How to evaluate/compare match lists among different schools?

[Cyberdyne 101]

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Here's what I've gathered from looking at match lists:
1. Schools like Penn and Hopkins have a higher percentage of people matching into academic residencies (they also have a lot of inbreeding).
2. A school like U Maryland will likely have more of a mixed bag.
3. California schools usually have a lot of California programs on their match lists (I'm still trying to figure out this trend).

 

[Psai]

I remember what it was like to be a premed

Full of snark and opinions that pretty much all turned out to be wrong
Now I'm here educating you kids to save you some time

 

[gyngyn]

The mold of...

The fact that the match list won't help anyone pick a medical school, doesn't change the fact that medical students will eventually have to make their own "lists" of residency programs.

What factors are included in making this list are subject to changes, but that there are factors and that some of those are already included in the - oh my God I'm actually pulling this - USNWR is not nonsense.

And just FYI, prestige isn't a factor that only "pre-meds" consider. Unless you're implying money is as well.

The variables that go into this process are the student's qualities: strengths, weaknesses, preferences, grades, step scores, research, potential strength of letters of evaluation, geographic imperatives and preferences, the potential for success in a couple's match (where indicated), potential for debt reduction, reputation of school... These factors change over time.

The second set of variables also changes every year. They are the strengths and weakness of the programs themselves. Only well established members of each specialty can distinguish between the really good programs and the merely adequate ones. The quality of their advice constitutes much of what the student is paying for when they attend a particular school. In my specialty there are very famous institutions that don't give their residents more than rudimentary opportunity to hone their surgical skills. After all of this, a student's experience of a particular program, either on an elective or interview will add the final information for an individual's Rank Order List.

I hope you can see that a vanishingly small amount of this information can be known to even the most perspicacious pre-med.

 

[BurbyPrep89]

The variables that go into this process are the student's qualities: strengths, weaknesses, preferences, grades, step scores, research, potential strength of letters of evaluation, geographic imperatives and preferences, the potential for success in a couple's match (where indicated), potential for debt reduction, reputation of school... These factors change over time.

The second set of variables also change every year. They are the strengths and weakness of the programs themselves. Only well established members of each specialty can distinguish between the really good programs and the merely adequate ones. The quality of their advice constitutes much of what the student is paying for when they attend a particular school. After all of this, a student's experience of a particular program, either on an elective or interview will add the final information for an individual's Rank Order List.

I hope you can see that a vanishingly small amount of this information can be known to even the most perspicacious pre-med.

And pre-meds don't actually have to make these lists now. I don't disagree with any of the above, because even at the medical school stage, there are unseen factors that determine what makes up a class list.

However, if I were to say to a high school student that he couldn't tell me that he understands that there are a number of factors that go into this list and that the list is really a matter of the factors important to the applicant (location, price, diversity etc) and the factors important to the school (GPA, MCAT, diversity etc) reaching a meeting point, I would be exhibiting an astonishing amount of arrogance. This concept, is not difficult to understand. It won't require practice for quite some time, but it doesn't change its degree of comprehensibility.

 

[Psai]

Man such a premed

 

[WillburCobb]

And pre-meds don't actually have to make these lists now. I don't disagree with any of the above, because even at the medical school stage, there are unseen factors that determine what makes up a class list.

However, if I were to say to a high school student that he couldn't tell me that he understands that there are a number of factors that go into this list and that the list is really a matter of the factors important to the applicant (location, price, diversity etc) and the factors important to the school (GPA, MCAT, diversity etc) reaching a meeting point, I would be exhibiting an astonishing amount of arrogance. This concept, is not difficult to understand. It won't require practice for quite some time, but it doesn't change its degree of comprehensibility.

 

[Goro]

I am SO bookmarking this!

I'm still a neophyte at advising my students about residencies. Most of the time I tell them to just go visit our Clinical Deans, because they're much closer to understanding this than I am. But what I have learned to do whenever I say "check out school X's match list is to add "and ask for feedback from our residents, since they've been through the thresher".

Which leads to ponder, say, @SouthernSurgeon, can you list some top surgery programs? @mimelim, can you add your list for your specialty? @gyngyn, how about you? Other residents, what say you???

I once asked our top Clinical Dean about how to know what's a good residency program, and his answer was "whatever is best for the student". From this, and from the answers I see from SDN's residents, is that it's hard to discern the difference between Mass Gen and Joe's Hospital and Clam Bar!

I've written many threads on why match lists are misleading to premeds. Schools offer them up because most of the time they look "good" but they know it's data you have insufficient info/tools to reasonably process.
(1) you don't know what programs are good in each field. You can't. I'm much further down the line and I'd be guessing if I told you I knew the pecking order of programs in each field other than my own. the big name med schools are really not good in everything, there's inevitably one or two fields each is actually poorly regarded or considered malignant. And as a premed you'll never know. This is all stuff you learn word of mouth from mentors plugged into the field, late in med school. And programs will get better and worse over time as their success is often tied to chairmen or PDs who my move or retire. You'd need somebody plugged in to tell you if a place is a rising star or a rotting carcass of a program,
(2) you don't actually know what the seniors at a particular program WANTED. Just what they GOT. A list might look amazing to you, but if eg it really reflects everyone's fifth choice the school did pretty poorly and people are going to be unhappy. The place where everyone got their first choice is a better launch pad than the place where everyone got their fifth choice, even if the latter list looks objectively "better" to a premed.
(3) looking at specialties vs primary care doesn't tell you enough of the story. What if a Particular class was simply more interested in primary care? What if the faculty in primary care are just very charismatic and people come out of there liking those rotations the best? what if most of the people in IM you are calling primary care are really going to do GI fellowship and be specialists? What if all the anesthesiology and radiology "matches" were really ortho and derm hopefuls who had to SOAP into the next best thing they could find? And again, this doesn't really reflect what people can get -- in most med schools the top graduate tends to go into IM or surgery, by choice, not derm or plastics. Not because they couldn't get those competitive specialties, but because it's not about getting the most competitive thing you can get -- it's about picking the career you will enjoy for the next 40 years. If eg you really like working with kids you go into peds, even if some premed is going to think you didn't push the envelope.
(4) you don't really know what field you are going into. Most med students change their minds more than once. You dont want to pick a school because you think it's an ophtho mill and then find out you hate ophtho.

