By Patrick Broadwater, Keith Gillogly and Dirk Hoffman

“My heart is filled with excitement, and I can sense the mix of anticipation and eagerness in the air as we celebrate this special Match Day,” said Allison Brashear, MD, MBA, UB’s vice president for health sciences and dean of the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, while welcoming the crowd of students, family members, faculty, and other supporters.

She acknowledged everyone’s work and contributions. “I want to thank the parents and support people. Students don’t get to this day without all of you.” 

Brashear noted that Match Day isn’t just a ceremony — it’s an intense, heartfelt moment where years of longing meet destiny.

“This day is the culmination of more than just academic achievement. It’s the embodiment of every tear shed over a textbook, every patient story that touched your soul, and every time you questioned your own strength and found it anyway,” she said.

“It's the moment when the abstract dream of ‘doctor’ becomes a tangible reality.”

David A. Milling, MD, executive director of the Office of Medical Education and senior associate dean for medical education, said “Match Day and graduation day are two days I really look forward to. This is a happy day. I’m very happy for you.”

He then called each student forward to receive their envelopes as various Jacobs School deans and faculty members handed them out one by one.

As anticipation built and the students waited for noon, Milling reminded the students of the work they’ve put in and their exciting futures ahead. “This is where you’re supposed to be. This is where you’re going to train, and it will be an amazing experience for you.”

At noon, confetti blasts of blue and white filled the air and carpeted the ground amid whoops and cheers of jubilation, gratitude, and the realization of dreams come true.

Each year, many Jacobs School graduates remain in Buffalo to join the region’s exceptional advanced training programs. This year is no exception.

In all, 25 percent of the class — 43 students — have chosen to stay at the Jacobs School for their residencies..

The Jacobs School has a strong tradition of retaining graduates and training the next generation of health care providers who will remain as physicians within Western New York and care for the community.

Among the specialties that have the most UB matches from the class are: family medicine (six), psychiatry (six), internal medicine - prelim (five), surgery (four), pediatrics (three) and emergency medicine (three.)

All 190 seats in UB’s residency training programs were filled this year, and include 45 UB graduates and many incoming trainees from medical schools across the country. 

Six medical students from the Class of 2025 matched to programs at Yale University and two matched to programs at Brown University.

This year’s matches also included nine students from the MD-PhD Program. These students matched to prestigious training programs across the country, including at UB, Johns Hopkins University, Yale University, Duke University, the University of Michigan, Case Western Reserve University and the Mayo Clinic.

This year’s class included nine MD/PhD, one MD/MBA, and one MD/OMFS dual-degree students.

Justin Im, who’s from Queens, New York, matched to a neurological surgery training program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard University.

He said his medical education at the Jacobs School was instrumental to feeling prepared for his training program. “Medical school was super formative education wise, learning about how to take care of patients and obviously making lifelong friends,” Im said. 

This year’s match also included multiple couples who matched to training programs together. Rhea Marfatia and Bryan Velez will both be joining the internal medicine residency program at Montefiore Medical Center and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City.

“This was one of our top choices, so I’m really, really happy about it,” Marfatia said. “We’re absolutely thrilled and excited to be together. That’s what we wanted to do, and we got it,” Velez said.

Marfatia is from Western New York and Velez is from New York City. “We’re ready for anything that comes our way,” Velez added.

Shady Albakry, who grew up in Queens, and Jenna Lutfy, who lived a few miles east on Long Island, started dating about a month into medical school at UB. Three and a half years later, they’ll be heading back to Long Island together, having matched at Stony Brook Medicine.

“We ended up matching in the same place, so we’re ecstatic,” Lutfy said.

Albakry matched in internal medicine, while Lutfy matched in medicine-pediatrics. Both got their first choice of location and specialty.

“After spending the first two years of medical school just learning about all the different kinds of diseases and illnesses, the third- and fourth-year clinical rotations were really eye-opening in the sense that I have to know how to treat diseases now,” Albakry said. “I enjoyed that part of it. I could not picture any other field for me than internal medicine.”

“I thought I was going to go into peds and then I did my medicine rotation. It was very cerebral, very intellectually stimulating to me. I couldn’t decide,” Lutfy said. “I love babies, but I also love curing the whole population, so that’s how I decided on med-peds.”

“It all worked out,” Albakry said. “I couldn’t have done this without her, honestly. She supported me the entire time at medical school. We’re really happy with what we’ve got.”

Lutfy was among those that felt a mix of emotions on Match Day. The excitement of getting her first choice was tempered by the fact that the group of 170-plus medical students would be going their separate ways next year.

“Just seeing that envelope and knowing that we’re not all going to be together next year was a pretty hard pill to swallow,” said Lutfy.

“I’ve been waiting my entire life for this day, but I’ve also been dreading this day for a long time,” added Albakry. “You have this close-knit family you develop over four years. Some of the people I’ve met at medical school – the professors, the administration, my classmates, the class below us – those are some of the greatest people I’ve met in my entire life. I love them. They made this experience the most memorable experience of my life.”

Maxwell Scott agrees.

He will be one of the dozens of grads in this year’s class staying in Buffalo to do their residency. A native of Lakeview, he matched in orthopaedics at the Jacobs School.

“I love the program, I love the people in it, I know I’ll get great training, so I’m super excited.”

But he’ll miss his classmates, too. He cited the friendships he made as one of the best parts of his medical school experience.

“There are too many memories to count – whether it be going to Bills games together or having those moments when we’re all together staying up late studying. The combination of all of it.”

Same for Kathryn Hobika. Without hesitation, she said it was her classmates that made her medical school education stand out.

“The friends I made, 100%,” she said. “I can’t believe that we’re all going to be graduating.”

Hobika matched in the highly competitive pediatrics-psychiatry/child and adolescent psychiatry at Brown University, one of only about a dozen such programs in the country.

“This is literally surreal,” she said. “I was not expecting this. I am so, so pleasantly surprised.”

“I think we went to the best med school in the country,” Lutfy said. “I’m so happy I ended up in Buffalo. We’re so lucky to have been here. It will be sad to leave.”

In 2019, shortly after sending off her medical school applications, Catherine Lawton experienced an accident and serious injuries during a Labor Day camping trip. While inside her tent, an oak tree fell and struck Lawton, leaving her with two collapsed lungs, a fractured pelvis, and a back broken in 10 places.

After a long hospital stay, Lawton eventually interviewed for and joined the Jacobs School as a medical student. While the accident left her with a paralyzed left leg and incomplete spinal cord injury, Lawton is set to graduate this year and matched to the physical medicine and rehabilitation program at the University of Washington School of Medicine. “The Jacobs School definitely prepares us well,” Lawton said.

“It was my first choice, so I’m very, very excited,” Lawton said of her program match. “It’s amazing, the rehab that everyone’s doing and the new tech that’s coming out. I love the focus on adaptive sports and engineering solutions that they have in Seattle.”

Fourth-year medical students are listed below with their future medical specialties and the locations of their residency matches.