Cooper's first Match Day: "We left our legacy"

As one, graduating medical students across the country opened their envelopes Friday and discovered the results of the National Resident Matching Program, learning where they will next go to train.

In Camden, one Cooper Medical School of Rowan University student learned he would be staying, matched with the emergency medicine program at Cooper University Hospital.

Then another student ran up: "Cooper?" she shouted.

"Cooper!" he said, hugging her.

Another student ran up.

"Cooper?"

"Cooper!"

Somehow coming together as a unit, the students who will be staying in Camden for several more years found each other, celebrating the news.

"It was my No. 1 choice; I'm really happy," said Michael Coletta, who will do his residency in emergency medicine at Cooper.

Coletta's girlfriend beamed at the news. His father, also a doctor - "emergency room, just like my son" - declared himself proud.

As part of the inaugural class at Cooper Medical School, Coletta came to Camden in 2012, joining dozens of other students in an untested program. Four years later, 43 of them learned of their residency matches, in hospitals across the country, including at systems affiliated with Dartmouth College, Boston and Brown Universities, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

"All four years, they were worth it," Coletta said. "I came here to hope to match here, and I've been able to do that. It feels great."

As family and friends waited in the airy lobby of the medical school's building in downtown Camden, the students received their envelopes and gathered in the auditorium for a private meeting. Paul Katz, the school's dean, called on them to go out and do the school proud.

"Part of my challenge to them was, they have to go out and show what the school is about, and pave the way for those who will be fellow alumni with them," Katz said afterward.

"It's a new school and they've got to prove themselves. They will do so not by what they say, but by what they do, and how they act and how they take care of their patients. I know they'll be our best ambassadors out there."

Imoh Ikpot, 27, was already smiling as he carried his sealed envelope into the crowd. That smile only widened when he learned he had gotten into his top pick: anesthesiology at Ohio State University Medical Center.

"All your four years of hard work, you endured the interview process, and it's the one moment that determines all of your hard work, and it's so exciting to get to this point," he said, friends and faculty congratulating him.

Jacqueline Park, 28, of North Jersey, was also matched with her first choice program: internal medicine at Stony Brook Teaching Hospitals on Long Island.

"I just felt like I fit in with the people there, and I just love the environment and everything about the program," she said.

In May, Park and the other students - doctors, soon - will graduate in the medical school's first commencement ceremony, and the tightly bonded class will split up, one-third of them staying in the region and the rest scattering across the country.

"We left our legacy," Park said.

Eight of the students, including Coletta, will remain in Camden, matched with residency programs at Cooper.

Erica Schramm, 31, was excited about getting Cooper - "I always wanted to do emergency medicine. . . . I was holding this as the gold standard" - but more excited for Katherine McMackin, 28.

Schramm and McMackin, strangers in the first medical school class, became best friends when they were placed in the same small group, a team of students that work with assigned faculty members on a case-study-based curriculum.

"The first two years, you live with your small group, you do everything together, and now we get to do residency together," said McMackin, who will do her vascular surgery residency at Cooper.

"Having that support, knowing when I'm calling the [emergency department] I'm calling a friendly voice -."

Schramm cut her off, declaring herself about to cry right before following through on that threat.

"You and I, we went through every milestone of this together," Schramm said.

Now, they'll spend several more years together, leaning on each other and the rest of their medical school cohort as they face the next challenges.

"It's extremely important to have a tight-knit family/friend network that you can rely on," said Sundip Patel, 38, an emergency medicine doctor at Cooper and assistant professor at the medical school who is director of the fourth year for students.

"Residency's very difficult," said Patel, who did his residency at Cooper after graduating from Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. "There are going to be days you come home, you're extremely tired, you may have dealt with a very difficult situation, and you need someone to confide in, someone to talk to."

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