But to be fair, people are wondering if the match list correlates with ROAD-E, not whether there is a 1:1 exact relationship.
So, while there may be exceptions--even many exceptions--do you know if there could be a loose correlation? It doesn't seem unreasonable on its face.
Not so much. "Correlation" is a horribly misused word on pre-allo and very often confused with "causation". There may be correlation with folks who opt to go to certain schools and folks who opt to go into certain fields. Does that mean they have any better chance of getting to their target because they went that direction? Looking at the match list, you may be misled into thinking absolutely yes. Based on what residency directors will tell you in terms of what they focus on, the answer is decidedly, no. And that is where correlation is a term that screws premeds up.
Fireitup and njbmd got it right here. The med school doesn't add much to the equation. This is a journey that you make yourself, and you just need an adequate launching pad, not a particular one. So if you attend ANY US allo med school and do well on the boards, your rotations, and have solid away rotations, and (for some fields) decent research, you will likely match in the field you want. That's all there is to it. Numbers, personality, connections, research, and references will matter; things like school name is much further down the list. And well it should be, because the school doesn't really add much -- heck, half your class isn't even going to attend lectures the first two years, so it's hard with a straight face to suggest that the school adds much to ones competitiveness. You could skip lectures anywhere and still do the same on the boards, which in turn is the single biggest factor in matching.
Match lists are a dangerous thing because they only tell you where someone went, not what they wanted, where else they could have gone, what limitations they imposed on their search, etc. In many schools the top students don't go into a ROAD specialty. It's actually pretty common for the top student to go into IM or surgery at many programs. Why? Because unlike undergrad, we are no longer talking about getting into a name, we are talking about selecting what you are going to do for the next 40 years of your life. So if you really really like peds, you are going to go into peds even if you had the grades for rads. Or if you find rads and anesthesia boring and derm conditions gross, you might well opt to go IM and plan to go into a subspecialty down the road. Very very common. So you really don't get much insight from the match list as to what people could get, only what they opted for in the end. Sort of like coming into a movie in the last 5 minutes and trying to imagine what happened prior -- most of the time you are going to be wrong.
Additionally, there are ranges of quality in each field. There are poorly thought of and even malignant programs in every specialty, so one would argue that the worst of the ROAD programs really should be looked at as a worse match than some of the better programs in the noncompetitive fields. So counting up ROAD fields without knowing which are malignant is basically making up a bowl of raisins and rat turds and calling them all raisins. They may look the same, but it's misleading to the poor premed who grabs a handful.
Further, a premed is poorly situated to know which programs are good versus malignant. That's something you really only learn sitting down with a mentor in the field to find out what's what, and by talking to alumni from your med school who are residents at various places, to see what they are willing to say about their program. XYZ hospital program in IM may sound wonderful on paper because of the school affiliation but guess what -- it's the place you wouldn't wish your worst enemy because the PD is a SOB and abuses all the residents badly and keeps them beyond the 80 hour work week etc. That's pretty common -- you don't pick programs based on name, you pick them based on finding out the real skinny from moles inside the program. You talk to alumni, mentors in the field, do away rotations. You simply can't know otherwise. And this unfortunately isn't a rarity. If you peruse the resident boards you can find scores of folks who picked badly.
Next, you have to realize that while you are perhaps very geographically mobile as a premed, a lot can happen in 4 years of med school. You will be 4 years older and perhaps have reasons to stay in a particular area (family, spouse, kids, health). Lots of this plays into why people make certain match selections.
Also, you have no idea what they really wanted. What looks like a good match to you, may be very very far down someone's list. Someone who wanted derm in California but ended up doing Anesthesia in Nebraska might be licking their wounds, but the dude counting up ROAD specialties would naively call this a win. Again, when you are picking a residency, you aren't just picking a nice resume credential, you are launching yourself down the road that you will be on for the next 40 years of your life. So the consideration is very different than the premed mentality of getting the best thing that you can. While it may be important to an undergrad mind to get the best "ranked" med school you can get, the residency selection is more about getting your career on a particular track, which may be more about the specialty you "like" rather than what you can get or what will impress the neighbors. The selection is simply different, and very hard for a premed to wrap their mind around until they get there. So looking at match lists simply doesn't enlighten, because you focus on the wrong things.
Data that is most often misconstrued is bad data. And I submit that to an undergrad, the match list is totally bad data. Steer clear of it. There are much better things to focus on in picking a med school. Things that actually matter. This is a journey you take alone. The residency will select based on scores, grades, research, away rotations, references. You excel at all these things at a US allo school, you write your own ticket. But you may find you genuinely like something totally non-competitive. And that's cool too. That's what med school is all about -- figuring what you are interested in, while giving yourself a solid background in the rest. Not getting the top derm residency. Nobody really is that impressed with what you get, only with getting what you want. The person blissfully happy doing peds matched better than the person whining about his malignant anesthesia program. And match lists will steer you to the wrong one of these choices as "better" 100% of the time. Which is why you can ignore them. Because a good match is one where people get what they want, not what they can get. And when you are thinking about a career that makes you happy, not one that impresses folks, the considerations are totally different.
