Laughs, Tears and Hugs as Students Meet Their (Residency) Match
TouroCOM's Class of 2026 Celebrates Residency Placements at Leading Medical Centers Across the Country
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Anticipation and suspense filled the historic Alhambra Ballroom in Harlem on Friday morning, as fourth-year medical students at Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine (TouroCOM) in Harlem filed in and filled the tables with their family members and friends to await the noon hour -- when they would open envelopes and learn where they would spend their next four years as medical residents.
Meanwhile, the same scenario was playing out at TouroCOM’s sister campus in Middletown, N.Y. and at medical schools around the country in the largest match in history - with over 53,000 applicants registered to participate.
Dr. Kenneth Steier, executive dean of TouroCOM Harlem, Middletown, and Montana, opened the event by addressing students in Middletown in person and with pre-recorded congratulatory remarks at the Harlem Campus. He reminded the students of the distinctiveness of osteopathic medicine and to use those special skills to help diagnose and treat patients.
“Think about the whole person, about the skills you have to help diagnose and treat patients in addition to prescription medicine, surgery and other therapies. Use the hands-on approach,” he said.
Shrieks, Laughter, Tears and Hugs
At the appointed hour, shrieks filled the ballroom along with laughter, tears and lots of hugs. In total, 237 TouroCOM students matched, nearly all of whom placed into programs in the New York/tri-state area. The match rate for Harlem was 96.5 percent, and for Middletown 98 percent.
The most popular specialties for Middletown student placements were emergency, internal and family medicine. For Harlem, the predominant categories were anesthesia, neurology, physical medicine & rehabilitation (“PM&R”), diagnostic radiology and urology.
Slightly more than half of the TouroCOM Class of 2026 will be entering primary care or other shortage specialties.
Among the leading academic medical centers in the expanded Tri-state area TouroCOM students matched into are Yale, UConn, Stony Brook Hospital, NYU Grossman, Staten Island University, Garnet Health, Vassar Brothers Medical Center, Albany Medical Center and Lehigh Valley Health Network.
Other top tier programs welcoming TouroCOM students include Brown University, Dartmouth, George Washington University, Tufts Medical Center, University of Louisville and Henry Ford.
TouroCOM Middletown’s Frank Miele matched to Yale New Haven Emergency Medicine.
“Opening that envelope and seeing my number one program on the page was one of the most exciting and emotional moments of both my medical career and life,” he said.
Miele said he was motivated to pursue medicine when his grandmother was diagnosed with colon cancer and he felt overwhelmed, not understanding what was happening to her.
“My path to EM really came from keeping an open mind and paying attention to where I felt most fulfilled. I learned that some of the most meaningful parts of medicine are not just the diagnoses or procedures but the human moments when you make patients feel heard, cared for and less alone during vulnerable moments.”
TouroCOM Harlem’s Keziah Koroma was thrilled with her match to Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., in pediatrics, her first choice. A native of the Caribbean island of Tobago, she said she became interested in medicine at an early age, after her she, too, lost her grandmother, who was hospitalized, sent home, and then hospitalized again and died.
“I went home and I told my parents, I want to be a doctor. I just remember we’d be asking questions and nobody would really explain what was going on. I just felt so helpless.”
“Serve My Country”
Middletown student Joseph Cooney from Massapequa, Long Island, matched at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii in internal medicine. He attended TouroCOM through the Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP), a military scholarship offered by the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force to students in medical and other health science professions that covers expenses including tuition in exchange for serving as a commissioned officer after graduation.
“My dream was to be in medicine. I liked the military aspect too, serving something larger than myself – my country,” he explained.
Harlem OMS-IV Mark Wanis, in attendance with his mother and girlfriend, will be going to Northwell Health in internal medicine.
“I am very, very happy,” he said about his match. Wanis said he came the U.S. from Egypt at 14 and decided on medicine in high school, inspired by Egyptian-British cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Magdi Yacoub, a world-renowned pioneer in heart transplantation who established a children’s hospital in Egypt that provides free heart surgeries for children.
All four - Miele, Koroma, Cooney and Wanis - matriculated into the D.O. program through TouroCOM’s M.S. program, an opportunity afforded master of science students who meet a GPA benchmark.
TouroCOM Harlem student Rabbi Adam Epstein, a 42-year-old board-certified mohel and licensed EMT, matched into SUNY Downstate in family medicine. A father of four, Epstein previously taught in a local day school in Chicago, where he also volunteered with the volunteer ambulance service Hatzalah, and took shifts in the fire department and emergency rooms.
“I just started taking classes with no particular goal in mind and I was enjoying it more and more, and then I got into medical school,” he said, adding he would have been happy attending any of the six residency programs he applied to, including emergency medicine, psychiatry, PM&R, internal medicine and family medicine.
“Thank God,” the rabbi said, when asked his reaction to the match.
