Which of course would have gotten him in just about any place.
I, too, applied to 25. It had been 20, but a friend of my freaked me into adding 5 more, though I'm not sure those 5 ever even got back to me....
My board scores were less than yours, my clinical grades all "Outstanding" except one "advanced" in OB (for some unknown reason), my M1/M2 grades are a mixed bag, but were nothing to help me or my iffy board scores. I had lots of extra curriculars, and evidentally my letters where very good. I did not get to see them, but many people read parts to me. I agree with SteadyEddy, it's evident that your hardwork really will be noticed even if it seems hopeless in those wee hours of the morning.
I was offered 14 interviews, accepted 10, ranked 9. I got 3 actual rejections, leaving 8 programs I never heard from (if I had cared I would have pursued them). I was city matching, which I think maybe helped, or I wouldn't have known where to begin. I wanted Boston. DC was a far 2nd, Philly an even further 3rd. Chicago was on the list because it was home, but I owed it to my husband to get him to a city he liked. I applied to almost every program in those 4 cities from highly academic to small community programs. I saw good things in almost all of them and ranked all but the program I considered leaving in the middle of the interview day.
As an "average", if not below average by numbers, candidate I kept my options open with a broad range of programs and then only turned down the interviews I did after hearing from better programs or ones I knew I liked better. Finally, I continued to keep my options open by ranking 9 programs.
That's my advice to almost everyone. Keep things open. The first step is the number of programs you apply to. Whatever the extra money, who cares (I don't even have any idea the order of magnitude of applying, but I'm certain it's only a drop of my $200K in loans). If you end up with 25 interviews from your 25 programs, then you can knock off a few.
I personally know candidates numerically better than me who were courted by multiple top tier programs and did not match to either of them. Rank, rank, rank. Nothing you're told matters until it's the third Thursday in March, so be flattered, keep your hopes up, but don't cut your ROL short.