Let's make a new med school ranking

[bobbo]

USNews is worthless, what relavence does the amount of NIH funding a school recieves and the student/faculty ratios have to with how good the actual school is?

I propose we come up with our own ranking system which better reflects things that are important to applicants. Granted, a ranking really doesn't mean anything, and probably causes more stress than anything, but for some reason we feel the need to have rankings for everything (how many VH1 top 25 best/worst/most influential shows have you watched?)


Factors I think should be included (some of which are already included in US News):

GPA/MCAT of students
Acceptance rates
Reputation scores from residency directors
Residency matches to top 15 hospitals (of course those rankings are probably just as flawed)
Matches to the most competitive residencies
Average debt coming out of school
Maybe add some measure of student satisfaction and stress level

Anything else?

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[kelenaf]

Perhaps:

Strength/Integrity/Reputation of clinical training - seems to me this is way more important than how the basic sciences are taught.

Board scores/Pass rate - it would be an objective measure.



This is fun

 

[Celestron2000]

Sounds like a good plan, but lots of work... why don't you compute that out for us, then let us know.

One thing though, average debt could be skewed by how many richies attend a school, and would clearly favor state schools, but maybe thats okay.

 

[jjmack]

Originally posted by kelenaf
Perhaps:

Strength/Integrity/Reputation of clinical training - seems to me this is way more important than how the basic sciences are taught.

Board scores/Pass rate - it would be an objective measure.



This is fun

I don't think the pass rate would be very helpful since I think it's really really high for all US medical schools. I don't think this ranking scheme would be very different than the US news list.

 

[celticmists18]

It would be very different if we made the aim to look at clinical education and took the research/grant factor out of play (which is a huge factor in the USNews rankings). god only know how you could go about ranking a clinical education . . . but I heard that the USNews used to do it and when they did Jefferson Medical College was in the top 5, now Jeff is lucky to make the list (personally I think it is because Jeff has like no research funding).

 

[Bones2008]

Originally posted by bobbo
USNews is worthless, what relavence does the amount of NIH funding a school recieves and the student/faculty ratios have to with how good the actual school is?

Well, the rankings are purported to rank the top research schools in the country. NIH funding has a lot to do with this: more money = more research.

 

[hakksar]

Factors I think should be included (some of which are already included in US News):

GPA/MCAT of students
Acceptance rates
Reputation scores from residency directors
Residency matches to top 15 hospitals (of course those rankings are probably just as flawed)
Matches to the most competitive residencies
Average debt coming out of school
Maybe add some measure of student satisfaction and stress level

A couple of these (matches to top 15 hospitals and matches to the most competitive residencies) will be skewed both by geographical location and the type of students the school accepts (I mean I could care less about how many Derm or Optho matches a school has). A better indicator (although the schools will never let this out) would be how many students match in the top 3 of their rank order list.

 

[Eraserhead]

Let's just do it by ave board scores. Where do you get them though?

 

[JohnHolmes]

Originally posted by bobbo


Factors I think should be included (some of which are already included in US News):

GPA/MCAT of students
Acceptance rates
Reputation scores from residency directors
Residency matches to top 15 hospitals (of course those rankings are probably just as flawed)
Matches to the most competitive residencies
Average debt coming out of school
Maybe add some measure of student satisfaction and stress level

Anything else?

Sounds good. You forgot to mention the factor of the _student body_ ...

CCW

 

[exmike]

we dont need another ranknig system. we just need the MSAR to be more complete.

 

[TRUE]

Originally posted by Eraserhead
Let's just do it by ave board scores. Where do you get them though?

Schools don't release them generally speaking. Some people asked on interview day or were told straight out. I made a thread a while back that compiled a list of about 10 or 15 schools and their scores. I guess just search for it. The title of thread was STEP I compilation or something like that.

 

[meanderson]

what the heck...I'll make up my own top 12:

1) Harvard
2) Johns Hopkins
3) UCSF
4) Duke
5) Stanford
6) WashingtonU
7) Penn
8) Columbia
9) Cornell
10) Baylor
11) Michigan
12) Mayo

 

[Eraserhead]

Originally posted by facted
Schools don't release them generally speaking. Some people asked on interview day or were told straight out. I made a thread a while back that compiled a list of about 10 or 15 schools and their scores. I guess just search for it. The title of thread was STEP I compilation or something like that.

It seems like making our own objective ranking system is an impossible task then.

 

[exmike]

I've said before that using Step 1 and Step 2 scores would probably be the closest we can get to an objective rankings set. But even then, there is a great deal of self selectivity when it comes to higher board scores. Obviously people with higher MCATs/GPA's are going to get higher Steps, so does it really tell you that much about how good the school is at teaching? And if you want to go there, a highly reputatable school doesnt necessarily teach their students better since those students would have done well on the Steps anyway.

 

[VCMM414]

Originally posted by exmike
I've said before that using Step 1 and Step 2 scores would probably be the closest we can get to an objective rankings set. But even then, there is a great deal of self selectivity when it comes to higher board scores. Obviously people with higher MCATs/GPA's are going to get higher Steps, so does it really tell you that much about how good the school is at teaching? And if you want to go there, a highly reputatable school doesnt necessarily teach their students better since those students would have done well on the Steps anyway.

But how about the fact that Yale students score rather average on the boards (in fact, Yale's mean is around the national mean) but yet still match crazy well? Certainly their relatively low scores don't hurt them much come matching time (Yale's reputation makes up for their board score deficiencies). Different educational philosophies of schools would need to be accounted for also for a truly flawless set of rankings.