2017 Match List analysis - Part 3 of 3
I would say overall for this year’s match list, taking into account the overall breadth & variety of specialties matched into (with specific individual matches from those in the prior year’s class who took a year off for research), residency program institutional caliber even for the non-competitive specialties, geographical distribution, I would say this year’s match list overall is about average to a little weaker than previous years’ match lists for UMKC. Keep in mind that UMKC Med has always been a smaller, lower-tier medical school so the spectrum of specialties/programs that a student is able to match into coming from here will be different than medical schools that are middle-tier/solid middle-tier and top-tier.
I think there are several things at play here:
1 -- The residency match for medical students has gotten tighter (and continues to get tighter) due to the ratio of the number of U.S. residency spots (and the number of residency spots allocated to each specific individual specialty) to the number of U.S. med school graduates, with new medical schools created having been added by the LCME in recent years, and thus more U.S. senior graduates that weren't there before in previous match years. Thus, medical school reputation, both in terms of academic prestige, and also being "known" entities to residency programs, in terms of the quality of their medical graduates, is a lot more important now than it used to be. Thus, more lower-tier medical schools (esp. newly created med schools that don't really have a track record) will be the first to feel the crunch, while top-tier med schools will be the last to feel it, if at all.
2 -- UMKC's BA/MD class composition has changed a lot in terms of geography (Class of 2013 was the first class who had the regional category added, entering as Year 1s), a weakness started to emerge in terms of students matching into the more competitive specialties, since the demand for them now is higher (not surprising, since students from outside of Missouri make up more of the class now and pay more in tuition than in-staters, and thus are more likely to gravitate towards or at least consider specialties that are more competitive or have a higher income, to pay off their higher debt loads sooner, although income potential is not the sole driver or even necessarily a major driver of specialty selection). I think UMKC students coming in these days are much more aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the med school early on in being able to place them in certain specialties/programs, so students are much more willing to do things like take a year off to expand their CV (it's likely not something they planned to do as a Year 1) or try to get involved much early on in research, as the medical school is now trying to encourage, expand, and promote research which it didn't really make an effort before. It was much different when the class was only 90% in-state, 10% out-of-state, in terms of the type of specialties the majority of students in the class were seriously considering and shooting for (Class of 2012 and earlier), although that's not a hard and fast rule.
You can compare these match lists for UMKC to those at Mizzou, SLU, and Wash U above, as well as Google medical schools’ match lists from your own home state as most med schools have posted them online. If you have any questions at all on the match list, the actual matching process, or anything I’ve said here, please feel free to ask.