I usually liken trying to evaluate match lists to coming into a movie one minute before the credits and trying to figure out what happened. How did the characters I see on the screen get there? Is this the ending they wanted? What things on their journey shaped their decisions? Are the guys I'm seeing on the screen good guys or bad guys, winners or losers? without the context that comes with either knowing all these people personally and knowing how they subjectively did, or more typically actually sitting down with a mentor in the third year of med school to know how the programs in the field you are interested in actually stack up, you don't know if this movie was a comedy, tragedy, etc. So I say put the lists aside. I know you won't listen to me because I too ignored this kind if advice and looked at them when applying. But knowing what I know now, I wouldn't bother.

 

[Cyberdyne 101]

Which leads to ponder, say, @SouthernSurgeon, can you list some top surgery programs? @mimelim, can you add your list for your specialty? @gyngyn, how about you? Other residents, what say you???

I'm also curious to hear about some of the better programs (whether academic, community, or whatever).

 

[ridethecliche]

I entered this conversation because I'm trying to figure out how to decide whether to go to an interview when I'm already holding an acceptance. I'm also hoping to get into a few other schools I'm waiting to hear back from and want to see how those schools would rank against each other all else equal.

I know there's no such thing as a bad US MD school, but I'm trying to look for other factors in order to gauge strength of programs.

I think there's a certain argument for having a 'smarter' student body as well if it's collaborative. I liked learning from my classmates when I went to a selective LAC years ago. I'd hope to continue doing that in med school. GPA and MCAT tell a story, sure, but I just wish there were other things to go by as well.

I am SO bookmarking this!

I'm still a neophyte at advising my students about residencies. Most of the time I tell them to just go visit our Clinical Deans, because they're much closer to understanding this than I am. But what I have learned to do whenever I say "check out school X's match list is to add "and ask for feedback from our residents, since they've been through the thresher".

Which leads to ponder, say, @SouthernSurgeon, can you list some top surgery programs? @mimelim, can you add your list for your specialty? @gyngyn, how about you? Other residents, what say you???

I once asked our top Clinical Dean about how to know what's a good residency program, and his answer was "whatever is best for the student". From this, and from the answers I see from SDN's residents, is that it's hard to discern the difference between Mass Gen and Joe's Hospital and Clam Bar!

Joe's Hospital and Clam Bar sounds more fun than MGH to be totally honest.

Neptune's oysters and the daily catch are freaking awesome.

 

[gyngyn]

It's complicated. I do both general and specialty specific advising. I don't ever go into depth on the specifics of programs in specialties other than my own and to some degree, Family Medicine or programs at our own institution. Some programs have tacit USMLE screens, some have a historical preference for certain types of research or have feeder schools. Some superb programs have matriculated several of my students, while equally "famous" yet mediocre programs have matriculated none. Some programs rank their candidates by their "merit" and others rank them by how much they believe the applicant will rank them highly.

When your Clinical dean says "what's best for the student," he is being vague but correct. One gives different advice depending on the student. A weak program might be the best choice for a particular student!

 

[Cyberdyne 101]

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/top-10-general-surgery-residencies-rankings.31734/page-6
@Goro, here's the thread @SouthernSurgeon was referring to.

Btw, in the past I've browsed orthogate and Uncle Harvey and posters would often rave about the operative experience at southern academic programs like Vanderbilt, Emory, UTSW, Carolinas Medical Center etc and claimed some level of southern advantage in this regard. Is there any truth to this?!

 

[Law2Doc]

... From this, and from the answers I see from SDN's residents, is that it's hard to discern the difference between Mass Gen and Joe's Hospital and Clam Bar!

I think one can sit down with a Mentor in the field in late third/early fourth year and get the scoop on your desired field of residency. There will be differences in opinion but the most important things tend to be along the line of -- i heard this place is malignant and that one has a new chairman nobody likes and this one just stole half the faculty from X so they should be on the rise. And so on. A US news list or other list won't help you as much because this kind of stuff is fluid.

And as mentioned, that's really still only half the equation when we talk bout match lists. Because so much of that list reflects the class involved and what they WANTED, not could get. A premed might look at a list and say nobody went into derm from there so it must not be a good place for derm. But in fact it might be a solid place for derm but simply nobody wanted it. Again what I think is lost in the premed analysis most of the time is that this is really truly about picking ones career path, not gunning for the most objectively prestigious thing one can get. So absolutely you will see people who numerically could be doing derm choosing peds, and people who could go to a very prestigious program on the east coast choosing instead to stay someplace more modest in the Midwest. And so on. So yeah a top student might have plenty of good reasons to choose a Joes Hospital and Clam bar other then thats the best he could get. It might have been his number one ranked choice over lots of things premeds might find more objectively appealing. Premeds would read this as a bad match, but he might gave gotten exactly what he hoped for. And might have had valid reasons for his choice.

Again, none of this is meant to pile on premeds. I'm not saying I could interpret a match list outside of my own field, and even within my own field I'd be assuming a whole lot about the motivation of the people involved, not to mention that the hierarchy is quite debatable. But this advice is directed at premeds because they are given these lists as if there's value there. Schools are saying look at this, it should reassure you we are very good. I'm saying its best use is really hamster cage lining.