Tiering the Top 20-25 IM Programs

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socal4life

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If The 1st Tier of IM programs are:
UCSF/Hopkins/MGH/Brigham

What are the 2nd tier IM programs?

What are the 3rd tier IM programs?

I guess I'm asking in terms of national reputation, great ancillary services, and most importantly teaching and fellowship placement?
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check the sticky with the FAQs
 
socal4life said:
If The 1st Tier of IM programs are:
UCSF/Hopkins/MGH/Brigham

What are the 2nd tier IM programs?

What are the 3rd tier IM programs?

I guess I'm asking in terms of national reputation, great ancillary services, and most importantly teaching and fellowship placement?
Click to expand...

theres a usnews ranking somewhere on the forum also, to give u a general idea
 
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Here are my rankings of IM programs. These are just my rankings. However, I just finished the interview process and I tried my best to do as much research as I could into the "best" programs. This is my list but it is based upon a lot of resources (the advice of my advisors, the advice of my interviewers, the program directors at hopkins, mgh, and michigan among others, and finally the advice and experience of my fellow medical students and the interns I know).

Keep in mind though that the "best" program is the one that will allow you to maximize your learning to your potential. So, take the advice of people on this board and those around you, but make your own list. Your opinion is the one that counts in the end.

I have ranked the programs by tier. The programs within a tier are too close to rank.

First Tier: Hopkins, Brigham, MGH. The best of the best. If you can go to one of these programs, leap at it.

Second Tier: UCSF, Duke, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia. All 4 of these programs are great but a very slight notch below the top 3. Just as an example: UCSF takes 7 people for cardiology fellowship each year. Last year 3 came from Brigham, 3 from MGH, and 1 from Hopkins. It was an aberation but I do think that the top 3 programs have a slight "name" advantage.

Third Tier: University of Washington, Washington University, Stanford, Michigan. These program are good porgrams. If you want a great learning environment, you can't go wrong with Stanford -- Great PD. If you want to do primary care or are interested in ID or Pulmonary, University of Washington (seattle) is great. All of these programs have fellowship placement as good as the schools in the second tier.

Fourth Tier: UAB, UTSW, Vanderbilt, Mayo (Rochester), University of Chicago, UCLA. All very solid programs. And if some cases (depending on what you want to do after residency) these programs might be better than those in the higher tiers. I really liked Mayo (Rochester). UAB and Duke are probably my top two schools in the south. Make sure to enquire into UCLA's fellowship programs. They require a lot of research if you stay at UCLA for fellowship.

Fifth Tier: Cornell, Emory, Northwestern. If you want to do Heme-Onc, you can't go wrong with Cornell. Same for Emory and Cardiology. Northwestern has a sweet call schedule and a great work environment. I ended up ranking Northwestern pretty highly on my rank order list.

Sixth Tier: Too many to list ... but places like UCSD, BID, Colorado, Mt. Sinai (New York), OHSU, University of Maryland, NYU. Some of these programs (UCSD) have a huge location advantage. You can see the beach from the hospital!
 
I just wanted to say that I whole-heartedly concur with the in depth analysis of medicine programs Da Big Dawg stated out there...This was pretty much what I gathered from many discussions with different PDs, advisors and people in different fields as the general "feeling" of the rank of programs...I like the tier by tier analysis, especially because although there is a difference between tiers, the differences within tiers is minimal and more likely to be attributed to intangible things such as location preferences (some hate philly, some like it, some hate NY some love it etc...), feeling of a program (penn is a happy program, columbia is more serious aka "malignant"), the workload (northwestern is cush, cornell is harder)...nevertheless, few will deny the top three in their place (and some would say UCSF may be up there, but I chose not to go to the west coast so I cannot comment), and most would agree with the general distinction of tiers...Incidentally, if we ever come upon enough people for a consensus we should just sticky this since so many people ask this question in so many different ways...

Heart
 
Tier 1 (100/100): BWH, MGH, UCSF, Hopkins

Tier 2 (98+/100): Duke, UPenn, UW, Stanford, Columbia
2a: WashU, UTSW, Michigan

Tier 3 (95+/100): UAB, Emory, UChicago, UCLA, Cornell, Yale, Mayo, Vanderbilt, BID

Tier 4 (90+/100): Baylor, Northwestern, UNC, UVa, Colorado etc.

I wanted to offer my own rough numerical values to each of the tiers. Obviously, ranking IM programs is no exact science once you move past the top 4 programs. There is plenty of overlapping. The absolute reputation differences between the tiers within the top 25 are relatively small. For example, a "2nd tier" program is only slightly below the top tier. The distance increases a bit between 2nd and 3rd tier programs, and so on. The most important thing to remember is that, in the grand scheme of things, any of the top 25 IM programs will offer very good fellowship opportunities; obviously some programs are stronger in certain fellowships than others. On the other hand, the level of prestige/competitiveness starts to drop quickly once you move past the top 25. Overall, my list is similar to the one posted above, though I do have fewer tiers.
 
Yale is an oversight perhaps. Never really looked into the program. If I had to venture a guess, I would say perhaps somewhere in the range of my tiers 2 and 3?

