Interpreting match lists

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I'm a current applicant, and have been fortunate to have been offered admission to a T20. I was taking a look at the school's 2024 match list, and am struggling to understand how exactly this data is valuable in determining this school's success in matching graduates into competitive residency programs.

For example, the school matched 4 students into ophthalmology and 3 into orthopedic surgery, all at really good programs (Hopkins, Stanford, etc.), and the school also matched over 10 students into family medicine. How would anyone know if the students who matched family med did so because they're interested in family medicine, or if it's actually that they wanted to match optho/ortho but ended up having to "settle" for family med?

 

[jrlybob1]

you'd probably have to message people from that graduating class or current students to figure out that last point. or did the school give you their SOAP rates in a post interview/admission info session?

 

[Goro]

Trying to interpret match lists is like reading tea leaves.

 

[LizzyM]

You really can't know without talking with the people who were involved on the ground and most will not speak except about their own experiences and even then perhaps not frankly (same with talking to students from your undergrad who ended up at T20 medical schools vs lower ranked schools in desirable locations. Did they go to UCLA because they didn't get into Hopkins, or did they really want to go to UCLA/live in Southern California over Baltimore?)

It is not unheard of for people to feel that family medicine is "real" medicine with longitudinal care of patients with a wide variety of conditions. On the other hand, do you expect the bottom 10% of a class, even a T20 class, to match in the most competitive specialties (and yes, every class has a bottom 10%).

 

[Med Ed]

How would anyone know if the students who matched family med did so because they're interested in family medicine, or if it's actually that they wanted to match optho/ortho but ended up having to "settle" for family med?

To this specific point, if an ortho/ophtho applicant doesn't match into ortho/ophtho, they will match into their backup specialty (usually general surgery), match into a prelim surgery year, or push back graduation and do a research year. The last thing they would do is match FM.

FM is a good backup specialty for applicants to psychiatry, which has gotten more competitive in recent years.

As noted above, the problem with trying to interpret match lists is that you can only tell what people got, no what they wanted. However, at a T20 medical school you control your own destiny, meaning the institution will give you direct access to all the clinical education, research, and networking opportunities you would need. Your fate rests on your work ethic and ability to play your cards well.

 

[threeroses]

To this specific point, if an ortho/ophtho applicant doesn't match into ortho/ophtho, they will match into their backup specialty (usually general surgery), match into a prelim surgery year, or push back graduation and do a research year. The last thing they would do is match FM.

FM is a good backup specialty for applicants to psychiatry, which has gotten more competitive in recent years.

As noted above, the problem with trying to interpret match lists is that you can only tell what people got, no what they wanted. However, at a T20 medical school you control your own destiny, meaning the institution will give you direct access to all the clinical education, research, and networking opportunities you would need. Your fate rests on your work ethic and ability to play your cards well.

I think this is a little bit of an over-simplification - many people dual apply to a number of specialties. From ophthalmology at least, I have seen many people dual apply neurology (in order to do a fellowship in neuro-ophth), as well as IM, EM, pediatrics, and even family med. Ortho is more likely to go gen surg, although I have seen a number dual apply to rads as well.

I agree that many pursuing a competitive specialty would just take a research year and try again if they did not match. By that token, you cannot typically tell from match lists what class that person was originally in - this school may have matched 4 into ophthalmology this year, but some of them could be reapplicants and/or have taken research years. In my own medical school class, three of us matched into ophthalmology. While all three of us were first-time applicants, we had all taken a year off to become more competitive prior to applying. There was no way to know this by looking at our match list.

As mentioned earlier in the thread - make no mistake, many people genuinely want to pursue family medicine because they are passionate about it. It is definitely not just a backup specialty.

Additionally, it is rare for schools to actually publish the percentage of students who SOAPed. I think that applicants would benefit from transparency about this, but schools are reticent to share. Many publish "100% match" without disclosing that a number of those matches came through the SOAP process.

I think the biggest thing you can gain from looking at match lists is appreciating the variety of specialties coming out of that institution and the locations (particularly if you are personally interested in matching in a certain location). Congratulations and best of luck!

 

[AJS59]

There will always be some people at every school interested in specialties like FM or IM. When picking schools, look for a high match rate and, if you have a specialty in mind, considerations of consistency in matching people into those specialties