The Envelope Please: BU’s Graduating Medical Students Match to Their Future
Graduates discover where they’ll be serving their residencies during annual Match Day

Natalie Nanez, (CAMED’24) celebrates matching into the Boston Combined Residency Program in Pediatrics
The Envelope Please: BU’s Graduating Medical Students Match to Their Future
Graduates discover where they’ll be serving their residencies during annual Match Day
Fourth-year medical student Natalie Nanez acknowledged being nervous in the days leading up to this year’s Match Day, where fourth year medical students across the country open envelopes at noon on the third Friday of March to find out where they will go for their residency training.
“I’m nervous, but also pretty excited. I feel like it’s the culmination of so many things,” Nanez (CAMED’24) said before learning Friday that she will be a resident at Boston Children’s Hospital’s Boston Combined Residency Program in Pediatrics, her first choice. Nanez could finally celebrate with her parents, José and Maria, who had sacrificed much to get her to this point.
Both parents immigrated to the United States from Colombia 30 years ago, and her father worked as a janitor, her mother as a housekeeper.
“They always said they wanted me to be educated and to go further than they were able to with the resources that they had,” Nanez said. “I saw how hard they worked, and it seemed like it was all done for me, to put me into this position. I’m eternally grateful to them.”
“She has worked hard,” said Maria Nanez. “I’m so proud of her. I’m so happy.”

Match Day is the product of an algorithm that matches fourth-year medical students to residency programs based on preference lists developed by both the students and the programs. Students will spend the next few years diagnosing, managing care, and treating patients in their specialty under the supervision of experienced physicians.
It was a medical emergency involving her father that set Nanez on the path to medical school. A potentially fatal heart condition went undiagnosed by their primary care physician until her mother found a physician from Columbia who attended their church.
“Just being able to express themselves so freely—she knew his language, she knew the culture,” said Nanez, who speaks Spanish, and wants to be a physician who can bridge communication and cultural gaps for her patients.
In the faculty speeches leading up to the opening of the envelopes, Angela Jackson, Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine associate dean of student affairs and an associate professor of medicine, assured the students they were ready to be doctors, adding that there will be times when they will feel they are not ready.
“You’re not going to feel like you’re ready, but the one thing you know is that while you don’t know all the answers, you know the questions to ask. You know how to find the information and you know how to learn,” said Jackson.
Priya Garg, associate dean of medical education and an assistant professor of pediatrics, recalled the fractured learning landscape that the Class of 2024 had to navigate as the first entering class to deal with the realities of a pandemic.
“Getting to know each other and the faculty was so much harder. Despite that, over the four years, you have created deep and meaningful friendships with your peers and memories that you will continue to look back on throughout your career,” Garg said.
“Some of you in the next four or more years are going to rely on your skills and competence to manage the most complex medical problems,” noted Kristin Goodell, associate dean of admissions and an assistant professor of family medicine. “Some of you are going to bring your deep empathy and ability to connect to help soothe patients in their most anxious moments. Some are going to dedicate yourselves to advocating for the most marginalized among us.”

Darienne Madlala (CAMED’24) arrived at Match Day after a life-changing stint with the Peace Corps. Born in South Africa, she moved to Maryland with her mother and three sisters her high school junior year. Her mother was a medical anthropologist and her father, who passed away last year, worked in small business development for the South African government.
Madlala followed in her mother’s footsteps, joining the Peace Corps after graduating from Amherst College, and spent two years in Gambia at a women’s health clinic, where she worked with women who had experienced the trauma of genital mutilation. “That really got me interested in women’s health,” said Madlala, who was matched in obstetrics and gynecology at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia.
“I know that their patient population is very similar to BMC in that they treat a lot of substance abuse in pregnancy,” Madlala said, “and that’s something I wanted to continue to address in residency.”
Karen Antman, dean of the medical school and provost of the Medical Campus, told the assembled students that while they had an unconventional medical education during their first year, it had made them better physicians.
“In addition to medicine, you learned flexibility and creativity, important skills in medicine, as well as disaster management, up close and personal,” said Antman. “You will grow and thrive wherever you are planted.”

Like other couples who try to match into residencies at the same hospital or city, fourth-year students Arturo Toro (CAMED’24) and Frances Rodriguez Lara (CAMED’24) had an additional worry coming into Match Day.
“Our biggest concern was not matching together,” said Rodriguez Lara, but their envelopes revealed they were both accepted into residency programs at Boston Medical Center, Toro in anesthesiology and Rodriguez Lara in otolaryngology.
Nine years ago, Rodriguez Lara relocated to Florida from Cuba with her parents, Oriel Rodriguez and Yadira Lara. Oriel Rodriguez said their daughter was driven to succeed.
“We arrived here with dreams and nothing but dreams, but the minute we arrived here, she already had her goals ready, and she knew exactly what she wanted to do and she worked so hard for them,” he said.
Akshay Ravandur matched in diagnostic radiology at his number one choice, Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. But he sometimes had his doubts that he’d ever make it to Match Day as he navigated the fourth year of hospital rotations while applying for residencies and passing the required exams.
“This day seems like it’s real now,” Ravandur said.
Following graduation in May, 38 medical students will be staying in Massachusetts, 15 at Boston Medical Center. The next most popular states are New York (24), Pennsylvania (14), California (11), and Florida (8). The class matched in a range of programs, with the top specialties being internal medicine (26), surgery (23), pediatrics (15), family medicine (13) and anesthesiology (12).
Comments & Discussion
Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.