Big Fuss Over Ivy League Med Schools?

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

mitch8017

Full Member
7+ Year Member
Joined
Jun 21, 2016
Messages
117
Reaction score
29
So other than Harvard, none of the other Ivy League Med Schools make an appearance in the Top 30? Kinda curious to why this is

Members don't see this ad.
 
Probably the research med schools. OP, just because the schools are old (e.g. Ivies), doesn't necessarily mean their research output is the best and thus most don't make the top 30 (assuming you're referring to USNWR rankings).
 
Members don't see this ad :)
Probably the research med schools. OP, just because the schools are old (e.g. Ivies), doesn't necessarily mean their research output is the best and thus most don't make the top 30 (assuming you're referring to USNWR rankings).

That would be weird though because Harvard, Penn, Columbia, and Yale are all in the top 10 for USNWR research rankings, Cornell is in the top 20, and the other two are in the top 40.
 
So other than Harvard, none of the other Ivy League Med Schools make an appearance in the Top 30? Kinda curious to why this is
It appears you're looking at the wrong rankings.

In any case, "Ivy League" has no meaning in regard to medical schools. The only people that chase them specifically because they are "Ivies" are the sorts of people that come from families that really value brand recognition. There's plenty of better schools in the top 20 that are not Ivy-affiliated but are regarded with the utmost respect by those within medicine (and often the public), such as Hopkins.
 
That would be weird though because Harvard, Penn, Columbia, and Yale are all in the top 10 for USNWR research rankings, Cornell is in the top 20, and the other two are in the top 40.

I figured they meant schools like Brown or Dartmouth
 
lol what

Nonetheless, the term ivy doesn't really carry much weight in medicine, since the top schools in medicine don't correlate as much with undergrad rankings.
 
Hey OP : No one cares about your prestige-chasing schools

The prestige-chasing physicians are the least happy, poorest paid physicians.
 
They be like, "oh, that Ivy, that's hella tight!"
I'm like, yo, that's over hyped for an MD
 
There are three misconceptions by OP. One, that people in medicine care a lot about "Ivies." Two, that people in medicine care a lot about rankings. Three, that he is even looking at the correct rankings lol

Yet these older, top schools do tend to be affiliated with very strong teaching hospitals, and that is where the difference in education comes. Prestigious schools are not better because of the wow name factor. They generally have more money and resources and invest a lot in their teaching hospitals. YMMV
 
Members don't see this ad :)
The Ivy League is a football conference. That is all it is. I don't get where students get the idea that "Ivy League medicine," "Ivy League law," or "Ivy League business" have some sort of prestige. That's kind of like rooting for your med school college's football team instead of your alma mater's. Unless you went to a DIII school, I don't get why anybody would do that. Even for undergraduate ranking, the Ivy League is nothing more than a football conference. Does it also tend to be composed of the highest-ranked schools? Sure. But those schools didn't get their ranking because they are in the Ivy League. There are plenty of top undergrad schools that aren't in the Ivy League - Stanford, MIT, and CalTech among them.
 
The Ivy League is a football conference. That is all it is. I don't get where students get the idea that "Ivy League medicine," "Ivy League law," or "Ivy League business" have some sort of prestige. That's kind of like rooting for your med school college's football team instead of your alma mater's. Unless you went to a DIII school, I don't get why anybody would do that. Even for undergraduate ranking, the Ivy League is nothing more than a football conference. Does it also tend to be composed of the highest-ranked schools? Sure. But those schools didn't get their ranking because they are in the Ivy League. There are plenty of top undergrad schools that aren't in the Ivy League - Stanford, MIT, and CalTech among them.

True, the Ivy League is an athletic conference (can't say they are too well-known for their football nowadays, although it can be said it was born because of football). We can split hairs and say the Ivy League is truly just an athletic conference, but in common usage that's clearly not the case. It's grown to be more than just a conference, but rather a colloquial term used to refer to some of the most prestigious undergrad institutions in the US and in some cases the world. Of course the Ivy League is not the end-all-be-all for great schools; we know that's not the case. We also know that that's even more so true for graduate and professional schooling, but the common layperson might not be aware of that, and that's where the misconception arises.
 
I don't think Ivy League status should play a big role in choosing one's school. However, I have spoken with physicians on residency application committees who have admitted that they will slightly favor an individual who attended an "Ivy League Med School" over say a state school. That didn't stop me from choosing my state school over an Ivy (yay for reduced tuition!) but it's something of which to be aware.
 
For starters, Harvard and Yale are two of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the US. Our current president and every president since 1988 has had a diploma from Yale and/or Harvard. The majority of Supreme Court Justices are graduates of Yale Law School or Harvard; Ruth Bader Ginsberg attended Harvard Law but transferred & graduated from Columbia.

