- Joined
- Nov 25, 2016
- Messages
- 170
- Reaction score
- 133
The idea that there are tiers to DO schools is about 10% truth and 90% premed neuroticism. Premeds want so badly to be part of the "best" DO schools that they will force an artificial tier system onto themselves, and make mostly bogus reasons to justify their list. They talk about "resources", but never pinpoint what resources are so important to them. They talk about having a strong alumni base and don't ever quite realize that having a lot of alumni from your school out there doesn't mean squat in terms of quality of the school, or any kind of benefit to you, the student.
There ARE differences in quality in schools, but it's nearly impossible to evaluate it from a premed standpoint. And there's quality variations within schools. The most important factor that makes a school good or bad is the quality of its clinical education. Unfortunately pretty much all schools have at least one or two great rotation sites and at least one or two piss poor ones, so no matter what tier list you make, you WILL encounter students from the "worst" DO school that are much better prepared for residency than students from the "best" DO school. This is a major issue in our education and it's the chief reason why residencies hesitate to load up their rosters with DO's. But if you can't consistently produce a better product than your peer schools you have no right to call yourself a tier above your peer schools.
In substitute of real measures of quality, people tier up the schools based on random personal preferences/neuroses. It's a better school if it's cheaper! It's a better school if they have an IS/OOS balance I like! It's a better school if it's affiliated with a real university because it makes it sound more legitimate to laypeople! It's a better school if it's not a dirty, evil for profit school! It's a better school because one year someone went to Mayo! This is why tier lists are a joke and some of us are "touchy" about it.
THANK YOU! THIS IS THE ANSWER WE ALL WANTED.
Now that's out of the way, what schools would you say objectively are at the top?