match day

match day (plural match days)

1. The day when graduating medical-school students find out where they will serve as residents.
   • 1999, Ellen Lerner Rothman, White Coat, 2000 Perennial edition, →ISBN, page 318 :

     On match day, at exactly noon, we would each receive a white envelope with a single piece of paper listing the hospital and program where we would spend the next several years.

   • 2002, Richard C. Karl, Across the Red Line, Temple, →ISBN, page 117 :

     The fourth-year medical students are getting anxious. It's getting close to match day. In a few weeks they will find out where they're going to spend the next several years of training.

2. (sports) Used other than with a figurative or idiomatic meaning: The day of a match.
   • 2001, David Griffiths, The Weekend Warrior, Reedswain, →ISBN, page 115 :

     For a player to perform, his body machinery must be continually fuelled, oiled and checked long before the first whistle. Match day strategies involving the consumption of large amounts of food deemed to have a beneficial content with regard to performance should therefore not be used as a substitute for a poor diet across the preceding days or weeks.