The Ivies are some of the most competitive schools in terms of undergrad admission. For that reason, and given their age, famous alumni, and broad offerings (compared with schools focused on science and engineering such as MIT and CalTech), the Ivies are well known to the general public and there is a halo effect for the medical schools. Given the easy access that consumers have to physician pedigrees, don't downplay the value of an Ivy diploma.

That said, debt is debt and you can get a medical license and match in your chosen field from any US medical school if you work hard and perform well.
 
Last edited:
George W Bush and Mitt Romney destroyed whatever respect I had for Harvard.

True story: When I was in grad school, we had a summer UG student from Harvard. She would have tantrums when people's timers would go off and weren't shut off in time.

Another time someone took her ice bucket (which had only ice in it, no reagents) and she burst into tears.



For starters, Harvard and Yale are two of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the US. Our current president and every president since 1988 has had a diploma from Yale and/or Harvard. The majority of Supreme Court Justices are graduates of Yale Law School or Harvard; Ruth Bader Ginsberg attended Harvard Law but transferred & graduated from Columbia.

The Ivies are some of the most competitive schools in terms of undergrad admission. For that reason, and given their age, famous alumni, and broad offerings (compared with schools focused on science and engineering such as MIT and CalTech), the Ivies are well known to the general public and their is a halo effect for the medical schools. Given the easy access that consumers have to physician pedigrees, don't downplay the value of an Ivy diploma.

That said, debt is debt and you can get a medical license and match in your chosen field from any US medical school if you work hard and perform well.
 
George W Bush and Mitt Romney destroyed whatever respect I had for Harvard.

True story: When I was in grad school, we had a summer UG student from Harvard. She would have tantrums when people's timers would go off and weren't shut off in time.

Another time someone took her ice bucket (which had only ice in it, no reagents) and she burst into tears.

Yale was founded in 1701 because the pious people of Connecticut believed that Harvard was too liberal. 😉

I think that there are high strung and "peculiar" people at every institution but some are more blessed in that regard than others.
 
"True story: When I was in grad school, we had a summer UG student from Harvard. She would have tantrums when people's timers would go off and weren't shut off in time."

It is a fact, universally acknowledged, that Harvard kids are very fragile and high maintenance (except the athletes, who are just . . . athletes).
 
George W Bush and Mitt Romney destroyed whatever respect I had for Harvard.

True story: When I was in grad school, we had a summer UG student from Harvard. She would have tantrums when people's timers would go off and weren't shut off in time.

Another time someone took her ice bucket (which had only ice in it, no reagents) and she burst into tears.

Ivy League kids are more privileged and thus have a greater sense of entitlement than the average college student. Most of them that I've met have been "bred" to go to an Ivy League school by a tiger parent who's an alum of such an institution or has enough money to essentially pay their way to an acceptance. I wouldn't say they're much smarter than most, they've just had superior access to tutoring, counseling and standardized test preparation.

The real geniuses are the ones that can get into MIT, CalTech, UChicago & Stanford on their own merit.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile app
 
Ivy League kids are more privileged and thus have a greater sense of entitlement than the average college student. Most of them that I've met have been "bred" to go to an Ivy League school by a tiger parent who's an alum of such an institution or has enough money to essentially pay their way to an acceptance. I wouldn't say they're much smarter than most, they've just had superior access to tutoring, counseling and standardized test preparation.

The real geniuses are the ones that can get into MIT, CalTech, UChicago & Stanford on their own merit.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile app

Thank you for your inaccurate and grossly broad overgeneralization.
 
Ivy League kids are more privileged and thus have a greater sense of entitlement than the average college student. Most of them that I've met have been "bred" to go to an Ivy League school by a tiger parent who's an alum of such an institution or has enough money to essentially pay their way to an acceptance. I wouldn't say they're much smarter than most, they've just had superior access to tutoring, counseling and standardized test preparation.

The real geniuses are the ones that can get into MIT, CalTech, UChicago & Stanford on their own merit.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile app
High comedic value.
Author used generalizations. It's super effective!
Excellent use of quotations to convey sarcasm.
At times language is stilted and awkward, could use re-write with vocalization.
Would press author to reconsider the schools cited as examples: why those? why not others? why does this matter?
Overall excellent stab at "trolling." Author has a bright future ahead!
 
George W Bush and Mitt Romney destroyed whatever respect I had for Harvard.

True story: When I was in grad school, we had a summer UG student from Harvard. She would have tantrums when people's timers would go off and weren't shut off in time.

