I think it’s relatively consistent with previous years in terms of overall geography, the type of institutions that UMKC usually matches into. There will always be exceptions, but those are usually just that - exceptions. Maybe slightly worse (just my opinion) in specific specialties in terms of the type of residency institution (a community-based vs. university-based program) - part of that is just because the residency match process, in general, is getting tighter bc there are higher numbers of medical students graduating, but there are not enough residency positions increasing to meet the demand, so things overall are becoming much more competitive. Realize also that students choose locations for different reasons - wanting to be closer to home or family, wanting to explore a different city, 2 students matching as a couple so they have to be in the relatively same area, etc.
Part of the problem with competitive specialties is that you have no idea what exactly contributed to their matching into it: did they take a year off from medical school to go somewhere else to do research and publish? Were they at the top of their class? Were they members of AOA (the honor society in medical school)? Maybe they did an audition elective at some other place and they knocked the attending’s socks off and impressed them. Maybe they are related to a faculty member in that program or they have a connection thru a family member somehow (doesn’t happen often but yes, it does happen - this is real life, after all).
Here’s a perfect example: If you see on the match list there is one guy who matched into Orthopedic Surgery at Mass General Hospital at Harvard. However, if you Google him, you will see that he did research in Ortho throughout medical school at UMKC and on top of that took a year off to do Orthopedic research and has THIRTY-NINE(!) research publications in Orthopedic Surgery. So not surprisingly, he’s going to get into pretty good programs especially if he was top of the class, which he probably was. Very few medical students, who are already a smart bunch in general, have 39 publications, so he’s very much at the high end of the bell curve. It’s like the people who have a 2400 on their SATs - as a whole they are very small percentage-wise of the population.
The people at the very top of the medical school class or who are AOA members, are people who likely would have been successful no matter where they went - whether at UMKC or at another school. Many of them, especially those who are AOA, likely would have been smart enough to get into Ivy League schools.
So context is very key here, and it’s very hard to know the story behind each person’s match.