Thanks for doing this!
How much of a benefit do you think being at a top tier medical school had on your clinical education and residency competitiveness?
(for context: I'm currently trying to chose between a highly ranked med school and a low ranked school where I felt I was a much better fit.)
Impact on clinical education was probably minimal. As long as the main hospital isn't like a 150-bed shop or something you will be ok during medical school. Like i said previously, i think it's hugely important to try to get a feel for what kind of environment you want to be in during MS-3/4, so make sure the school has many rotation sites to explore in different settings, but i think most of the schools meet this criteria these days already.. There are good and bad preceptors and attendings everywhere and it's not like you'll really get to know who's good or bad when picking a school.
For residency, whole different ball game. Medicine is one of the most meritocratic fields out there but remember that everyone's merit is at quite a high level when it comes time for apps. This i think is where many people's thinking goes wrong, that because it's so meritocratic that softs like school rank or prestige don't matter. It matters because there are so many people performing at a high level that PDs and senior residents start looking for some sort of way to separate out all the 250s/240s with 1 pub who are applying. There are PDs who don't even look at an app if it's not above a certain cutoff (say, 235 for DR) with a certain pedigree. (This is not typical, i'm just saying) Now, you shouldn't care about all this as a premed who is picking a school for the
next 4 years, but the elite tend to feed the elite. I haven't met my full rads class yet but from the residents I have met, the elite school representation is overwhelming and kinda shocking
The real contribution of a top tier medical school is really the support and resources they sort of just chuck at you like they'll never run out (..because they really won't with the tuition we paid lol). Constant reminders of this fellowship, that funding source, this lab looking for people and that chief starting some exposure program. I wouldn't have anything close to 4 pubs if i weren't at a place that constantly drove me to think about research questions deeply and see that there was something in it for me to learn on top of making myself more competitive (learning is so much more important btw). I know of plenty of schools who'll give you lots of flack if you say you wanted to do a dual degree that's not an MPH or research master's, but i got help from the med admissions office who hooked me up with admissions from the corresponding program at my university to help me with my apps (I did an away dual degree). I ended up getting into every single program I applied to and my GPA was pretty subpar at those programs because I kinda rode the MD holistic train to med school haha. When i look back I really think it's this subjective "support" portion that really made it worth it, plus the research encouragement and bright genius minds you'll get to work with.
This is not to say that you won't get this at other schools and idk if you will because i only attended 1 school obviously, but when I speak to other residents about their med school, this is the thing that stood out to me where i felt i got the better end of the deal when they didn't. What i feel like i was short-changed on was the 1) the cost and 2) lack of exposure to non-academic environments. Would've liked to spend more time at a community shop to see how they do things, but academia wants to breed academia by and large so it can be difficult getting that different perspective.
At the end of the day, you need to decide what cost the top school is worth it and why that is. If after second look you still feel like you don't like the higher ranked school because you don't jive with the campus culture, city, students, please don't go. I had classmates who chose the prestige for prestige and it took up until early MS-2 to slide into things and it's just unnecessary heartache and damn it was tough to see. Cost is huge and i would say if there's a >70k difference, go the cheap route and don't look back. You need to tweak this number accordingly, e.g. i knew i wanted a dual degree so i had to make sure i budgeted the space for the additional debt in case i didn't get any support (turns out i got some moolah so it was ok)
They eat, sleep, and **** just like I do 
