Medical School Rankings

Well, the new medical school rankings from US News are out. Who cares? It turns out a lot of people care. In general there are three types of people who care about the rankings, and here they are:

3. Medical schools that rely on private donations to fund expansion and education. Getting into the top 10 is a big deal, and if you've ever seen a cheerleading session given by the president of a top 10 medical school, you know how much weight they give these rankings.

2. Medical students. When you apply for residencies where you're coming from makes a huge difference. If your school has been hanging around the top of the ranking list you'll be a residency program favorite.

1. Your mom. Ain't no one going to be happier than your mom when she can say "yes, you remember my little Katie, she's in the best medical school in the country. Isn't she adorable?"

So who were the big winners and who were the big losers this year?

Big Winners:

University of Washington - ranked the top Primary Care medical school
Harvard (ever heard of this place before?) - ranked the top Research medical school
University of California, San Francisco and University of Washington - the only schools to make the top 10 in both primary care and research

The student - here's a very important point. The goal of going to medical school is that you have to learn how to treat patients. It turns out that all those famous medical schools don't have a monopoly on providing a great medical education. The "primary care" rankings bring this into perspective. If you ask the person on the street, would you rather be treated by someone who trained at Duke or at the University of New Mexico, what do you think they'd say? Mention that Michigan State Univeristy College of Osteopathic Medicine ranked more than 30 spots better than Johns Hopkins among primary care medical schools and watch the confused look on their face.

The medical school rankings are always a point of debate among medical schools and medical students. No single method for determining these rankings works perfectly, and every institution feels it should be ranked higher. Having two lists, research and primary care, deals with this problem a little, but also points out where weaknesses reside.