Most Important Factor for Your Med School List

It's not location, size, or ranking.

So, yesterday, a childhood friend who is applying to med school reach out to me. 

He asked me a question that no one has ever asked me before. And honestly, I have no idea why no one has never asked me before. 

He asked me: “What is the single most important thing to look at when making my med school list?”

At first, he had me stumped. Not because it is a hard question, but because I remember when I was trying to make my list. 

I had a massive spreadsheet where I would go to US News rankings, MSAR, Reddit, school websites and get as much info as possible for each school and try to compare it. 

“Oh our novel curriculum has students… Oh we have ranked …”

And the truth is all of that is BS. And I only realize this now, as I finish up my last bit of med school. 

Med schools are experts of tricking all applicants to think that med school is the goal. 

But, med school is NOT the goal. The goal is for you to get a medical degree and then do what you want with it. 

You can become the next Dr. Fauci or a community OBGYN. 

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The secret to making your med school list is to ask yourself one question: 

“Will coming here help me become the type of doctor I want to be?”

Now this seemingly simple question requires some work on your end. You have to think about: 

  • What specialties am I interested in and does this school have significant people enter that field?

For example, if you want to be a neurosurgeon, you better go to a med school that has multiple people match into neurosurgery. 

This sounds obvious, but the only way you can get this information is if you look at the match lists for that school.

This match list tells you so so so so much information. 

What you need to search to get match lists

The easiest way to get this info is to search:

“[name of school] match list 2023”

For example, I searched “Nebraska med school match list 2023” and got this link:

Once you have this, look and see how many people matched into any and all of the specialties you are interested in. 

Did they match at top academic programs or more community programs? If you want to end up in the Northeast for residency, are people ending up there? 

What to know for competitive specialties?

Another thing to keep in mind is that if you are interested in competitive specialities, look at how often the school takes its own students. 

If on the match list, you don’t see any people going to their home program either that means 

  1. The school doesn’t take its own students which is a bad sign. 

  2. Or worse, the students don’t want to go to their home program.  

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After working your butt off in undergrad, the last thing anyone wants to hear that med school is not the goal.

But the truth is that med school is just a step in your journey to become a doctor. 

A med school is only as good as its ability to help its students match where they want (or things related to medicine like research/start companies/public health/policy, etc). 

I would highly recommend checking it out. 

Help me, help you.

What other questions do you have about making a med school list?

I respond to 100% of emails.

Best,

CKR