2019 USNWR Rankings

[Microbug]

So pretty much the "research" part of these rankings = who has the most $$$ independent of the quality of the research and research education. Also, it doesn't matter how you got that $$. If some rando billionaire felt like donating to have a building named after him then you will rise in the rankings even if the school puts out research not on par with its peers. Awesome, makes sense!

The general consensus is the more money you have, the higher profile papers you’ll have and the “better” research you do. We can spend all day debating quality of high profile papers but a nature paper is a nature paper.

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[Microbug]

So pretty much the "research" part of these rankings = who has the most $$$ independent of the quality of the research and research education. Also, it doesn't matter how you got that $$. If some rando billionaire felt like donating to have a building named after him then you will rise in the rankings even if the school puts out research not on par with its peers. Awesome, makes sense!

Also, let’s not pretend like this world isn’t run by people with money.

 

[metview]

The general consensus is the more money you have, the higher profile papers you’ll have and the “better” research you do. We can spend all day debating quality of high profile papers but a nature paper is a nature paper.

That must be the general consensus among SDN posters. It's usually the quality/merit of the research that brings in huge grant $$$. You don't just throw money at a research lab and expect it to churn out great research. It's the amazing research idea that brings in the $$$. That is why non-nih-/non-fed money is a poor measure of research and unfortunately that is what USN is using it as.

 

[Microbug]

That must be the general consensus among SDN posters. It's usually the quality/merit of the research that brings in huge grant $$$. You don't just throw money at a research lab and expect it to churn out great research. It's the amazing research idea that brings in the $$$. That is why non-nih-/non-fed money is a poor measure of research and unfortunately that is what USN is using it as.

Usually people who have funding are the ones who get more funding. You need a history of funding to get funding. This is how academia works.

 

[metview]

Usually people who have funding are the ones who get more funding. You need a history of funding to get funding. This is how academia works.

I somewhat agree. By this logic, schools which received huge donations (either from the state or rich donor) should see an increase in NIH funding. Therefore, NIH funding is still the only measure which has value. If a school received donations from the state or a donor and their NIH funding does not increase then you have to question how that $$ is being utilized.

 

[metview]

I see your point, but I don't think rando billionaires are gonna throw $ at schools unless they has stellar research credentials.

Also, you don't need to be a T20 med school to have quality researchers.

If they are already stellar research institutes then NIH $$$ will show that.

 

[Cyberdyne 101]

If they are already stellar research institutes then NIH $$$ will show that.

Is that always the case? NIH funds are not unlimited. A lot of quality researchers probably don't get the $ they deserve.

 

[Microbug]

I somewhat agree. By this logic, schools which received huge donations (either from the state or rich donor) should see an increase in NIH funding. Therefore, NIH funding is still the only measure which has value. If a school received donations from the state or a donor and their NIH funding does not increase then you have to question how that $$ is being utilized.

I think you have a very idealistic and simplistic view of how academia works. It’s much more political than you think. Often times it’s about who you know and what resources you have access to than how great of ideas you have or how well you can pipette.

 

[aldol16]

I think you have a very idealistic and simplistic view of how academia works. It’s much more political than you think. Often times it’s about who you know and what resources you have access to than how great of ideas you have or how well you can pipette.

As someone who has spent a lot of time in academia, I agree with this. Academia is all about the connections, from when you set foot in grad school to when you leave your tenured faculty position. In grad school, the common wisdom is that you generally never get an academic position at an institution much higher ranked than your grad school. The reason is that people care who your adviser was and advisers tend to concentrate at the top schools, so you get that effect. Sometimes you'll find well-known PIs at less well known schools and those people tend to be the exception. But in general, it matters who your adviser is. When you get to the faculty level, even getting your paper in a journal or getting a research grant has to do with who you know. The people who sit on grant review committees are people just like yourself - PIs in your field. They're going to be much less likely to reject a paper or grant from a Nobel Prize winner than they are a newer faculty member even if the idea is the exact same. Then you also have to take into account that the best grad students end up going to the better institutions and so the faculty there have their pick of the cream of the crop. It's just how the system works.

 

[metview]

I think you have a very idealistic and simplistic view of how academia works. It’s much more political than you think. Often times it’s about who you know and what resources you have access to than how great of ideas you have or how well you can pipette.