UVa and UCSD are both solid programs. I would think they are borderline top 25 programs, which is still an enviable place to be. IMHO, they are on par with the likes of Pitt, NYU, etc.
 
Yale is currently rebuilding and given their fellowship match list for cardiology (my most objective judge of a program) I felt they were an excellent program, with many training benefits, but slightly less than the tier 2 schools. I would place them along with most tier 3 schools with an asterisk to indicate that they have a lot of capability of becoming tier 2 very soon with a new chief of medicine, new chief of cardiology and a few years of successful fellowship placement (heard from some of the cheifs while on interview that every year there are some people who either dont match in cards or who are advised to drop out of the match or not apply...made me concerned when I interviewed there)...otherwise yale is a great im program, and I actually really enjoyed the interactions with the PD, and felt the residents were of a very high caliber. incidentally, many people tend to treat yale as an oversight when mentioning top programs which brings up a question as to why a great undergrad grad and med school doesnt have an equally great IM program?
 
i agree with everything you said in your comments section, the difference is not that big within the top 25, and when it comes down, it is a personal preference (esp geographical). with that said, i am not sure if i would put UChicago, Mich, and BID that high up ...


VCMM414 said:
1st Tier (100/100): BWH, MGH, UCSF, Hopkins

2nd Tier (98-99+/100): Duke, Penn, Columbia, UWash, UTSW

2.5? Tier (ie. can be in either 2nd or 3rd tier depending on who you ask... basically I've not found a clear concensus for these programs): UChicago, Mayo Rochester, WashU, UMich, Stanford, BID

3rd Tier (95+/100): UAB, Emory, UCLA, Cornell

4th Tier (90+/100): Vanderbilt, Baylor, Northwestern, UNC, etc.

I wanted to offer my own rough numerical values to each of the tiers. Obviously, ranking IM programs is no exact science once you move past the top 4 programs. There is plenty of overlapping. The absolute reputation differences between the tiers within the top 25 are relatively small. For example, a "2nd tier" program is only slightly below the top tier. The distance increases a bit between 2nd and 3rd tier programs, and so on. The most important thing to remember is that, in the grand scheme of things, any of the top 25 IM programs will offer very good fellowship opportunities; obviously some programs are stronger in certain fellowships than others. On the other hand, the level of prestige/competitiveness starts to drop quickly once you move past the top 25. Overall, my list is similar to the one posted above, though I do have fewer tiers. I included one nebulous group between tiers 2 and 3, simply because I've had some difficulty teasing out which of these programs belong in which tier.
Click to expand...
 
snoozz said:
i agree with everything you said in your comments section, the difference is not that big within the top 25, and when it comes down, it is a personal preference (esp geographical). with that said, i am not sure if i would put UChicago, Mich, and BID that high up ...
Click to expand...
Like I mentioned, BID and UMich are tossups depending on who you talk to. I still think they are somewhere within tiers 2 or 3. For what it's worth, Michigan seems to compare favorably with WashU. OTOH, BID would be closer to tier 3 I think, and really that's mostly due to its name recognition. Otherwise, IMO programs like Emory and UAB are better structured toward resident autonomy/education.

As for UChicago, it seems to be a bit underrated among applicants. I get a feeling that PDs and deans think quite highly of the program. I certainly wouldn't be terribly shocked if any given person views it nearly at the level of the Dukes and the Penns of IM world.
 
all of these "rankings" are completely arbitrary. There are NO sites that rank internal medicine RESIDENCY PROGRAMS. There are sites that rank hospitals and departments- takes into account patient:nurse ratios, etc. This does not tell you about the quality of a internal medicine residency training program.
 
What about Cleveland Clinic?
How would you rate it?
 
DaBigDawg said:
Here are my rankings of IM programs.

First Tier: Hopkins, Brigham, MGH. The best of the best. If you can go to one of these programs, leap at it.

Second Tier: UCSF, Duke, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia. All 4 of these programs are great but a very slight notch below the top 3. Just as an example: UCSF takes 7 people for cardiology fellowship each year. Last year 3 came from Brigham, 3 from MGH, and 1 from Hopkins. It was an aberation but I do think that the top 3 programs have a slight "name" advantage.

!
Click to expand...

Any given year UCSF residents match at MGH/Brigham/PENN/Clevland Clinic for Cards as well as the West coast giants including UW/Stanford/ Cedars (top notch for Cards)/ and UCLA. I'm not sure if I follow your argument about this year's UCSF cards fellows all being from Harvard or Hopkins as a knock against UCSF residents...too small of a sample size to mean anything.

I don't doubt that in the lay publics eye Hopkins and Harvard have a bigger name than UCSF...but in academics who are considering Internal Medicine Residencies (and not just hospitals in general) they will tell you UCSF=MGH=BWH=JHU. And in fact based on my own small study size (my medical school over the past few years) its easier to get an interview at MGH or Hopkins than UCSF or Brigham...so if you go by which programs are most competitive there is another way contrast apples with apples.
 
ucla2usc said:
Any given year UCSF residents match at MGH/Brigham/PENN/Clevland Clinic for Cards as well as the West coast giants including UW/Stanford/ Cedars (top notch for Cards)/ and UCLA. I'm not sure if I follow your argument about this year's UCSF cards fellows all being from Harvard or Hopkins as a knock against UCSF residents...too small of a sample size to mean anything.

