CDU Celebrates Match Day 2025
Twenty-six fourth-year medical students from the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science/UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine program celebrated Match Day on Friday, March 21.
At exactly 9:00 a.m. local, CDU/UCLA students joined peers at medical schools nationwide in simultaneously unsealing envelopes revealing their matches.
The ceremony featured remarks from faculty and staff including CDU President and CEO Dr. David M. Carlisle, Provost and Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs Dr. Jose Torres Ruiz, College of Medicine Dean Dr. Deborah Prothrow-Stith, all of whom took time to congratulate students and reflect on the meaning of the moment.
“This morning is the culmination of a lot of hard work,” remarked CDU President and CEO, Dr. David M. Carlisle. “This is the day that we send our medical school graduates off to the next chapter of their educational trajectory to become residents.”
This year, 67% of CDU/UCLA students matched into primary care specialties, including Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, Psychiatry, Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Medicine-Preliminary. These fields are particularly vital for improving health outcomes in medically underserved communities like those surrounding the CDU campus in South Los Angeles.
While primary care remains a stronghold, students also matched into a wide range of non-primary care specialties—such as Anesthesiology, Emergency Medicine, Orthopedic Surgery, Interventional Radiology, Pathology, and Urology—highlighting the varied interests and talents cultivated within the medical education program.
CDU student Precious Moman was matched to UC Davis Medical Center where she’ll pursue Urology. “Being a first-generation student, there are so many things we don’t know coming into medical school,” said Moman. “Dr. Calmes and everyone at Drew helped fill those gaps to succeed.”
She also expressed gratitude toward L.A. Care Health Plan and their “Elevating the Safety Net” program, which has provided four full-ride scholarships to CDU medical students each year since 2018, including four students in the class of 2025.
“I also thank L.A. Care; I really appreciate the belief and support that you have in us as students and for us to come into this community, and I fully intend to do so,” shared Moman.
Geographically, the majority of the graduating students will remain in California. 44% matched into residency programs in Southern California, while 59% matched within California overall. In total, 70% of the class of 2025 will remain in the Western region for residency training.
This is particularly impactful for the State of California as Black and Latino physicians continue to be significantly underrepresented in California’s workforce. According to the California Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI), achieving parity would require an additional 37,000 Latino physicians in the state. While recent physician graduates from the Black community are well-represented, they still only constitute 4% of the overall physician workforce, in contrast to their 5.6% share of the total population.
As a Historically Black Graduate Institution (HBGI), one of only four Historically Black Medical Colleges in the country, and a charter member of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, CDU continues to lead the charge in producing physicians who are not only highly trained, but deeply rooted in the values of community, excellence, and compassion.