I’m typing this late at night so this may be all jumbled lol.
I would assume that people didn’t match because they failed or scored very low on Step. IMO this is more on the student than the school... Just like many people did for the mcat, there’s plenty of resources to self study for Step if the preclinical years at UM are not up to par. It could be that this year they graduated a group of students that were not great test takers. It could be the result of a new admissions strategy for CO 2019. I think when you have a school that is focused more on the underserved and mission fit, you will have some students that enter the class that aren’t perfectly groomed high stat students. This of course is fine and not definitive of their med school performance, but they will be more at risk of not passing classes or Step compared to a typical T10 groomed med student. On the other hand, these students who didn’t match could be ones that excelled in undergrad but hit a wall in med school. They could have been overwhelmed and underperformed... there’s so many assumptions we can make but in the end it doesn’t have to affect your experience in med school, regardless of where you end up.
I will say if the school was actively taking study time away and not giving enough time for step then the fault would be on them (which I have seen at another med school), but that’s not the vibe I got from interview day. I may be wrong and just hella optimistic tho lol.
UM's average on Step 1 score was a 232 in both 2015 and 2016 (for the graduating class of 2017 and 2018, respectively, and note that's for both the MD and MD/MPH scores combined). The national Step 1 average in those years was 229 and 228, respectively. So UM's averages slightly above the national average but also not the 240+ averages you see at some top 10 med schools. I wouldn't say UM's curriculum was low yield for Step 1: it actually covers the majority of what's tested. However, it also does have a lot of extraneous information that you end up learning as well.
I'm not sure why the absolute number of matches this year appears a lot lower than previous years. Unless a significant amount of people from the 2015 entering class are taking gap years than the number of people entering and the number graduating this year is also truly a lot less than 200, then about ~172 matches including partial matches is low (in the past 2 years it was more around 190 matches). Note that UM was more transparent in posting their 2018 and 2019 Match lists by listing also the the names of the programs where its students only matched into prelim spots (for those who matched into both prelim and PGY-2 Advanced, they only listed the Advanced program). In 2017 and earlier, it looks like they completely omitted the partially matched students.
The 2015 MD entering class actually had the highest average MCAT score on record at a 33.9 on the old scale (vs a 33.5 in 2014 entering class and 32.6 in 2013 entering class). Although probably unrelated, this is also the entering class where the MD class was ~70% male. Given the positive correlation between MCAT and Step 1 scores, I would expect this class to have performed better than any previous class on Step 1(though I don't have the numbers yet...).
I think the only time UM had significant underperformance as a whole class on Step 1 were the first 2 MD/MPH classes (classes of 2015 and 2016), in which there was a high failure rate on Step 1. Since the class of 2017, the MD/MPH class's Step 1 scores as a whole have gotten better but still lag behind the MD class by a few points. However, despite the lower Step 1 scores, the Class of 2017 and 2018 MD/MPH class matched into residencies at a higher rate than the MD class (for example, the MD/MPH class had a 100% match rate in 2018, while about 14 people in the MD class had to SOAP). I think the difference comes down to more MD/MPH students applying to less competitive primary-care based specialties (where Match rates for USMD grads are around ~98%), and more MD students applying to competitive specialties (where the match rates for USMD grads are <90% or average Step 1 scores are > 240).
Also, while less of an issue in the long run the fail rate for Step 2 CS at UM has historically been much higher than the national average, and in the class of 2018, 26 out of 200 (13%) failed CS on the first attempt and had to re-take it ( See slides 17-18 on this ppt:
http://ren.mededu.miami.edu/MD_Curriculum/Misc/OPDCG/OSCE_&_Step2CS_Orientation_slides_2018.pptx). Keep in mind that most people in this class took CS right after NBME changed the CS grading standards to essentially target a 6% failure rate for USMD grads (insted of the 3% failure rate they had aimed for in the past). Although failing CS doesn't hurt your in the Match nearly to the extent that a failure in Step 1 does, still something to be aware of.