I don't doubt that in the lay publics eye Hopkins and Harvard have a bigger name than UCSF...but in academics who are considering Internal Medicine Residencies (and not just hospitals in general) they will tell you UCSF=MGH=BWH=JHU. And in fact based on my own small study size (my medical school over the past few years) its easier to get an interview at MGH or Hopkins than UCSF or Brigham...so if you go by which programs are most competitive there is another way contrast apples with apples.
Click to expand...

Interesting thread. MGH has always been my dream. We'll see if it becomes a reality. Go Red Sox!!!
 
srbutros said:
What about Cleveland Clinic?
How would you rate it?
Click to expand...

Below Case, Ohio State, and UC if you're ranking Ohio programs. Nationwide? :laugh:
 
Do carib grads with decent scores (>90%) ever get into the top 25 programs?
 
This is what happens when pre-meds that only wanted to apply to "top rank" med schools grow up to be medical students that only want to apply to "top rank" residency programs.
 
DaBigDawg said:
Here are my rankings of IM programs. These are just my rankings. However, I just finished the interview process and I tried my best to do as much research as I could into the "best" programs. This is my list but it is based upon a lot of resources (the advice of my advisors, the advice of my interviewers, the program directors at hopkins, mgh, and michigan among others, and finally the advice and experience of my fellow medical students and the interns I know).

Keep in mind though that the "best" program is the one that will allow you to maximize your learning to your potential. So, take the advice of people on this board and those around you, but make your own list. Your opinion is the one that counts in the end.

I have ranked the programs by tier. The programs within a tier are too close to rank.

First Tier: Hopkins, Brigham, MGH. The best of the best. If you can go to one of these programs, leap at it.

Second Tier: UCSF, Duke, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia. All 4 of these programs are great but a very slight notch below the top 3. Just as an example: UCSF takes 7 people for cardiology fellowship each year. Last year 3 came from Brigham, 3 from MGH, and 1 from Hopkins. It was an aberation but I do think that the top 3 programs have a slight "name" advantage.

Third Tier: University of Washington, Washington University, Stanford, Michigan. These program are good porgrams. If you want a great learning environment, you can't go wrong with Stanford -- Great PD. If you want to do primary care or are interested in ID or Pulmonary, University of Washington (seattle) is great. All of these programs have fellowship placement as good as the schools in the second tier.

Fourth Tier: UAB, UTSW, Vanderbilt, Mayo (Rochester), University of Chicago, UCLA. All very solid programs. And if some cases (depending on what you want to do after residency) these programs might be better than those in the higher tiers. I really liked Mayo (Rochester). UAB and Duke are probably my top two schools in the south. Make sure to enquire into UCLA's fellowship programs. They require a lot of research if you stay at UCLA for fellowship.

Fifth Tier: Cornell, Emory, Northwestern. If you want to do Heme-Onc, you can't go wrong with Cornell. Same for Emory and Cardiology. Northwestern has a sweet call schedule and a great work environment. I ended up ranking Northwestern pretty highly on my rank order list.

Sixth Tier: Too many to list ... but places like UCSD, BID, Colorado, Mt. Sinai (New York), OHSU, University of Maryland, NYU. Some of these programs (UCSD) have a huge location advantage. You can see the beach from the hospital!
Click to expand...

In order to have a good shot to get into any of the programs above, what's the average step 1 and 2 USMLE one needs to have? I understand the selection process based on a lot of things, but I'm just curious as to the USMLE scores....Does anybody know? Thanks
 
mrdowntoearth said:
In order to have a good shot to get into any of the programs above, what's the average step 1 and 2 USMLE one needs to have? I understand the selection process based on a lot of things, but I'm just curious as to the USMLE scores....Does anybody know? Thanks
Click to expand...

Get a 2-digit score of 85 or better. That's a popularly agreed upon cut-off for screening at the top programs. A 2 digit score less than that will mean many places won't even bother to look at the rest of your application. MGH, Hopkins, Mayo, Stanford, UCSF, etc. get a hojiggity million apps each year and they need a simple way to cut that number down. Only looking at apps w/ Step 1 >85 is a good start, that probably cuts the number more or less in half. Then they start to look at the things that actually matter.

Keep in mind that pretty much any good academic IM program will give you equivalent training and the chance to get a fellowship spot. The big names will grease some wheels for you but, in general, you will make the difference, not the program. You may think that you don't want to be anywhere but Program X but that will very likely change when you actually get out there and interview. My rank-list bore absolutely no resemblance to what I expected when I started the process. Getting into a "top" program may make you feel good for awhile, but if you're not happy there then it doesn't matter how good the place is.

BE (now PE)
 
Any thoughts on the Mayo-Scottsdale and Mayo-Jacksonville programs?
 
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