Agreed. This topic comes up at least monthly so it's not like you'd be searching for a single thread.
Match lists are not particularly useful for premeds. This is so because (1) as mentioned above the match represents individual efforts far more than any benefit provided by schools, (2) a premed lacks the data necessary to read a match list because you don't know (a) whether a particular match represents what a person wanted vs the best they could get, (b) what programs are good versus malignant in a particular specialty, or the hierarchy of programs in each specialty (it is different in every specialty), and (c) you don't know what specialty you are likely going to want to go into yet (you may think you do, but in most cases you don't), and since the quality of a match is specialty specific you can't get much value. (Eg if you ultimately decide you want to go into OBGYN, why do you care that a program does well matching folks into peds). Bottom line, you lack data you need to read a match list usefully. You tend to do yourself a disservice counting specialties or big school names because that often doesn't tell you what you think. Waste of time. Schools give this to you because they know you won't know how good this is and will think that if a program has a few folks matching into derm or to programs at Mass General then it will look impressive. But pretty much all med schools have similar looking lists to the undoctrinated, and this form of analysis won't ever separate out a good from a horrible match. So don't waste your time with this. Where people match depends largely on their board scores (and individual effort), their contacts and away rotations, and most importantly what they want to do and where they want to live. It is unlike college or med school because people often snub the objectively "best" name program for the one that puts them in the geographical region they want to live in, or lets them do what they want to do. At many many med schools the top student will choose something like IM or gen surg over something like derm or plastics. They could have gotten those, but that's not how they wanted to spend their life. And personal career wants outweigh credential building at this stage.
In fairness, when I was a premed I thought this kind of thing was useful. But now I know better how little I knew as a premed and truly how useless this kind of list was in my hands. I sure wouldn't bother with it now. But hey, good luck with that.
