Using match lists to help with school choice

[bigdogrob4284]

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I have heard from several physicians and on here that looking at a schools match list is often an effective tool to help decide between medical schools. I am looking for some help as far as what to actually look for...? Is it bad for a school to have a lot of people doing a transitional year? Or what about preliminary or surgical preliminary years?

Any insight would be appreciated!

 

[Narmerguy]

Conventional wisdom on SDN states that match lists are generally not effective tools for evaluating a school. Often it is not clear what a "good" match entails (geographic preferences, which programs are "prestigious" at a given hospital may be specialty-dependent, etc) and they probably reveal more about the students at the school (and those students' preferences) than about the ability of the school to train and prepare a student for a particular specialty.

But I encourage you to do a search for this topic as it's one that has received lengthy discussion in the past.

 

[ShenanigansMD]

Yeah I would only use match lists to see which types of pre-physicians attend that school (like more surgery or primary care or whatever). Otherwise, I don't think match lists mean anything at all; I'm all about location personally.

 

[gasblaster]

I have heard from several physicians and on here that looking at a schools match list is often an effective tool to help decide between medical schools. I am looking for some help as far as what to actually look for...? Is it bad for a school to have a lot of people doing a transitional year? Or what about preliminary or surgical preliminary years?

Any insight would be appreciated!

Transitional Years are a good thing. Almost anyone going into anesthesiology, radiology, radiation-oncology, dermatology, and ophthomology is required to do either a transitional year, preliminary medicine, or preliminary surgery year for their intern year. You match into your advanced specialty and intern year at the same time.

Transitional years are the most competitive because everyone going into one of the above specialties wants one of these because it is typically a cush intern year. Prelim medicine is next preferred but prelim surgery is avoided. However, med students that don't match into the surgery specialty they were going for will often do a prelim surgery year and reapply the next match cycle. So generally a lot of prelim surgery matches aren't a good thing.

Hope that makes sense.

 

[Law2Doc]

I have heard from several physicians and on here that looking at a schools match list is often an effective tool to help decide between medical schools. I am looking for some help as far as what to actually look for...? Is it bad for a school to have a lot of people doing a transitional year? Or what about preliminary or surgical preliminary years?

Any insight would be appreciated!

There are many old threads on here on the questionable value of match lists. The big problem is that they are more often misleading than helpful because (1) they represent subjective choices of fourth year med students, what they chose, not often the most prestigious or best they could objectively get, and usually driven by personal nonacademic choices and personal goals, (2) as an undergrad you really have no way of knowing which programs are best in each specialty (the hierarchy is different in every specialty), and what programs are good versus malignant, etc. This is the kind of stuff you only learn from mentors in the field once you get close to a decision point in the 3rd year of med school. So since you don't know if that person chose IM because that's all they could get or because they liked IM more than derm or plastics, you really can't put much weight in that decision. And you also don't know if someone else's IM choice is actually a better match than a malignant plastics program. As an undergrad you simply don't know. (3) also, it's more important that people match into what they wanted than what some undergrad person thinks counds good. There are plenty of matches that look great on paper but actually are 5th on somebodies rank list. So a school where everyone gets their fifth choice or worse is perhaps going to be a worse place to match from than a place here everybody gets their top choices, even if those top choices look worse on paper. It's about getting what you want, not about what some undergrad not in the loop will be impressed with.

As mentioned above, advanced specialties (derm, optho, radiology, rad onc, anethes, PM&R, neuro, etc) require a transitional or prelim year before you start, to give you a generalist perspective before you subpecialize. Transitionals are sometimes the most cushy years, and so the best of these advanced programs go after them, and thus they can be the most competitive spots in the match. In general, prelims without also simultaneously matching into an advanced program is a bad sign. Prelims, particularly prelim surgery, can be a dead end.

So hope this helps. Don't put much stock in match lists as an undergrad, because they mst not tell you what you think. They are interesting, but more reflective of people's interests, desires, family and nonprofessional goals etc. But seeing a lot of prelim spots, esp prelim surgery slots without associated advanced residencies is a bad sign.

 

[Brachyury]

I have heard from several physicians and on here that looking at a schools match list is often an effective tool to help decide between medical schools. I am looking for some help as far as what to actually look for...? Is it bad for a school to have a lot of people doing a transitional year? Or what about preliminary or surgical preliminary years?

Any insight would be appreciated!

Two of my best friends in medical school were both junior AOA and scored 250+ on Step 1. Do you know what they're going into? Family medicine. So, when my school's match list comes out this spring and it shows that these two people matched in FP, will it make my school look bad? Without knowing these individuals, if you look at the match list, you will have no idea how competitive they were or which specialties/programs they could have matched at. Anyhow, my point is that it can be difficult to interpret match lists.

More often than not, people who match into surgical prelim spots were aiming for ENT or ortho but didn't want to apply to gen surg as a back-up, and they likely scrambled into a prelim program (the same thing can be said for prelim medicine-only spots for applicants who didn't match into derm). Usually these applicants had great numbers, but they just slipped through the cracks. Had they applied to gen surg as a backup, they would have most likely matched at a solid program (As a side not, anesthesiology, derm, ophto, radiology, and rad onc require either a surgery or medicine prelim year, so it is possible that someone who only matched to a surgery prelim failed to match into a competitive field like radonc or ophtho)

 

[gasblaster]

There are many old threads on here on the questionable value of match lists. The big problem is that they are more often misleading than helpful because (1) they represent subjective choices of fourth year med students, what they chose, not often the most prestigious or best they could objectively get, and usually driven by personal nonacademic choices and personal goals, (2) as an undergrad you really have no way of knowing which programs are best in each specialty (the hierarchy is different in every specialty), and what programs are good versus malignant, etc. This is the kind of stuff you only learn from mentors in the field once you get close to a decision point in the 3rd year of med school. So since you don't know if that person chose IM because that's all they could get or because they liked IM more than derm or plastics, you really can't put much weight in that decision. And you also don't know if someone else's IM choice is actually a better match than a malignant plastics program. As an undergrad you simply don't know. (3) also, it's more important that people match into what they wanted than what some undergrad person thinks counds good. There are plenty of matches that look great on paper but actually are 5th on somebodies rank list. So a school where everyone gets their fifth choice or worse is perhaps going to be a worse place to match from than a place here everybody gets their top choices, even if those top choices look worse on paper. It's about getting what you want, not about what some undergrad not in the loop will be impressed with.

As mentioned above, advanced specialties (derm, optho, radiology, rad onc, anethes, PM&R, neuro, etc) require a transitional or prelim year before you start, to give you a generalist perspective before you subpecialize. Transitionals are sometimes the most cushy years, and so the best of these advanced programs go after them, and thus they can be the most competitive spots in the match. In general, prelims without also simultaneously matching into an advanced program is a bad sign. Prelims, particularly prelim surgery, can be a dead end.

So hope this helps. Don't put much stock in match lists as an undergrad, because they mst not tell you what you think. They are interesting, but more reflective of people's interests, desires, family and nonprofessional goals etc. But seeing a lot of prelim spots, esp prelim surgery slots without associated advanced residencies is a bad sign.

Spot on.