UCLA medical students celebrate Match Day on their path to becoming practicing doctors

Pictured: The David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA class of 2026 holds up their Match Day cards at Geffen Hall at UCLA. (Credit: Reed Hutchinson)

Karla Murillo was among the 150 medical students who gathered at UCLA’s Geffen Hall for the nationwide, annual celebration of Match Day on March 20, where medical students across the country learn where they will begin their residency on the path to becoming practicing doctors. 

Murillo got the good news that she will remain at UCLA Health for her residency in ophthalmology, which she says will allow her to continue the work that inspired her pursuit of a medical career: providing health care services to underserved communities.
 

As the daughter of an immigrant mother from Mexico, Murillo’s lived experiences shaped her purpose in medicine. Growing up in southeast Los Angeles and Bakersfield where her single mother worked as a farm worker, Murillo saw first hand the disparities in health care access in the Central Valley. As the first person in her family to go to college, Murillo sought guidance from the UCLA Academic Advancement Program (AAP) to explore her interest in medicine after volunteering at the Ronald Reagan Medical Center’s Child Life Department. Many of the families she worked with traveled from the Central Valley for specialty care and were Spanish-speaking. 

Through the UC Davis Latinx Health Internship, studying public and Latino health in Oaxaca, Mexico, as well as High AIMS, a pre-health mentorship program at UCLA, Murillo decided to pursue both a medical degree and a master’s degree in public health and epidemiology through the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA’s PRIME-LA program. The program is dedicated to serving under-resourced communities by training underrepresented medical students who are passionate about addressing health disparities. 

“PRIME-LA became my dream medical program as it would allow me to combine both my interests in public health and medicine,” Murillo said. “I saw myself in the PRIME-LA students who were deeply committed to serving underserved communities and their community was what really drove them. When I got the acceptance call, I felt it had been a long time coming.”

Prior to medical school, Murillo never heard of the field of ophthalmology. However, through mentorship and exposure to the UCLA Mobile Eye Clinic (UMEC), she saw all her interests in community outreach, public health and surgery overlap.

While in medical school, Murillo wasted no time on beginning her work, expanding the UMEC program to the Central Valley to farm workers in her hometown with support from the UCLA Latinx Studies Seed Grant and the Dolores Huerta Foundation. She plans to further expand the program to day laborers in Los Angeles.

“We didn’t get here alone,” Murillo said. “I think that is probably the most beautiful part of Match Day. We recognize all the hard work we put into it but also all that our families have sacrificed and are finally able to see the fruits of our labor.”

Other students such as Isabella Lin entered medical school with broad intellectual curiosity, drawn to genetics, hematology, pediatrics and internal medicine, and how these fields intersect. Growing up in Australia, and as the first in her family to pursue studies in the medical field, she has come to value the opportunity to carve out her own path, allowing her interests to evolve.

“A lot of my decisions have come from indecision and not wanting to close doors. Should I pick an MD or a PhD?” Lin said. “Well, why not both?”

Lin was among the students enrolled in the Medical Scientist Training Program, an intensive eight-year program administered by a UCLA-Caltech affiliation in which students pursue both an MD and a PhD. She is graduating with her medical degree and a PhD in human genetics. 

“I had the chance to work with a lot of world-leading experts in genetics and their subfields,” Lin said. “Also, I had the chance to work with hematology and oncology teams and explored cancer genetics and genetic predisposition. These opportunities allowed me to see the full spectrum of what I was interested in.”

Enrolled in the Medical Scientist Training Program since she was 19 years old, Lin said Match Day represents the culmination of years of study, meaningful friendships and one of the most significant life decisions in nearly a decade.

“When many of us started this 8-year program, we were open to exploring different locations and opportunities in our 20s,” Lin said. “Now, it’s about thinking more intentionally about where we want to live and practice for the rest of our lives and what kind of impact we want to contribute to our field or scope of practice.”

Having applied to residency, Lin let fate decide what she plans to specialize in. Her answer came when she opened her envelope: “Stanford University — Pediatrics and Genetics.”

Among this year’s class of 150 students at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, 30% will be pursuing primary care specialties, namely in internal medicine, pediatrics and family medicine. About 67% of the class will remain in the western U.S. — 20% of the class continuing their training at UCLA — while others will venture to institutions across the country in states such as Texas, Massachusetts, New York, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Connecticut.

# 

Original article: UCLA medical students celebrate Match Day on their path to becoming practicing doctors