While I agree with your point, drjitsu, that we should all focus on gaining knowledge and accomplishing useful things that are important to us, rather than accumulating activities merely to fill our CV, I think you're being a bit extreme here.
First of all, I'm not sure I understand you're statement that getting an interview based on "CV filler" is something to be ashamed of. You defined community service as "CV filler" above. So I guess if a residency program chooses to consider an applicant's dedication to service/volunteerism when offering interviews, that is something that both parties should be ashamed of. Right.
Second of all, I agree that the handing out of interviews based solely on applicants' schools of origin (especially for those of us who aren't at the absolute top-tier schools) is frustrating. But there's another way to look at it. Imagine you're a PD. Over the years, you've found that residents who enter your program from medical school X have been competent and successful, while residents from medical school Y have struggled. If two similar applications are sitting on your desk, one from a student at medical school X and one at medical school Y, who are you going to invite for an interview? The name of the medical school on the CV is simply another piece of information that can be used (along with grades, letters, evals, research, etc...) to evaluate the potential a candidate has for succeeding at the next stage of training. I agree that it shouldn't be the primary factor, but to imply that it shouldn't even be considered is ridiculous (not nearly as ridiculous, however, as implying that candidates from top medical schools get interviews at top programs solely based on their school's name).
Finally, it's news to me that we all rank programs based only on reputation. I don't know or know of a single person who has done so. The vast majority of people rank based on what is best for their individual goals. If one's burning goal is to be department chair at JHU, then maybe ranking based solely on reputation is in line with these goals (and I'm certainly not commenting on whether this is good or bad...to each their own), but for the majority of applicants, many other factors come into play.
You've made a lot of generalizations that seem to stem from frustration with the whole "who you know"/nepotism/pedigree aspect of this field. I agree that this can be frustrating at times, for sure, but it's reality. As you said, work hard and gain knowledge, and things will most likely work out for the best. In the mean time, don't let the other stuff drive you crazy.
On a serious note, these do seem somewhat inflated to me. One thing to consider - these MAY include prelims who are going on to derm, rads, rad-onc etc. Emory has a very large class of prelim interns, and the 237 seems high to me just because they have such a large residency class in general, and there's such a small population of categorical IM applicants with > 230 board scores. Prelims tend to have super high board scores and may be inflating the average a little.
