All eyes were focused on a wicker basket, something you’d expect to reach into for a piece of crusty bread. But in this case, the basket held a neatly stacked row of envelopes, each containing a sheet of paper confirming the next phase in the quest of Stanford medical students to become doctors.

Organized by the Washington-based National Resident Matching Program, Match Day has become a rite of passage for graduating medical students across the country and across the generations. For more than 50 years, Match Day has revealed to students which residency program they will attend once completing their final requirements at medical school.

It began on March 20 at 9 a.m. exactly. In the lobby of Fairchild Auditorium, Elliott Wolfe, MD, director of the Office of Medical Student Professional Development, handed out envelopes one by one after Terrence Blaschke, MD, read the names in random order. A similar scene was playing out at that moment at medical schools nationwide.

Melanie Watkins reads the results of her Match Day envelope with friend and fellow medical school student Khaliah A. Johnson. Watkins will begin a residency program at UC-San Francisco later this year. Photo: Eric Weissman

Students sheepishly moved forward to the claps and cheers of their colleagues, took their envelopes and disappeared back into the crowd. Some tore into the envelope right away; others clutched onto it, savoring the moment or perhaps too anxious to see the results, before finally taking a peek.

Among the first names read was Melanie Watkins, ("soon-to-be MD" in her words) a graduating student originally from Los Angeles who was matched to her first choice, UC-San Francisco.

Watkins was among the 80 percent of Stanford students who matched with their first choice; 96 percent matched with one of their first three choices, noted Blaschke, professor of medicine and of molecular pharmacology and associate dean for medical student advising.

"I think it is fair to say that most students matched at what would generally be considered top-tier, competitive institutions such as Stanford, UCSF, Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Yale, Columbia, Cornell and so on," Blaschke said. "This reflects the quality of our graduates and their interest in rigorous academic residencies."

Watkins clearly fell into the category who couldn’t open the envelope right away: holding it in both hands, staring at it, grinning nervously to the friends who surrounded her, before finally prying into it.

"UCSF was my first choice for residency because of its obstetrics and gynecology research and its diverse faculty," she said. "Plus I’m a single mom so it’s important for me to stay in an area where I have so much support. So many residents at UCSF come from Stanford – it’s like a little family’s waiting there for me."

Watkins describes herself as a typical Stanford School of Medicine student, simply another way of saying how atypical she in fact is. Rather than completing her studies in four years, she took five, using the extra time to conduct research, travel to Ghana and Mexico and work as a teaching assistant in four classes. "For me, it was a wonderful Stanford experience but by no means exceptional for this place," she said.

Watkins said she pursued a medical degree because of the power it potentially offers to help bring about change and to open up career options. "I could be a reporter, a basic researcher, a clinician, a senator – I chose medical school for all the opportunities that would become available," she said.

Match Day also allowed Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital to know who their new residents will be. The hospitals matched for all 156 of the open resident positions. The new group comes from top schools nationwide including Stanford, Harvard, Hopkins, Yale, UCSF and UC-Davis, said Ann Dohn, director of the Office of Graduate Medical Education. "This was a phenomenal match for us this year," she added.

For a listing of School of Medicine student matches in 2003, please visit http://deansnewsletter.stanford.edu/archive/2003_residency_match.html.