Milestone events

We believe in celebrating your major milestones at distinctly Detroit venues reflective of your unique urban clinical training: from beginning your journey as a medical professional with the White Coat Ceremony, marking the start of Clerkship year with the Clinician's Ceremony, through the excitement of Match Day, to the pride in watching each student cross the stage at Commencement at the magnificent FOX theatre! Every step of the way, we are committed to ensuring a positive and inclusive learning environment and the resources needed to thrive during your medical education to develop into a true Wayne Warrior MD!

Clinicians Ceremony

The Clinicians Ceremony is a key mile marker on our Highways to Excellence MD curriculum. This ceremonial event is held in the Spring, before the beginning of the third year of medical school. It denotes a rite of passage for our Physicians in Training as they embark on a pivotal segment of their medical education journey: the beginning of core clinical clerkships. On clerkships, students engage in full direct patient care alongside doctors, residents, and other members of the healthcare team to learn and gain experience in primary care and medical specialties. The ceremony is coordinated with the school's Gold Humanism Honors Society chapter underscoring the challenges and imperatives to providing compassionate, collaborative and scientifically excellent care to all patients.

The Clinicians & White Coat Ceremony for the Class of 2025 will be held at the SoundBoard Theatre on March 24th at 11:00 a.m. Specific details can be found here: Clinicians & White Coat Ceremony Information

Commencement

Congratulations, Class of 2023!!! We are looking forward to celebrating this milestone event. The School of Medicine Commencement and Hooding ceremony for the Class of 2023 will be held on Tuesday, June 6 at 1:00 p.m. at the Fox Theatre located in downtown Detroit. Specific details about the ceremony can be found HERE.

This event will be livestreamed: Watch the Ceremony

Match Day

Get ready to cheer when Match Day is here!!! After years of hard work and determination, this annual ceremony is the penultimate celebration for our Warrior M.D.s in their fourth and final year of medical school. The ritual takes place at the same time, on the same day, always a Friday in March, for all United States medical students. Surrounded by family, friends, faculty, administrators, staff and classmates, our medical students count down the seconds before noon, Detroit time. Then, they open an envelope containing a single sheet of paper. On it is their residency assignment for the next three to seven years, depending on their medical specialty. Then, the celebrations begin.

Our Match Day is one of hundreds held nationwide that follow the protocol of the National Residency Matching Program, a private non-profit corporation established in 1952 to provide a uniform date of appointment to graduate medical education positions in the United States. From mid-January through late February, applicants and program directors rank each other in order of preference and submit preference lists to NRMP, which processes them using a computerized mathematical algorithm to match applicants with programs.

The Match Day celebration for the Class of 2023 will be held at the Detroit Marriott Renaissance Center on March 17th at 11:00 a.m. Specific details can be found here: Match Day 2023 Information

Annual match outcomes:

White Coat Ceremony

The White Coat Ceremony is a celebratory occasion marking the start of a student's journey into medicine. Acceptance of the short white coat signifies that the student is now a physician-in-training committed to practicing compassionate, patient-centered medical care. It also serves as a reminder of the ideals that set Wayne State University's Warrior M.D.s apart: that the privilege of medical education comes with the responsibility of service to the community. Students wear the coats during their four years of training, leading up to the traditional longer coats worn by physicians after graduation from medical school. The ceremony is an international tradition started by the Arnold P. Gold Foundation and Gold Humanism Honor Society in 1993.

The White Coat Ceremony for the Class of 2027 will be held at 11 a.m., July 28, 2023 at the Detroit Opera House.