Since their days as college freshmen in 2014, Hawa Ali, Sarah Styer, and Octavia Ruelas have dedicated countless hours in the classroom and the clinical setting — all in the hopes of becoming a doctor. They chose the University of Minnesota Rochester as their starting point, and in the years since, they became close friends while following through on their goals.

Ali and Ruelas headed to the University of Minnesota Medical School and Styer pursued medical school at the University of Wisconsin. All three women recently became newly minted MDs, and were tied together once more by a shared experience last Friday — one that united nearly 36,000 hopeful healers across the country.

March 19 marked Match Day 2021, and all three received good news: they would move on in their medical journeys.

The announcement also signified the end of a six-month process filled with countless interviews, rankings and a whole lot of nervous waiting. Ruelas said the feeling Friday brought her was a relief unlike any other.

“It was exciting, but it’s so stressful,” said Ruelas. “A med student in the class below me asked what it was like to go through Match Day… I told them, it’s kind of like jumping off a cliff and realizing you survived... I thought, ‘Oh, okay! I made it! I’m good!’”

Match Day is an annual tradition in the medical field, when new medical school graduates find out where they’ll be completing their multi-year residencies. It’s the last formal step in a doctor’s training, even though residents have already earned the MD title.

In the fall, Styer will head to the University of Cincinnati for her residency in emergency medicine, while Ruelas and Ali will stay inside Minnesotan borders: Ruelas at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, also in emergency medicine, and Ali will complete her ear, nose and throat surgery residency at Mayo Clinic here in Rochester.

All three rated those hospitals highly in their match “wish lists,” so Friday was a celebration for everyone — particularly Ali, who always wanted to stay as close to Rochester (her hometown) as she could. She says finishing her medical education at home will be the perfect place for her to learn, while exploring her passion of combating disparities in health care.

“My background is Somali, so I knew I wanted to be around a large Somali population,” said Ali. “Coming back home and knowing the community, I think it lends itself well to my interests in surgery and helping people of color. It’s the perfect fit for me, honestly — it’s kind of surreal.”

Before they were Gophers, Badgers and ultimately doctors, all three started as Raptors — earning bachelor’s degrees in health sciences while volunteering inside Rochester’s hospitals and gaining valuable real-world medical experience.

Styer stated that her undergraduate experience as a medical scribe inside a Mayo Clinic emergency room is where she found her true passion in medicine: working in a fast-paced environment, giving care to the people that need it most.

“Those days sparked my love of emergency medicine, and it never went away,” said Styer.

As part of UMR’s fourth-ever graduating class, the three students decided to pass up opportunities at larger, more established universities to benefit from smaller class sizes and a health science-centered curriculum. As her undergraduate career progressed, Ruelas says, her conversations with professors morphed into long-lasting working relationships — which came in handy when it came time to move on to med school.

“It was easy to develop relationships with professors,” said Ruelas. “When it comes to learning, obviously, it was great to go talk with professors and gain clarification — then, as an upperclassman, you start thinking about ‘oh, who can write me letters of recommendation?’ Those first meetings helped then, too.”

Seven years later, the three women say their experiences in Rochester helped lay the groundwork for their path through medical school and residencies. Match Day was a day they all had circled in their minds since stepping on the UMR campus together — and now that the day has passed, Ruelas couldn’t help but reflect on the journey the three friends had taken together.

“I know all three of us have wanted to be in this position for a long time, so having the common experience at UMR together, and knowing we’ve all gone through some hard work to get to where we are makes me so proud,” said Ruelas. “These women are my inspiration!”

This story is included in our March edition of On Campus.