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After fifth-year Harvard Medical School students Ruchit Patel and Kelsey Biddle got engaged in 2023, learning they would both be spending residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston was a relief.

“The biggest thought we had was ‘We want to make sure we end up in the same place,’” said Patel, who will spend the next seven years as a neurosurgery resident. “It’s a long time, so we want to make sure we spend those years together.”

Patel and Biddle joined 162 other medical students at HMS on March 21 at the New Research Building to discover where they would begin their residency training.

Faculty, family, and friends joined the students as Dean for Students Fidencio Saldaña led a countdown and rang the bell that signaled students to open their Match Day letters.

Match Day is an annual tradition taking place on the third Friday of March in which graduating medical students across the country learn where they will spend their residency, a process through which they train in a specialty.

Nearly half of the newly-matched students, 78, were placed at an HMS-affiliated training program. Internal medicine was the most popular specialty, with 51 matched students.

“It’s very exciting, a huge relief, and also very surreal,” said Biddle, who matched into BWH’s psychiatry program. “With being in medicine, you’re on this path for so long, and it’s kind of hard to believe that we’re actually transitioning from school to work.”

Residency is the last step before doctors are licensed to practice medicine independently, and residency assignments are organized by the National Resident Matching Program.

Match Day is the culmination of a months-long application process. While some students like Biddle and Patel linked their applications to be placed together, others rank institutions from all over the country.

John Lee, who matched into a combined orthopedic surgery residency across all Harvard hospitals, described the feeling of applying as “a mix of excitement and nervousness not knowing where I’ll be for the next five years.”

For many, the stakes are especially high as where they are matched directly affects their proximity to their family, friends, and partners.

“When you first start applying to residency in September, it’s a lot of stress, and you’re like I don’t know where I want to go, I don’t really know what I want to do, what program I’m looking for,” Tarun Ramesh said.

“There’s a lot of mixed feelings. On one hand, a lot of stress about where we may end up being for the next three to seven years. On the other hand, this sense of relief and excitement about this next part of our journey,” he added.

Multiple students also said Match Day was an opportunity to celebrate the culmination of graduates’ time at HMS with family.

“I had my two girlfriends with me and my family, and I was also opening the letter with a really good friend of mine, who also took a fifth year,” said Susan Gonzalez, who matched into the Boston Children’s combined residency program.

Students at med schools across the country open their matches at the same time. As part of an additional tradition at HMS, students receive letters they wrote to themselves at the beginning of med school.

“It’s nice to see that, although my overall vision hasn’t changed, my journey through that process has,” Ramesh said.

—Staff writer Kaitlyn Y. Choi can be reached at kaitlyn.choi@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Sohum M. Sukhatankar can be reached at sohum.sukhatankar@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @ssukhatankar06.