Hallie Rozansky and Fellow Graduates Brave the Elements for a Holiday Match

Several PhD Students Match, Making for an Especially Robust Class

Philadelphia native Hallie Rozansky, M’17, was composed, even cheerful, as she prepared for the ceremony to begin. An unseasonably cold March day was no match for her energy or the buzz in the Harrison Auditorium at the Penn Museum of Archeology and Anthropology on March 17th, where students gathered to participate in Match Day. The event, which has been organized by the National Resident Match Program for more than 60 years, serves as a culmination of the residency placement process for approximately 39,000 medical students seeking residencies nationwide.

Families and friends of 169 students joined Dean J. Larry Jameson, Senior Vice Dean Gail Morrison, and the Perelman School Office of Student Affairs to learn where they had matched for their residencies. Typically numbering in the 140s, the School’s roster of matching students this year was bolstered by more than two dozen students completing dual degrees.

Ms. Rozansky, a Yale graduate who was eager to return to Philadelphia to earn her MD at the University of Pennsylvania, said before the ceremony that she is prepared for the rigor of a residency in internal medicine, wherever it leads. Her preference was a residency program focused on holistic medicine, where residents collaborate with physicians to treat the whole patient. “I want to treat the whole person and beyond—by considering the social elements of a patient’s life and how it affects their health,” she said. Hallie also wanted to place in an academic environment and explore opportunities to eventually teach medicine.

As students anxiously awaited the opportunity to claim their envelopes, leadership kept their remarks brief, eager to share the placements with students and guests. “May the luck of the Irish be with you today, St. Patrick’s Day,” Dean Jameson declared as the first student was called to the stage. The luck may have been with Ms. Rozansky: she landed a residency at her first choice, Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital.