Before we start to spawn cows arguing about match lists, just remember such things vary from year to year and certainly one should be taking all match list data with a lump of salt. Remember also that the focus of the school and student population dictate the "quality" of the matchlist. This is the reason why schools like Rosalind Franklin (not picking on them, just an obvious example) can appear to have excellent match lists with tons of out-of-state California matches & competitive specialty matches, just because most of the people there are out-of-state and the school has no mission to train primary-care physicians who stay instate. The same can be said for schools such as Temple or Tufts colocated in Boston, Philadephia, or New York, where they disproportionately have more "desirable matches" at institutions like Penn or MGH. Just because a southern school or a state school anywhere keeps a lot of people off the west and east coasts does not mean that students who graduate from there lack the capabilities to do so.
The match list for UAB I posted above (and others from previous years as well in the consolidated match list thread posted each year in pre-allo) does have that information with regards to which people who were MSTPs matched in which programs, so you can exclude those from your count.
If you really wanted to compare apples to apples, remember that Duke also has an MSTP, and again plenty of students there complete more than a year of research. I've never seen a Duke matchlist posted in this forum in the past 4 years which contains information which parse these people out.
No one has mentioned either that UAB will be changing its curriculum this year to a systems-based approach this year - its unknown as to how smoothly the new curriculum will be implemented. It could be great, or it could be real bad.
These UAB students matched well because they are MD/PhDs and are strong applicants overall, NOT because they went to UAB.
I don't see how you can say this unless its your own opinion that the UAB name contributes absolutely nothing to a residency application.
Finally, to the OP, if you want to stay outside of academics, save your money and come to UAB. If you are interested in academics, UAB will support you, but you alone have to decide whether or not >200,000 in debt is worth it to go to Duke. If you desire to apply for an extremely competitive specialty at the top academic institutions, this is where I would seriously think about attending Duke over UAB, because (as stated above), you'll either have to have a PhD or have a >250 Step I + AOA to get into that from UAB, whereas you might not need to be at the top of your class at Duke.
At the same time, don't
overestimate the Duke name. It might be up there in the rankings, but it's still in the south. Also consider factors outside of name only when deciding where to matriculate.
