When talking about the Class of 2015’s impending Match Day, fourth-year Geisel medical student Mildred Lopez Pineiro expressed how she and her fellow classmates were more than ready to hear where they would begin their residency training. Often both a stressful and exciting day for medical students, Mildred noted that the close-knit nature of Geisel’s community made the day less nerve-wracking.
“I think we have a lot of support here at Dartmouth because it is a small community and because people actually care what’s happening with each student…I feel like we all support each other and we know we’re all going through this. I’m hoping it’s gonna be a happy day and I’m gonna get to celebrate with my family and friends and everyone will get a choice that they really like.”
Mildred attended the University of Puerto Rico for her undergraduate degree, a school with a much larger student body, and credits Geisel’s small class-size and the opportunity to work closely with faculty to tailor her education to her interests as one of the reasons she chose to come to here.
“I feel like it’s a very individualized experience and you get good advising,” says Mildred. “There are people who are very open to give you advice about anything and they care what your interests are, and target whatever opportunities they can find for your interests, which is something that I really like. I’m very interested in diversity issues….and here at Dartmouth there’s not as much of a Latino-American population, they made sure that I found the opportunities to have a diverse experience and to have exposure to that population.”
On Match Day, Mildred was delighted to learn that she was going to be spending a preliminary year in medicine at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina and would then be moving on to her residency in dermatology at the University of Texas Medical Center in Houston—a program that will continue to expose her to a diverse patient population. The move is an especially happy one for Mildred because her significant other also lives in Houston.
“I was looking for a program that was big and that offered a variety of pathology and diverse diagnosis, and also where the resident had more ownership over their own patients and over making decisions over their patients. I wanted to be in a program that’s independent, that allows me to formulate my own thoughts when I’m going through diagnostics and therapeutics, and where I could actually see all the different pathology that I’m gonna encounter once I’m in the real world and just practice it on my own.”