"You need a history of funding to get funding. This is how academia works." "The general consensus is the more money you have, the higher profile papers you’ll have and the “better” research you do."

You're the one who brought up these "simplistic views." I did not.

Everyone and their mother know that academia is political but your responses still do not explain why non-nih/non-fed money should be used as a measure research merit/quality other than your simplistic view of "more money = better research." This thread reeks of classic sdners. I'm done here.

 

[Microbug]

"You need a history of funding to get funding. This is how academia works." "The general consensus is the more money you have, the higher profile papers you’ll have and the “better” research you do."

You're the one who brought up these "simplistic views." I did not.

Everyone and their mother know that academia is political but your responses still do not explain why non-nih/non-fed money should be used as a measure research merit/quality other than your simplistic view of "more money = better research." This thread reeks of classic sdners. I'm done here.

That’s whole point, it’s not a merit based system. What don’t you get about that lol

 

[aldol16]

I somewhat agree. By this logic, schools which received huge donations (either from the state or rich donor) should see an increase in NIH funding. Therefore, NIH funding is still the only measure which has value. If a school received donations from the state or a donor and their NIH funding does not increase then you have to question how that $$ is being utilized.

Those two sources of funding are not connected. Yes, NIH/NSF funding begets more NIH/NSF funding. But more donation money does not equal more NIH/NSF funding. This is because the pools of money are not used for the same purpose. Academics fund their research mainly via NIH/NSF funding. They are expected to pay a portion of their own salaries with those grants. Yes, when you hire a tenure-track faculty member, you give them seed money for their lab (on the order of $1 million at the top schools) and that comes from the school. But beyond that, the PI actually has to pay the school for lab space/administrative assistance/etc. from their own research (read: NIH/NSF) funding.

So where does that donation money go? Well, it either goes 1) into the endowment, from which it cannot be spent without taxation or 2) into the operating budget for the whole school. Usually that means operating costs and/or building things that might attract more donors, e.g. more buildings, a swimming pool, etc. Something that increases the aestheticism of the school and makes the student experience better/more luxurious so that you get a self-perpetuating cycle of alumni donations.

So as you can see, the pools of money aren't linked so non-research funding doesn't really matter at all.

 

[C.elegans]

Man there is so much NYU bashing here as if ppl just can't accept the fact that rankings are there to change. So what if NYU focused on its rankings and succeeded. The fact that they were able to boost their stats so much is because students of that caliber chose to attend NYU. Like others have said before, NYU has a massive presence in Manhattan and is only expanding everyday. Watch and see NYU maintain the Top 10 ranking for the next few years and cement its place. Very few schools start out as top schools, and the rest put in the money and effort to rise through the ranks.

 

[buckoh24]

Man there is so much NYU bashing here as if ppl just can't accept the fact that rankings are there to change. So what if NYU focused on its rankings and succeeded. The fact that they were able to boost their stats so much is because students of that caliber chose to attend NYU. Like others have said before, NYU has a massive presence in Manhattan and is only expanding everyday. Watch and see NYU maintain the Top 10 ranking for the next few years and cement its place. Very few schools start out as top schools, and the rest put in the money and effort to rise through the ranks.

They also changed the ranking system to include internal research funding, not just NIH funding. And NYU has that $$$$ so that probably explains the big jump. She thing happened to Mayo.

 

[C.elegans]

They also changed the ranking system to include internal research funding, not just NIH funding. And NYU has that $$$$ so that probably explains the big jump. She thing happened to Mayo.

These rankings are arbitrary anyways. Rankings can change at any moment depending on the criteria they base if off on. How can anyone say the previous method was any fairer than the current method? One can say that the peer assessment scores are all biased and some of the traditionally elite schools benefitted immensely from this just because of the automatic prestige associated with the name (such as Yale or Columbia). Some methods of calculation are just "fairer" to certain schools depending on their respective strengths. Like many have said here, the T25 schools are all equally respectable schools with their contributions to medicine in the US. I sometimes think that the dental schools were smart getting rid of the ranking system and sparing students and schools from this misery each year.

 

[efle]

Man there is so much NYU bashing here as if ppl just can't accept the fact that rankings are there to change. So what if NYU focused on its rankings and succeeded. The fact that they were able to boost their stats so much is because students of that caliber chose to attend NYU. Like others have said before, NYU has a massive presence in Manhattan and is only expanding everyday. Watch and see NYU maintain the Top 10 ranking for the next few years and cement its place. Very few schools start out as top schools, and the rest put in the money and effort to rise through the ranks.

