SAN DIEGO - Most of the more than 100 graduating medical students at UC San Diego will serve their residencies in California, with about one-quarter remaining in San Diego County, the school reported Friday.

The 131 future doctors, and thousands like them around the country, took part in a Match Day event in which they all opened envelopes to learn their assigned hospitals at the same time -- noon Eastern Time, or 9 a.m. in San Diego. Many of them brought along parents and siblings for the occasion.

The students spent months on applications and interviews, and they submitted to the National Resident Matching Program a list of their favored hospitals. They each visited more than a dozen medical centers around the country.

The hospitals submitted lists of students, and they were matched up by a computer algorithm.

Match Day has been a medical school tradition since it began in 1952.

According to UCSD, 63 percent of the medical school graduates will serve at facilities in California, and 26 percent will stay in San Diego.