NOTE: Match Day was Friday, March 20 - and fourth-year students at the KU School of Medicine-Wichita finally found out where they will do their residencies. In this series, we follow fourth-year student Jonathan Pike on the interview trail and provide snapshots of the challenging and somewhat mysterious Match. See this spring's issue of Embark magazine for a full version of the story.

Few patients sitting in exam rooms likely ever think about the Match, or that doctors-to-be can end up anywhere they rank on their list and that their next home is determined by a mathematical formula whose decision is binding.

The Match - formally the National Residency Matching Program - dominates the time and minds of graduating medical students seeking residencies in family medicine and nearly four dozen other specialties. It's a process that, for KU School of Medicine-Wichita student Jonathan Pike, started in the spring of his third year and stretched into his fourth. On Match Day - Friday, March 20 - he and thousands of others learned exactly where they would complete their residency.

In Kansas, where he intends to practice, Pike interviewed at all four family medicine residency programs - Wesley, Via Christi, and Smoky Hill-Salina, all of which are programs of the KU School of Medicine-Wichita, and the program at KU Medical Center in Kansas City.  During December, he interviewed in Greeley, Colorado, and with three programs in Texas.

The programs vary in size, but all have training that fits with his plan to have a full-spectrum practice, and his desire to stay in or near the Midwest.

"They have the things I want to be well trained for: rural medicine, OB, specifically in the realm of deliveries and C-sections, and sports medicine," says Pike, who played basketball on back-to-back state champion high-school teams and then in junior college.

Perspective about the process seemed to help keep Pike relaxed as he hit the interview trail. "It's a little bit different than medical school interviews in that programs are recruiting me as much as I'm trying to present myself as the best applicant possible," he said.

As Caren Bachman, Smoky Hill's residency coordinator, said: "We are nervous because they are interviewing us, too."