To add to that... it's not much easier to read a match list as a med student, resident or even as an attending. Why? Because you don't know jack about residencies other than those in your specialty. I know a lot about IM residencies because I studied them, interviewed with them and matched in my top choice. I couldn't tell you anything about EM or Rads or Surgery...etc, because quality is not necessarily hospital dependent; it is program dependent. A place with a good rep in one program can royally suck in everything else. You just can't know enough about all the fields to even rate a match list as a "good".
And, you can't just compare all AOA residencies to all ACGME reseidencies. There are good ones and ones that suck in each category. You will hear a lot of people say that "generally" ACGME is better but I disagree. It all depends on what YOU want out of the residency. There were a lot of great ACGME residencies out there that I would never even consider because they don't have what I specifically want.
For example, there could be a great IM program you'd like to go to.... but you want experience putting in a lot of central lines. This program happens to call a surgery resident, though, every time they need one. When are you going to get the experience doing that if you go there? You will find that you have a feeling for individual prgrams more so than ACGME or AOA ones if you interview at both.
No doubt.
I know a ton about EM residency programs, because that's what I'm interested in, I've done a lot of research, and our EM course director is very much "plugged in", and I've picked his brain a lot about it. But I couldn't tell you the first thing about who has good programs for Anesthesiology or Pediatrics or whatever.
But even then, there are still plenty of great programs out there that I don't know much about.
The average pre-med looks at a match list for specialties that they believe to be competitive, and big-name institutions. But places like Harvard, Stanford, Hopkins, etc., are not necessarily the best in the business for everything.
Sometimes, its places you've never heard of, or would never expect. So when I tell my mom that the best places for me to train in my field would be places like Cook County, LA County, Maricopa-Phoenix, Denver Health, Emory, and Baltimore Shock, she doesn't get it, and thinks I've got low standards because I don't even want to apply to a bunch of big-name places.
Don't get me wrong, I'll look everywhere, but this is just what I've heard from people whose opinions I value on the matter.
