The Envelope, Please

With a rousing performance of the bugle call "Charge" on his trumpet, Dr. Marc Kahn called the Tulane School of Medicine's 2010 Match Day Ceremony to order on Thursday (March 18). Match Day is a focus of anticipation and anxiety for medical school seniors, because this is the day they learn where they will be assigned to do their residency training.

"This year 164 graduating seniors are being matched," said Kahn, senior associate dean for admissions and student affairs at the medical school. "This has been a great class — it is the class that we recruited while we were in Houston during the 2005–06 academic year because of Hurricane Katrina."

Tulane has never had difficulty attracting students, according to Kahn. "Our number of applications remained constant through Katrina and has increased steadily since then."

A key attraction has been the wealth of opportunities for performing meaningful public service in New Orleans. Kahn said, "Our students have had a community service requirement for at least 20 years, and they see New Orleans as a city where they can come for medical school and not only study medicine, but also really get involved in rebuilding a community."

The seniors who matched with residency assignments on Match Day will be going to 26 different states. Of these, 51 — or 31 percent of the class — are staying for their residency training in Louisiana. Thirteen are going to institutions in New York, nine will go to California, and the rest with go to a host of other states.

Senior Samantha Zeringue matched in the surgery residency training program at Tulane. "I love Tulane," she said. "I did undergrad here, I did med school here, so I'm excited to stay. This is what I wanted."

Dan Chen will be going to Brown Rhode Island Hospital for residency training in primary care and internal medicine. "This is where the nostalgia begins," he said. "We're going to be spread out all over the country — I just hope we can all keep in touch!"