These rankings are arbitrary anyways. Rankings can change at any moment depending on the criteria they base if off on. How can anyone say the previous method was any fairer than the current method? One can say that the peer assessment scores are all biased and some of the traditionally elite schools benefitted immensely from this just because of the automatic prestige associated with the name (such as Yale or Columbia). Some methods of calculation are just "fairer" to certain schools depending on their respective strengths. Like many have said here, the T25 schools are all equally respectable schools with their contributions to medicine in the US. I sometimes think that the dental schools were smart getting rid of the ranking system and sparing students and schools from this misery each year.

The issue is that US News is used as a proxy for reputation, not actually as a list of who has the most funding of various types. So this new change moved away from how the list is practically used. It doesn't really have anything to do with fairness, just whether it is accurate or not. If they updated the undergrad rankings next year to include average temperatures and now it put UCSD way above Dartmouth, it wouldn't be any more or less fair...just less useful.

 

[Avada Cadaver]

The issue is that US News is used as a proxy for reputation, not actually as a list of who has the most funding of various types. So this new change moved away from how the list is practically used. It doesn't really have anything to do with fairness, just whether it is accurate or not. If they updated the undergrad rankings next year to include average temperatures and now it put UCSD way above Dartmouth, it wouldn't be any more or less fair...just less useful.

If they rank Law schools based on overall reputation, you'd think they could do the same for medical schools, perhaps in addition to research and primary care.

 

[C.elegans]

The issue is that US News is used as a proxy for reputation, not actually as a list of who has the most funding of various types. So this new change moved away from how the list is practically used. It doesn't really have anything to do with fairness, just whether it is accurate or not. If they updated the undergrad rankings next year to include average temperatures and now it put UCSD way above Dartmouth, it wouldn't be any more or less fair...just less useful.

I see what you are saying but I just felt that too many people were overly sensitive about schools rising through the ranks. From my point of view, NYU is on a course to building a very solid reputation with all the funding and development that they have been pouring into the school lately. Is the jump from #13 to #3 perhaps too dramatic for one year? I think so. But was NYU on a upward momentum for the past 5 years and would it have eventually made it to Top 5 in the next few years if it had not this year? I certainly think so. And in my previous post, I was implying that the Peer Assessment Scores in themselves are quite biased and unreliable, and even may be influenced by certain preconceptions of schools being better due to their historic "name". Now if I was a Columbia med student or Cornell med student, I understand why this year's ranking may be uncomfortable

 

[Lucca]

I see what you are saying but I just felt that too many people were overly sensitive about schools rising through the ranks. From my point of view, NYU is on a course to building a very solid reputation with all the funding and development that they have been pouring into the school lately. Is the jump from #13 to #3 perhaps too dramatic for one year? I think so. But was NYU on a upward momentum for the past 5 years and would it have eventually made it to Top 5 in the next few years if it had not this year? I certainly think so. And in my previous post, I was implying that the Peer Assessment Scores in themselves are quite biased and unreliable, and even may be influenced by certain preconceptions of schools being better due to their historic "name". Now if I was a Columbia med student or Cornell med student, I understand why this year's ranking may be uncomfortable

Reputation is literally nothing more than historic preconceptions. That being said, it likely matters more in the real world than research $$ / faculty member.

NYU is a bit of a meme on SDN, don’t take the discourse too seriously. It’s an excellent school.

 

[efle]

I see what you are saying but I just felt that too many people were overly sensitive about schools rising through the ranks. From my point of view, NYU is on a course to building a very solid reputation with all the funding and development that they have been pouring into the school lately. Is the jump from #13 to #3 perhaps too dramatic for one year? I think so. But was NYU on a upward momentum for the past 5 years and would it have eventually made it to Top 5 in the next few years if it had not this year? I certainly think so. And in my previous post, I was implying that the Peer Assessment Scores in themselves are quite biased and unreliable, and even may be influenced by certain preconceptions of schools being better due to their historic "name". Now if I was a Columbia med student or Cornell med student, I understand why this year's ranking may be uncomfortable

I'd have to disagree with the bolded. Reputation with peers and program directors lags for decades at least. NYU has been making its way upwards, but by that I mean it's now similar to places like Emory and UNC, rather than Hopkins and Harvard. Going from #34 to #3 in a decade isn't really possible as far as a school's rep. It reflects some very favorable tweaks to the ranking algorithm, and for the moment it's very inflated and misleading.

