Is prestige of medical school important?

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ChemEngMD said:
Prestige matters to individuals more than institutionally.

If someone turned down a full scholarship to go to a top 5 medical school for the "prestige", then you can bet that if they become a residency director someday, it will matter to them. People are inherently biased even when trying to be subjective. Thus is life.
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This

It depends on where you are applying and who is looking at your residency app
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Psai said:
Prestige matters but not in the same way that premeds think it does. If you're a PD, you are looking for a hard working resident who will reflect well on your program after they finish. Who will you trust? A school that's been providing solid medical students for decades or some random new school that you've never heard of? Name brand schools are well known, many faculty are from those schools and a lot of the top schools have a long track record for training great students (although Harvard seems to get a bad rap). If you want to go to a top academic residency, you pretty much need to go to a top medical school. If you want to get into a competitive specialty, school name helps. If you want to have solid letters of recommendation, having a big name signature at the bottom of your letter is pretty key. This is even more true for the smaller specialties where everyone knows everyone. Then again, if the big name sends in a generic letter, that's not as good as if an attending that you've worked with closely writes you a glowing letter saying that you're the best student they've seen in 15 years.
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This all the way.
 
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TheKDizzle said:
As someone who lived his whole life in the South and is now going to school in the Northeast, you're both right and you're both missing each other's points. Yes, the most prestigious residency schools/programs tend to be incestuous and have the added self-selection factor where students who go to these schools want to stay at these schools/care about the ranking of their residency program (and the things that go along with it, i.e. research/connections). And yes, by no measure does this mean that there aren't other extremely high quality institutions out there that train just as high quality doctors, researchers, heads of departments, you name it. People will intrinsically assign values to competing factors based on their priorities - if you're a MD/PhD like crimsonkid (likely planning on going into academia?) things like this matter a lot. If you're planning on working in a hospital/private practice/entrepreneurship you probably don't care nearly as much (Quinn I'm not saying this is you, just saying this broadly). In the end there isn't a right answer. There's only right answers for individuals, as unsatisfying as that is to our desire to categorize solutions.
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This all the way
 
@TheKDizzle pretty much owned this thread. Like for real, the next time someone makes this thread dude should just be like

"inb4 drama"

And just post this.
 
Bulbasaur said:
If undergraduate prestige matters little when applying to medical schools, does it follow that medical school prestige matters little when applying for residencies?
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Incorrect on both counts. Undergraduate school prestige does play into the TIER of medical school you can get into, but it's not a hard and fast rule. Medical school prestige does take play in certain competitive specialties, esp. with all else being equal. Life is not black and white nor egalitarian.
 
chillaxbro said:
Is it possible that taking reputation into consideration is "taboo" and many of those surveyed don't outwardly admit it is a factor?
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It would go against the egalitarian mantra that we're all indoctrinated with that somehow it shouldn't matter at all what institution students go to. We should all somehow only be measured based on multiple choice exams and letters on a transcript. SMH.

If firms on Wall Street look at the prestige of the institution, why would Medicine be immune to that?
 
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WillburCobb said:
So, now I'm wondering if the students I know that didn't come from "top" schools that landed these spots had to take on a paper bag with it's contents sticking out neatly like baguettes, or a plastic bag with its contents mashed together like chicken parts?


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Bahahahaha
That is literally my favorite Louis CK line. I say it all the freaking time.
 
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Psai said:
You sure are replying a lot for someone who ostensibly doesn't care.
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TheKDizzle said:
Sorry, where did I say I don't care? Yes, it bothers me that people casually make nonfactual statements and no, I don't take you seriously.

Alright, done hijacking thread - sorry everyone. :)
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Your actions speak louder (i.e. you getting butthurt). If you actually didn't care, you wouldn't deign yourself to respond to it.
 
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TheKDizzle said:
Dude I'm not sure what your problem is nor why you keep digging a deeper and deeper hole for yourself. I don't go around looking for arguments but I do have an obligation to call out statements that are unfounded and ridiculous. Oh, and FYI, sorry to continually burst your bubble, but HMS is regularly the top ranked school by residency directors across the country.
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Really? Who told you this, your medical school faculty?
 
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touchpause13 said:
Bahahahaha
That is literally my favorite Louis CK line. I say it all the freaking time.
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But how would you do it? Do you take the whole bag and suck the side? Or do you open the bag and suck each one individually and throw the used ones in a bowl like edamame shells...?
 
