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It's difficult to compare match lists, but there's some value in doing so. ...
No there isn't. I've written pretty extensively on this very topic on these boards and can give you a lot of reasons why there is really no value for premeds to look at match lists. I'll revamp a few here, but there are even others in my prior threads.
First, you have no idea what a good match is. There are better and worse places in every specialty, and they don't align to the rankings of med schools. No place is good in all fields, and in fact many are quite malignant in several. So you can't go by program or specialty name. A premed might look at a list and say "this dude matched into ortho at XYZ" and think that's a good match because XYZ is a top ranked med school. But in fact XYZ might be the most malignant program in the country and at the botton of this dude's ranking list, so not really an appealing match at all. How can you know as a premed? You can't. This is the kind of stuff you only find out once you are in med school, choose a specialty, choose a mentor in the field, and find out the word of mouth buzz about the various programs. They aren't ranked anywhere, it's a word of mouth thing, largely determined by the personnel. Good vs malignant matters -- your life will be very bad if you choose someplace awful and have to be there for 3-7 years, even if the name sounds impressive. So no, you can't look at a match list and know anything until you get further down the road.
Next, a match is only good if people get what they wanted. A list that looks unimpressive but everyone got their first choice is better than one where everybody fell down to their 5th choice. Doesn't matter if the latter looks more impressive to you as a premed, it's a bad match. People will be crying on match day.
Bear in mind that the match doesn't tell you what people could get, only what they chose. There are a million factors that go into that choice, and people don't generally choose the most competitive thing they can get. The top person in the class is just as likely to choose IM or surgery as they are to choose plastics or derm. You have to realize that you are choosing what you are going to be doing for the next 40 years of your life. It's not something you do because it's prestigious, like choosing a school might be -- you actually have to like it. Many top students enjoy things like psych or peds or surgical procedures and thus will choose to go down these roads. For them getting their choice in these fields is a better match than getting derm or rads. Also bear in mind that folks coming into residency are 4 years older than when they applied to med school. Many will have spouses, fiancees, families, or otherwise have put down roots. So many will make choices that will work best along with the non-academic aspects of their lives -- they may not choose the best program in a specialty because it's not where their spouse has a job, etc.
Truth is, the match list only tells you something about that particular class and their goals, if they got them, not about how the school does. You are basically trying to extrapolate things but have no basis for doing so. It's basically like watching the last 5 minutes of a movie with the sound off and trying to extapolate what happened in the prior two hours. You will be wrong most of the time. Waste of time in my opinion. Don't bother with this. As a premed folks probably will still try to fool themselves that there is some information to be obtained, but I assert that without the context, the raw data will run you astray 99.99% of the time. Generally you will make better decisions with no data than misconstrued data.
You really missed the boat in this discussion
