Sometimes, the connections you least expect have the greatest impact.
When Julia Adamson ’20 and Ali Toth ’20 first met through their sorority, Alpha Phi, neither thought much of it. They exchanged smiles, made small talk, and went their separate ways. As pre-med students and sorority sisters, they crossed paths often, but it wasn’t until they moved into the sorority house together that a friendship began in earnest. Even then, neither could have predicted how important that connection would become.
After graduation, Adamson was completing a post-baccalaureate program at the University of Pennsylvania while living with her family. When her parents decided to move, finding her own place in Philadelphia made sense. She reached out to Toth, who was juggling several jobs in and around the city while preparing for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT). Adamson convinced her to become roommates, and together they embarked on a new chapter.
Although both were pursuing careers in health care, their approaches to life couldn’t have been more different. Adamson describes herself as Type B, while Toth embraces a more Type A mindset.
One story captures their dynamic perfectly — and serves as a test of many relationships: assembling IKEA furniture.
The pair had just moved into a third-floor walk-up apartment with no air conditioning. Adamson was scheduled to take her MCAT the next morning, but she decided to spend some time building a dresser for their new home. After completing the frame, Toth stepped in to help install the drawers — only to discover that the entire piece had been assembled backward, with the back panel nailed to the front.
“Ali fixed the dresser while I studied,” Adamson says with a laugh. “The nails are still in my dresser to this day.”
Despite walking into the wrong building on the morning of her exam, Adamson aced her MCAT. Toth had already taken and passed hers a short while before.
As both women progressed through different medical schools — Adamson attending Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and Toth the Drexel University College of Medicine — they eventually found themselves facing another major milestone: Match Day.
As fate would have it, both matched at Yale, with Adamson in pediatrics and Toth in neurosurgery.
“When I saw we were going to the same place, I started sobbing,” says Adamson. “I was so happy.”
“Medical school is hard, and it’s competitive, even within your own class,” says Toth. “Having someone I knew from school, but in a different specialty, was amazing. It grounds you. We got to study together, be each other’s safe space, and complain together when we needed to. We used to walk around Philly together to de-stress all the time. In New Haven, we can do the same thing. It’s really special.”
“Since we went to Lehigh together, Ali has known me through so many parts of my life,” says Adamson. “I don’t need to explain anything to her; she just gets me. We have a different bond, and we know what each other needs. I’m so lucky to have someone like that. And to know that I always will.”