 

[thenucleusaccumbens]

I'd have to disagree with the bolded. Reputation with peers and program directors lags for decades at least. NYU has been making its way upwards, but by that I mean it's now similar to places like Emory and UNC, rather than Hopkins and Harvard. Going from #34 to #3 in a decade isn't really possible as far as a school's rep. It reflects some very favorable tweaks to the ranking algorithm, and for the moment it's very inflated and misleading.

Stats of matriculants at NYU (3.9/521 according to their website) are considerably higher than at Emory and UNC though. Their stats are more like Hopkins and Harvard level. As are NYU students Step scores ( > 240 Step 1 avg on par with the other top tier schools). In terms of NYU being ranked #3, I personally don't think there's any major difference between schools in the top 20 in terms of reputation and opportunities and wouldn't consider NYU any less prestigious if it happened to be ranked #17 instead of #3 or whatever. I don't really see how NYU could be ranked in the 30s at this point though; I think that would be misleading and unfair given the stats of med students at NYU being what they are now.

 

[efle]

Stats of matriculants at NYU (3.9/521 according to their website) are considerably higher than at Emory and UNC though. Their stats are more like Hopkins and Harvard level. As are NYU students Step scores ( > 240 Step 1 avg on par with the other top tier schools). In terms of NYU being ranked #3, I personally don't think there's any major difference between schools in the top 20 in terms of reputation and opportunities and wouldn't consider NYU any less prestigious if it happened to be ranked #17 instead of #3 or whatever. I don't really see how NYU could be ranked in the 30s at this point though; I think that would be misleading and unfair given the stats of med students at NYU being what they are now.

USC Keck has the same median admitted MCAT as UCSF, but that doesn't mean Keck is viewed the same by residencies and peers, or that their spot in the 30s is ridiculously low. Similarly to funding, stats are often used as a proxy but can be misleading.

I do think an institution's rep is a product of the people that pass through it though, much more than a product of their way of teaching. If next cycle's NYU admits are frequently cross admitted to other top ~5 programs and turn those down to attend NYU, then NYU is now the real deal in my book. Counterpoint being that if students admitted to both NYU and, say, Stanford or Penn overwhelmingly matriculate to the latter, then they're at the top by rank and LizzyM but not truly by the student body they're able to attract.

 

[Deleted member 750603]

As someone who has gone through the process of application, interviews, rejections, acceptances and reading about schools and talking with people about ranking I can tell you the only ranking the matters is the following.

1. School you like
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
100. School you don't like


Stop being a lemming. Make your own choices in life.

 

[mydogmolly]

As someone who has gone through the process of application, interviews, rejections, acceptances and reading about schools and talking with people about ranking I can tell you the only ranking the matters is the following.

1. School you like
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
100. School you don't like


Stop being a lemming. Make your own choices in life.

101. And then Yale, right?

 

[Deleted member 750603]

101. And then Yale, right?

Maybe? Sure. No idea. ::::nervous laugh:::::

 

[Mad Jack]

Schools that "fell" out of the top 10 - Columbia (6), Yale (9), Michigan (9)
Schools that "rose" into the top 10 - UCLA (11), NYU (12), Mayo (20)

Here's a theory: what do some of these rising stars have in common? Accepting relatively few people initially and then taking people off their "waitlist" who have demonstrated interest in their school (i.e., via a letter of intent). This helps them maximize their yield (aka the number of offers they extend that choose to matriculate). Since yield factors into the selectivity index of a school, this might inflate their rankings.

Thoughts?

More likely theory: rankings don't mean anything and USNWR just makes them to sell their product. If the rankings never changed, they'd stop selling, so they have created a ranking system that favors frequent changes that have little to do with actual quality of education.

 

[mydogmolly]

More likely theory: rankings don't mean anything and USNWR just makes them to sell their product. If the rankings never changed, they'd stop selling, so they have created a ranking system that favors frequent changes that have little to do with actual quality of education.

I know someone who works for a company that sells law school rankings, and she told me this was the business model almost word for word. As long as people care about the prestige of their piece of paper, this will be a market.