On Friday, March 16, beginning at noon, students in the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine Class of 2018 opened envelopes along with medical students from across the country to reveal where they would be heading for residency training. With family, friends, and classmates surrounding them, the class celebrated their achievements and honored all of the loved ones who helped them achieve this milestone.
Watch a video with highlights from Match Day 2018:
Get to know some of the Class of 2018 students who matched March 16:
- Iowa native Maggie Graham ’18 knew that going to medical school with a spouse and three children would be difficult, but credits her wife – “the most supportive person on earth” – open communication, and asking friends and family for help along the way with getting her to this point. “Match Day and graduation feel like they are just as much about all of them as about me,” says Graham, a 2016 Freeman Foundation Legacy Medical Scholar who is grateful for how Vermont embraced her and her family. She matched to a family medicine residency at UVM Medical Center.
- The son of Vietnamese refugees, Tinh Huynh ’18 survived the tragic death of his brother in a Texas gang shooting and many struggles prior to college and medical school. Despite the stress of these experiences, he says that “Being where I am now, I am definitely happy I chose a career in medicine, which is full of meaningful experiences on a daily basis.” He matched in anesthesiology, a field he finds especially fun and challenging, because it involves work with all patient populations and interacts with every specialty, at University of Texas Southwestern Medical School.
- Astia Roper-Batker ’18, originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, has a love of science she inherited from her father, a public school science teacher, that led her to pursue medicine after serving as a research coordinator for smoking cessation trials. She is grateful for the challenges she found in Vermont – rigorous medical school coursework and hiking – and opportunities for leadership and service, including a Schweitzer Fellows project with classmate Susannah Kricker to promote health literacy among Latino dairy farm workers. Recently married, she will leave for a six-week global health elective in Uganda on March 18. Roper-Batker matched to an internal medicine residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
Students in the Class of 2018 will earn their medical degrees at Commencement on May 20, 2018, and will begin residency orientation in mid- to late June.
