Finding out where they will fulfill their medical residencies can be a dream come true for aspiring physicians. After months of waiting and wondering if they would find their perfect match, students at NYU Grossman Long Island School of Medicine (GLISOM) took part in the nationwide ceremony known as Match Day - the day when future doctors learn the location of their residencies.

The 24-member class of 2024 will be the third graduating class of the Mineola medical school, which recently received a major donation from Home Depot founder Ken Langone and was renamed after Dean Robert I. Grossman, MD. The school is the only one in the country to offer a three-year, tuition-free medical degree focused on training primary care physicians.

“Our mission is to help alleviate the local and nationwide shortage of primary care physicians and this soon to be graduating class will be helping to do so by bringing their topnotch clinical skills to communities in need,” said Gladys M. Ayala, MD, MPH, Dean of the NYU Grossman Long Island School of Medicine.

Each year, residency matches are made through a mutual selection process run by the National Residents Matching Program, in which students and residency programs rank their preferences. A computer generates matches among more than 38,000 residency positions nationwide by using an algorithm so complex that its developers were awarded a Nobel Prize. 

This year’s celebration took place at 12:00 pm on March 15, when GLISOM students opened their envelopes to reveal their residency matches. They will begin training as residents soon after the school’s graduation in May.

Among the latest class of students hoping to make a difference are:

• Sabrina Daoui, an Algerian born immigrant, who worked as a health care analyst in California and New York after graduating from Cornell University. Sabrina will be pursuing a residency in Internal Medicine.

• Aparna Raghu, a Princeton University graduate with a degree in molecular biology, who volunteered with AmeriCorps as a legal advocate and served as a research fellow for The Food Project to advance legislation to improve health equity and primary care access. Aparna will pursue a residency in Family Medicine.

• Sharika Hasan, a Bronx born alum of Vassar College, where she received a degree in Biochemistry. Sharika conducted Hepatitis research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and served as a live-in elderly caretaker. She will be pursuing a residency in Internal Medicine.

While LISOM students can be matched with any residency position nationwide, the school is pleased to announce that many students matched with NYU Langone locations, and others matched with additional institutions in the broader New York region. Many of the students in this year’s graduating class have selected residencies among the following primary care disciplines: family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, and obstetrics and gynecology, helping to relieve that nationwide shortage of physicians in these fields of medicine.