position, whereas the success rate for U.S. students is about 94 percent, according to the matching program.
The National Resident Matching Program began in 1952 and is sponsored by the American Board of Medical Specialties, the American Medical Association, the Association of American Medical Colleges, the America Hospital Association and the Council of Medical Specialty Societies.
