Well, I just solved my own problem. For anyone that's curious, it's blindly simple and I'm punching myself for not figuring this out earlier. You add materials to the favorites list by right clicking on the material in the feature tree of your part then selecting the "manage favorites" option...
So I've been trying to figure this out for a while to no avail. Is it possible to change which materials are shown in the quick dropdown box when you're applying a material to a part? This would save a lot of time for me if i could add my 10 or so most used materials to this box instead of...