Medical School Student Counting the Hours to Match Day

By Lauren Hui

It’s easy to boil down Match Day to a single, life-changing moment. But as I look back, I think about how many days, hours, and minutes it’s taken to reach this point.

Like many others this year who will open their Match envelope, I was one of the students who graduated from college during the COVID-19 pandemic. We began medical school with trepidation and excitement as we emerged from long years of social restrictions. I look at my classmates and see individuals who have changed over the short years of medical school: growing from bright, chipper MS-1s into new parents, spouses, community leaders, researchers, and, ultimately, physicians whom I am proud to call my friends and colleagues.

None of this would be possible without the support of our communities. We are all here thanks to the complex network of people — family members, friends, neighbors, and mentors — who have influenced our lives. An old theory called “Dunbar’s number” suggests that each person can maintain approximately 150 stable, meaningful social relationships. If you multiply that by 50,237, the number of medical students participating in the 2026 Match, you will find that over 7.5 million people have touched the lives of this year’s soon-to-be physicians.

As I thought about the people who have shaped me into the person I am today, I realized a huge part of why I’ve chosen radiology is because we get to influence our patients in a similar way. Although we may not be the first physicians a patient sees, we provide answers, treatment, hope, and guidance along their journey as valued members of the care team.

My sincere hope is that our Class of 2026 will always remember our why. In the next 30 years of our careers, we will face an explosion in projected imaging utilization, the rise of artificial intelligence, and an increasing physician shortage. Instead of thinking of each image as another study to be read, I’d like to reframe it as one more person we get to serve. A radiologist may read upwards of 150 plain films in a day: already meeting or exceeding the number of relationships we can maintain as individuals, if we believe Dunbar’s number.

While the Match is not a perfect system, I’m grateful for what it means to me and other applicants this year. We will find out where we will go to train for the next three to seven-plus years, who our colleagues will be, where our families will move, and whom we’ll be able to serve for the next few years.

So, as we count down to Match Day/Week, I and many other medical students aren’t just twiddling our thumbs. We’re putting our energy into various distractions, from spending time with family and pets to travel and maybe rediscovering hobbies we’ve put aside during the four years of medical school.

I know I’m keeping busy by helping my sister start up her small business — a welcome distraction from the nervous jitters of a countdown that is finally nearing an end!

Lauren is an MS-4 at Texas Christian University’s Burnett School of Medicine. She can be found on X @ltyh_med.