Another time someone took her ice bucket (which had only ice in it, no reagents) and she burst into tears.
why does this matter? there are crazy people in every school....
 
Last edited:
Ivy League schools generally produce great doctors. Maybe not because of having a much better education, it could be because the best talent goes to them because of their reputation. Either way don't listen to people who say the school doesn't matter. At the end of the day there's a reason why so many US presidents went to Harvard. These schools spew out success. Even drop outs from there become successful. Gabe Newell and Bill Gates both dropped out of Harvard and are now billionaires. Sure if you work your ass off it'll pay off but if you go to a top tier school and work your ass off it'll pay even more.
 
True, the Ivy League is an athletic conference (can't say they are too well-known for their football nowadays, although it can be said it was born because of football). We can split hairs and say the Ivy League is truly just an athletic conference, but in common usage that's clearly not the case. It's grown to be more than just a conference, but rather a colloquial term used to refer to some of the most prestigious undergrad institutions in the US and in some cases the world. Of course the Ivy League is not the end-all-be-all for great schools; we know that's not the case. We also know that that's even more so true for graduate and professional schooling, but the common layperson might not be aware of that, and that's where the misconception arises.

That doesn't mean that we should continue to use these - by using terms we know to be incorrect, we implicitly reinforce them for the lay person. If you're talking about undergraduate ranking, then saying "Ivy League" might be accurately construed as a rough approximation. When you get to graduate and professional schools, whether a school is part of the "Ivy League" simply doesn't matter. It's not even a rough approximation. Of the top, say, 15 medical schools if one is to use US News, 4 are Ivy League, 3 are PAC-12 (and if UCSF had an undergraduate NCAA program, it'd probably be PAC-12/13 too!). One might as well just say "PAC-12" med schools to refer to good med schools. For graduate programs, it's even worse. Of the top 10 chemistry programs, 3 are Ivy League and 4 are California schools.

Since this label is really only relevant for undergraduate schools (and only loosely so), I don't see the point in continuing to use it. This is coming from someone who went to an Ivy League undergrad and then to a non-Ivy top graduate program (because Ivy programs in chemistry generally are not as good as, say, Berkeley or CalTech).
 
Ivy League schools generally produce great doctors. Maybe not because of having a much better education, it could be because the best talent goes to them because of their reputation. Either way don't listen to people who say the school doesn't matter. At the end of the day there's a reason why so many US presidents went to Harvard. These schools spew out success. Even drop outs from there become successful. Gabe Newell and Bill Gates both dropped out of Harvard and are now billionaires. Sure if you work your ass off it'll pay off but if you go to a top tier school and work your ass off it'll pay even more.
They are different fields.

I 100% think people undervalue the benefits of going to a top school for undergrad- no matter what your future is.

For medicine, school does matter to a small extent in certain situations. Most physicians practice in a non-academic setting. Top schools are much better at setting students up for academic careers for the few who want them. Plastic surgeons, etc can use "Harvard trained" as advertising, but most people won't care if their surgeon isn't ivy trained and if a MD doesn't advertise their training, most people won't look into it.

School name will start to become more important as more and more schools open, but we aren't at the point yet and wont be for a while
 
Last edited:
That doesn't mean that we should continue to use these - by using terms we know to be incorrect, we implicitly reinforce them for the lay person. If you're talking about undergraduate ranking, then saying "Ivy League" might be accurately construed as a rough approximation. When you get to graduate and professional schools, whether a school is part of the "Ivy League" simply doesn't matter. It's not even a rough approximation. Of the top, say, 15 medical schools if one is to use US News, 4 are Ivy League, 3 are PAC-12 (and if UCSF had an undergraduate NCAA program, it'd probably be PAC-12/13 too!). One might as well just say "PAC-12" med schools to refer to good med schools. For graduate programs, it's even worse. Of the top 10 chemistry programs, 3 are Ivy League and 4 are California schools.

Since this label is really only relevant for undergraduate schools (and only loosely so), I don't see the point in continuing to use it. This is coming from someone who went to an Ivy League undergrad and then to a non-Ivy top graduate program (because Ivy programs in chemistry generally are not as good as, say, Berkeley or CalTech).

I agree, and I think on SDN it's known that Ivy League =/= the best of the best for medical schooling. As you said, chemistry is another good example, as is my field of neuroscience. Sure Harvard is still a powerhouse, but most of the "top" schools are not Ivies (MIT, JHU, UCSF, Stanford, UCSD, etc).

For the record, I wasn't disagreeing with the meat of your initial post, I was just stating that the Ivy League is much more than a football conference at the undergrad level.
 
Top