Originally posted by elias514
Who freakin knows if medical school reputation matters in residency placement. Some days I think that it does, others I think that institutional prestige is irrelevant to the Match. I've looked at match lists from approximately 30 different medical schools (a mix of highly ranked and unranked), and I've found that every school sends at least a few graduates to the most competitive residency programs in the most competitive specialties. Yet, highly ranked schools send a disproportionately high number of grads to such programs, which leads me to believe that prestige in fact translates into better residency placement. But then I think about what kind of students are accepted to these schools--highly motivated, outstanding students who happen to be great standardized test-takers. If residency placement is based mostly upon clerkship grades, Step 1 score, interview, and letters of recommendation, wouldn't these students rock the Match at ANY medical school? Who knows. Probably.
It seems like there is an infatuation with ranking in the U.S. today. Everything is ranked--colleges, high schools, cars, songs, celebrities, you name it. The truth of the matter is that some things probably shouldn't be ranked, because the rankings distort reality. Medical schools might fall into this category. I firmly believe that the United States has the best medical schools in the world and that acceptance to ANY medical school is an honor and a privilege. Patients don't give a crap where their doctors went to medical school, they only care about how their doctors treat them. Moreover, all medical graduates have to clear the rigorous licensing and certification requirements to practice medicine in the U.S.; thus, all doctors (in principle anyways) in a given specialty are roughly equal in competence after completion of their training. Finally, lest I forget, a doctor from Harvard med earns the same amount as a doctor from an "unranked" med school, even though the former probably has more educational debt. In sum, the more I think about the ranking of medical schools, the more I believe that the ranking is totally bogus.