Obviously other factors are more important for deciding, but I wanted to know how I should be interpreting match lists when deciding what school to attend. Not sure about what specialty I want to pursue but I'm thinking something surgical/procedural for now.

Are you supposed to look at the caliber of institutions that people match into? Confused about this because I know that med school ranking/prestige isn't necessarily correlated with the strength of residency programs.

Or, are you supposed to look at the number of people matching into difficult specialties? I know this can also vary a lot year to year based on the interests of the graduating class.

How much should we be factoring in the strength of home programs?

Thank you!