Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine students celebrate Match Day

The third Friday in March, also known as Match Day, is when graduating medical students learn where they will spend the next several years as a medical resident. It was an exciting and nerve-wracking day for many students at the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, but at noon, they learned where they would be headed.

Preliminary numbers showed that 99 percent of the Heritage College Class of 2024 successfully matched. Of those, 69 percent matched in Ohio, and 47 percent matched in a primary care specialty.  One-third of the students matched in primary care in Ohio.

Match Day is a culmination of months of applying and interviewing with potential residency programs in the hope students will land in a location they want and in their preferred medical specialty.

“Overall, I’ve felt like it’s been a positive process, obviously a stressful one, but you know that going in,” said fourth-year student Aidan Bean.

Coming into medical school, Bean initially hoped to go into orthopedic surgery, but a mentor sparked his interest in sports medicine. 

“He really has been great about giving me opportunities to see what the field of sports medicine is like and solidified that this is the right path for me,” Bean said of his mentor. Bean, who is from Powell, Ohio, hopes to work with professional athletes and eventually return to central or northeast Ohio. Bean matched into Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and will do his intern year at Riverside Methodist Hospital and then finish his residency at the University of Toledo.

Fourth year student Alyssa Lambrecht said she tried to be realistic about how many residencies to apply to and find the right balance of applying to enough to ensure she was placed, but to avoid applying to so many that she was overwhelmed. 

When she began medical school, Lambrecht knew she wanted to go into medical oncology. Her participation in the Heritage College’s Rural and Urban Scholars Pathways program solidified her interest in practicing in a rural community. She also took an extracurricular seminar on racism in medicine and did rotations in Toledo, which she said helped increase her understanding about how to be more inclusive and help underserved populations that are not receiving the same quality of care. She also became an advocate for those who struggle with addictions and substance use.

“I like serving populations that are traditionally underserved,” said Lambrecht, who is from Oregon, Ohio. She hopes to practice medicine with populations who don’t have easy access to health care. “Being able to make a difference would be rewarding.”  

Medical students from around the country learned where they would be matched at noon on March 15, although a handful of students followed a different timeline, including students who matched through the military, and urology and ophthalmology specialties as well as students participating in the Heritage College’s Transformative Care Continuum (TCC). The TCC program is an accelerated curriculum developed in partnership with Cleveland Clinic. Students are admitted directly into family medicine residency programs at Cleveland Clinic Akron General or Cleveland Clinic Lakewood Family Health Center upon graduation. 

Lambrecht matched at her first choice: the University of Kentucky in internal medicine.

“It was amazing opening my letter with my family and significant other. I was surprised at first, because I didn't think I would get my number one, but I was so happy and it was an amazing surprise,” said Lambrecht. “I love seeing all my classmates matching at some of their top programs, and finding out some of my closest friends from HCOM will only be an hour away from me.”