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DermViser said:
Really? Who told you this, your medical school faculty?
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Does it really surprise you that Harvard would be the medical school most often named as most prestigious by residency program directors? I understand that you may be making the point that there are many excellent institutions and no robust data-driven models for school rank, but is the original statement really that unbelievable?
 
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scarletgirl777 said:
Does it really surprise you that Harvard would be the medical school most often named as most prestigious by residency program directors? I understand that you may be making the point that there are many excellent institutions and no robust data-driven models for school rank, but is the original statement really that unbelievable?
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The original comment that was being responded to was regarding the caliber of students that medical schools put out, not "prestige"of the institution itself.
 
crimsonkid85 said:
Again, I never said the only good hospitals were at Harvard, JHU, UCSF. Just that these are places where, in general, there is the strongest training--both in terms of research dollars and clinical volume/complexity. The clinic hospitals (Mayo, Cleveland) are fantastic institutions, but their focus is more on healthcare delivery and less on research. MD Anderson is famous for cancer only, and let's be honest, Cleveland clinic is is famous for cardiology only (and their chief of cardiology comes from Hopkins, lol). Sigh, I don't know what you have against BWH, I was only saying that it is considered one of the top four IM residencies. If you don't like it, then by all means, don't go there. No need to get so worked up over it.

As for me, I don't want to go to either Mayo or MD Anderson :/ Mayo doesn't attract me in terms of their breadth or depth of research, and MD Anderson is too limited in scope for the specialty I am pursuing. Most likely I will stay at one of the flagships. <3
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You have no experience with any of these residency programs and no ability to judge them without it, especially as generalizations about entire institutions. This post's entire purpose seems to be a brag about *predicted* ability to choose any residency that you would like. Dude..stahp.
 
Spoke to my PI about med school
Talked about prestige
He says undergrad prestige is absolutely considered by him and his peers for potential PhD students
How does this translate to medical schools / residency programs?
 
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chillaxbro said:
Spoke to my PI about med school
Talked about prestige
He says undergrad prestige is absolutely considered by him and his peers for potential PhD students
How does this translate to medical schools / residency programs?
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Haven't we been talking about this for 6 pages? It matters to some degree, but is less important than other things like USMLE performance, letters of recommendation, clinical grades, etc. The NRMP has an excellent survey of program directors by specialty that you can look up if you'd like more information.
 
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JJMrK said:
Haven't we been talking about this for 6 pages? It matters to some degree, but is less important than other things like USMLE performance, letters of recommendation, clinical grades, etc. The NRMP has an excellent survey of program directors by specialty that you can look up if you'd like more information.
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no
 
TheKDizzle said:
No, US News did. The rest of your comments aren't worth responding to.
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Only liking this for the second sentence which unfortunately ends in a preposition...


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I couldn't even tell you where my resident classmates went to school; because no one cares. It probably really only matters if you want to be at an academic residency powerhouse and do academic medicine. So it probably affects <5% of med students.
 
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It matters. Not as much as Step 1 and 2 scores, I imagine.
 
gannicus89 said:
I don't take note of the date most of the time.
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This is fair. But how did you even find it? Surely it wasn't on the front pages anymore. Were you stalking someone's post history and decided to comment?
 
The Real SVB said:
This is fair. But how did you even find it? Surely it wasn't on the front pages anymore. Were you stalking someone's post history and decided to comment?
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It's on the front page for me under pre-allopathic MD threads. I don't have the energy to stalk :[
 
gannicus89 said:
It's on the front page for me under pre-allopathic MD threads. I don't have the energy to stalk :[
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Well duh now it is because it got bumped and the front page is based on descending last post date. Before you posted there's no way a Feb 2014 thread was there...so how'd you find it???? The mystery continues
 
The Real SVB said:
Well duh now it is because it got bumped and the front page is based on descending last post date. Before you posted there's no way a Feb 2014 thread was there...so how'd you find it???? The mystery continues
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No, it was there BEFORE I posted. Or else...Iwouldn't have seen it today.
 
Usually old threads get bumped because they appeared in the "Similar Threads" list. The thread link immediately beneath my reply box right now is from 2000.
 
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Definitely does but will not save you if other things are lacking. For example, as amazing as Penn's match list is, they had 2 kids go unmatched in ortho last year.
 
I honestly can't say whether prestige matters. When it comes to "how to become a doctor" so many people really don't understand the process. In a respective state, say for instance, Oregon, a degree from OHSU seems like it'd mean more to future Oregonian patients than a degree from Vanderbilt. In my state, Idaho, many of the doctors are UW/Utah graduates, so these schools tend to mean more to an average Idahoan.
 
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