<p>It’s more important to do really well in any medical school than average at “the best”. In other words, being top 10% in the class at LSU-Shreveport or the University of New Mexico (no offense to those schools) is better than being middle of the pack at Harvard, Penn or WashUSTL. </p>
<p>As Brown said though, the impact of your medical school is not zero. So there is some benefit, but it’s just nowhere near as important as many other factors. Depending on your ultimate specialty, you can actually do pretty poorly on class rank, have very average USMLE scores, still end up at a very quality mid tier academic residency program, become board certified and progress to an extremely well thought of/highly competitive fellowship program (which may or may not my the story of my academic career). </p>
<p>The Match is far more complex than just your stats vs some other random applicants. Students are looking for specific things from residency programs (ie, I was looking for a residency program that had a very strong division in the field I expected to do fellowship in, but that would also give me a quality broad based clinical experience), and residency programs are often looking for “fit” which can’t be measured by test scores and class ranks. It also varies extensively on specialty as you can imagine that psychiatry programs are looking for a very different set of characteristics than a neurosurgery program. </p>