Kyle Cornell, DO '18
"It finally hit me how much we had grown and achieved."
Where are you going for residency?
Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, MA for Internal Medicine. My fiancé, Gavin Kuns, DO ’18, also matched at the same residency, and same program.
Where are you going for residency?
Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, MA for Internal Medicine. My fiancé, Gavin Kuns, DO ’18, also matched at the same residency, and same program.
What factors went into selecting your Match choices?
Applying to residency as a couple adds an extra dynamic to writing your rank list. Instead of a traditional list with your programs ranked in order from favorite to least favorite, you have to create two lists that mirror each other and account for the possibility that you may end up at separate programs. For us, the factors that influenced our choices were primarily our experience on the interview day and/or rotations. By the end of interview season, we got much better at looking for the right “feel” in a program. As much as geographic location matters, so does the fit of your academic goals and personality. What are the current residents like? Are they happy at work? How are they treated by faculty? I thought it would be impossible to judge a program’s fit through only one interview day, but it's easier than it sounds. It was
most helpful to keep an open mind on interview day. Even after all of the reading we had done, the program we thought we would like best was not a great fit for us on interview. Likewise, we were surprised to fall in love with the residency where we ended up matching.
How did we feel opening the envelope on match day?
Honestly, it’s difficult to put into words. Even though I knew we had both matched somewhere (you find out the Monday of match week), not knowing where caused a lot of nervous energy. The anticipation for opening the envelope builds for about 10 months. We hadn’t been sleeping well and my heart would suddenly race even at rest. For us, exercise seemed to be the only help in those days. Opening the actual envelope was a blur. My fingers felt so clumsy! It was impossible to process the news right away. We were so relieved. It’s a strange feeling to not know where you will be working and living in 3 months. I’m glad we attended UNECOM’s match day event because even better than opening our own letters was the pride I felt watching my friends open theirs. It finally hit me how much we had grown and achieved.