Baseball Bats, Cracker Jacks and Residency Matches: Burnett School of Medicine at TCU Has 100% Residency Match Rate

FORT WORTH – The Class of 2025 at the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University had a 100% match rate and matched into some of the top medical residency programs in the United States.

The Empathetic Scholars® and future physicians will start the next chapter of their careers as resident physicians with esteemed health care systems such as Johns Hopkins Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Stanford Health, and the Mayo Clinic.

RESIDENCY MATCHES BY SPECIALTY (.pdf)

“These medical students chose our medical school because they saw the importance of being a physician with deep medical knowledge but also having compassion, empathy, and putting the patient at the center of everything they do,” said Stuart D. Flynn, M.D., the Founding Dean of Burnett School of Medicine at TCU.

The Burnett School of Medicine at TCU has created memorable Match Day celebrations for their students and this year’s baseball-themed event kept that tradition going. The medical students learned their match at TCU’s Charlie and Marie Lupton Baseball Stadium at Williams-Reilly Field on Friday, March 21.

“This moment is something they can be proud of and see themselves as trailblazers,” Dean Flynn said. “These are future physicians that will make all of us proud and they will continue to build upon the knowledge that we’ve given them.”

VIEW RESIDENCY MATCH MAP 

The Class of 2025 will be entering 13 residency programs in Texas, including in North Texas at Texas Health Resources Fort Worth, JPS Health Network, and UT Southwestern in Dallas. Across the rest of Texas, Burnett School of Medicine students will be at residencies in San Antonio, Austin, Houston, and El Paso.

Every year, fourth-year medical students across the country find out where they will begin their careers as physicians within the specialty of their choice at the same time. The National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) releases results to applicants seeking residency and fellowship training positions in the United States at 11 a.m. CST on the third Friday of March each year.

The NRMP conducts the match using a computerized mathematical algorithm to align the preferences of applicants with the preferences of U.S. residency programs seeking new trainees. Residency training for most graduates will begin in June or July.

Burnett School of Medicine graduates have continued to defy the odds when it comes to landing coveted residency slots in competitive medical specialties. Some of the most notable medical specialties students accepted into were dermatology, ophthalmology, neurosurgery, orthopedics, urology, and ear, nose & throat (ENT).

Match Day was a day of validation for Jonathan Balcazar, MS-4 at Burnett School of Medicine at TCU, who matched in Urology at UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange, California.

“Urology is very hard to match and I’m thankful that I did have the resources to match because of TCU,” Balcazar said.

Mireya Rahman, MS-4 at Burnett School of Medicine, captured one of only two military residency spots for neurosurgery at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

“There was a lot of pressure,” Rahman said. “I had a really good mentor during my Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship (LIC) experience. I’m thankful for the way TCU structured our electives, which gave us an opportunity to see things that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.”

At the baseball-themed Match Day celebration, students received custom Cracker Jack boxes with their names printed on them in place of the traditional white envelopes. When students opened their boxes, they found caramel popcorn with a personalized baseball card that displayed their name, photo and residency match.  Each student also received a personalized baseball bat and ball as keepsakes.

The Match Day celebration was a fitting ending to her time in medical school, Alejandra Gutierrez, MS-4 at Burnett School of Medicine at TCU, added.

She has a dermatology residency at San Antonio Uniformed Services Health Education Consortium (SAUSHEC) Dermatology Residency Program, Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC).

“My journey has been surreal,” Gutierrez said. “I’m glad for my experience here and incredibly grateful for it.”