That’s been my experience with my classmates/friends. Other than direct benefits to residency apps, the only other reasons I’ve heard of friends doing aways are:
- international aways for the sake of an excuse to travel to other location (these are always done after submitting the rank list so usually the students don’t work as hard as they are used to and thus have plenty of time to enjoy their foreign locale)
- long distance relationships. Had a friend whose boyfriend was planning on relocating to her coast after law school so she only did aways in his city and there was really no reason on her end for spending time in those hospitals other than being able to live in his city for a few weeks.