As many as 25 of the 34 students of the Class of 2014 at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar (WCMC-Q) sought and secured matches on residency programmes in the US, it was announced yesterday.

This year is the first time in the history of WCMC-Q that every graduating student who applied has secured a US residency place - an extremely rare and coveted achievement for any medical college.

Two of the other students from the Class of 2014 were accepted to residency programmes at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) while seven are pursuing a variety of alternative activities next year.

The annual Match Day event is a fiercely competitive affair, with more than 40,000 graduating medical students around the world vying for approximately 25,000 residency positions.

The WCMC-Q students revealed the news of their successful matches in front of friends, family and faculty at an event at the college. Students matched at internationally renowned medical institutions in the US, including Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Yale-New Haven Hospital, the University of Rochester Medical Centre in New York and New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

WCMC-Q dean Dr Javaid Sheikh paid tribute to the Class of 2014, saying: “Achieving a match rate of 100% is a great honour for our college, an honour that has been made possible by the truly excellent levels of commitment, hard work and talent shown by our students during their time here, and by our faculty and staff who have supported them every step of the way.

“We now bid a fond farewell to our students as they embark on a new chapter in their careers by joining residency programmes at elite-level institutions, both here in Qatar and overseas. We wish each and every one of them the very best of luck.

“We have faith that they will be great ambassadors for WCMC-Q and that they will use the knowledge and skills they have learned here to improve the health and well-being of the patients they serve, wherever they are in the world.”

Match Day marks the culmination of four years of medical training for WCMC-Q’s students, who will graduate in May.

Qatari graduate Abdulwahed Zainel, who secured a paediatric residency at HMC, said he is happy and excited to be going to HMC and there are so many things to look forward to.

“I am sure there will be lots of hard work but I will have the chance to work with children to help them overcome their health problems, which is what I really want to do.

“I learned science in Arabic at high school, so it was a big transition for me to study medicine in English, but everyone at WCMC-Q gave me great support every step of the way and I’m very grateful for that.”

Maen Abou Ziki matched at Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut, where he will join an internal medicine residency programme.

Nour Barakat will pursue an ophthalmology residency programme at HMC. “I’m so happy because it has been my dream to be an ophthalmologist for so many years. I feel very privileged to have studied with so many amazing, hard-working people and so proud that our Class of 2014 achieved this incredible 100% match rate,” she said.