Originally posted by bokermmk
After browsing this forum for about 6 months I have come across many posts commenting on match lists and have never seen one that claims the school has a bad match list. So I ask, do any schools actually have 'bad' matchlists. Or are there superstars at every school preventing this?
Boker,
It depends on what you define as a bad matchlist. If you are looking into going into a competitive specialty, then looking at how many students in a class matched into those specialties could warrant a worthy comparison. Be sure you check multiple years, and not just one year.
For me, ultimately when choosing a medical school, I knew which field I wanted to enter, and when I realized that one of the schools I was accepted to didn't even have the department for the field I wanted to specialize in, obviously I didn't go there. That school also had no students matching into that specialty either.
Also, I became very skeptical about another school I was accepted to last year when they actually seemed like they were trying to hide their matchlist and matchlist statistics. All the other schools I interviewed at would indicate that X% of students would match into one of their top 3 choices, and most of those schools provided us matchlists on our interview day. However, at this school, the statistic was hidden and when I asked the Dean about it, she became a bit defensive and insisted that "Our matchlist is good." Ultimately, I had to bother the school repeatedly to get ahold of their matchlist, and it was sent to me in the mail about 2 months later. It really made me wonder what they had to hide.
Lastly, when I interviewed at Saint Louis University last year, one of the tour guides said that either 10 students or about 10% of the class
fails USMLE Step 1.
Hope this helps, Peace.
that's pretty bad. i've never heard of people actually "failing" the match. do you mean they had to scramble and matched somewhere other than their top choices?
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