Graduating medical students learn residency placements, prepare for next chapter of training

West Virginia University’s graduating medical students will go to 24 states and Washington, D.C. for their residency placements. West Virginia will retain 48% of the class. The placement announcements were made as part of the University’s Match Day celebration, Friday, March 15.

Primary care continued to be a popular choice, as the Class of 2024 placed 47% of their members into a primary care specialty. For the class overall, the top three specialties were internal medicine, family medicine and psychiatry.

Match Day is a national celebration where medical students learn in which U.S. residency programs they will train for the next three to seven years. For WVU’s School of Medicine, the celebration unites more than 100 students, families, faculty members and friends on the Morgantown, Charleston and Eastern campuses as they unveil their “match.”

For students, the Residency Match process begins in the final year of medical school, when they apply to the residency training programs of their choice. Following interviews at programs across the country, applicants and program directors rank each other in order of preference and submit those lists to the National Resident Matching Program, which processes them using a computerized mathematical algorithm to “match” them.

Stats for the Class of 2024 include:

• Students placed in 23 different specialties across 24 states plus Washington, D.C.
• West Virginia was the highest matched state. Second was North Carolina and Pennsylvania and Florida tied for third.
• Students matched across three time zones, with the furthest matching being in Utah.
• For a complete list of Matches, visit go.wvu.edu/WVUMatchDay.

“Match Day is an important milestone for these future physicians. They get to celebrate their achievements with their friends and family and turn their sights toward a program that will launch their career,” Norman Ferrari, M.D., chief academic officer and vice dean for medical education for the Doctorate of Medicine program, said.

There were 50,413 total applicants registered in the 2024 Main Residency Match, an increase of 2,257 applicants over last year.

WVU has the largest number of graduate medical education offerings in the state, with 77 specialty training programs. One-half of those training programs are the only such specialty programs offered in the entire state.

Residency training begins at WVU in July for residents from medical schools across the country.

For more information on the School of Medicine, visit medicine.wvu.edu.