Photo by: Heather Coit/The News-Gazette

Michael Kuhlenschmidt, a UI medical school student, sits outside the UI Medical Sciences Building in Urbana on Tuesday, March 17, 2015. Kuhlenschmidt will join other future doctors in finding out his residency this Friday.

URBANA First came a bachelor's degree in engineering. Then medical school.

Now Champaign-Urbana native Michael Kuhlenschmidt is waiting, with thousands of other U.S. medical school seniors set to graduate this spring, to find out about their next big career step where they'll go for their residencies.

The news will be delivered via personal letters at the same time Friday for all medical residency program applicants across the country which will be at 11 a.m. for those in the Central Time Zone.

Last year, more than 40,000 applicants competed for 29,000 residency positions in the U.S., and the match this year is expected to be larger, according to the National Resident Matching Program.

For the 29-year-old Kuhlenschmidt and his fellow students set to graduate from the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Urbana-Champaign, the envelopes will be delivered Friday morning in a ceremony at the Champaign Country Club.

At least a bit of the stress has been lifted for him and many others. Applicants were notified Monday whether they were selected for a match, though they still have to wait until Friday to find out where they'll be going.

"I did match, which is a good feeling," Kuhlenschmidt said.

Through the complicated system used, students rank their residency program choices and the residency programs rank their applicants, and all that information is run through a computerized mathematical algorithm, according to the match program.

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Med school grads wait to find out where they'll go for residency