Perhaps I just scored below the mean on the SF (search function) portion of the SDN-CAT, but I'm wondering if anyone has a resource for the kinds of rankings I cite in the thread title.
I have seen the
Residency Director Rankings thread but the information in the USNEWS survey seems rather spotty. Is there a self report ranking out there that is more comprehensive?
I'm also looking for any information on curriculum among schools, specificially something that describes how students are evaluated when you compare candidates from schools who have honors/pass/fail systems against those from schools with noncompetetive pass/fail evaluations.
Happy holidays!
US News and World Reports ranks med schools based on research and on primary care criteria. It is very questionable methodology, but some people like the ranking system. The big problem is that while in any group of schools, there will be those that are more and less competitive, it's hard to define "better" in such a system. All accredited US med schools are quite competitive, all are quite solid in terms of their mission, all are filled with students who got mostly A's in college, all are going to get the job done for the right individual. For the most part, med school is an individual journey, and your med school won't make or break you, you will make or break you. That being said, med schools certainly can be differentiated by things like geographic desirability, physical plant and infrastructure, hospital affiliations, research opportunities, P/F, PBL, etc., and you can probably select schools based on these criteria and get your own, more workable rank list that will work for you.
There are no useful lists based on USMLE scores -- these scores are not published, and as a result, many programs see fit to withhold info, or worse, publish questionable data (sometimes outright lies. Most people on the interview trail will find it remarkable that virtually ALL med schools will say they score in the top 50% of US med schools. Some even make up scores based on running averages over multiple years, or by dropping out failures who subsequently retook or dropped out, etc). Don't believe USMLE info you see on here or from programs. This is not publically available -- you won't know it and it shouldn't be a part of your decision. in fact, it's not published specifically so it won't be a part of your decision, as programs feel it ties their hands in terms of trying new teaching techniques out of fear of admissions reprisal if their scores dip after trying certian things. Not that this would actually happen, because there is very little that a program can do that will have much impact in your score. The same person putting in the same effort will score the same regardless of where he goes to med school. All med schools cover the same material. All med students use the same First Aid, board review books, the same question banks. So the USMLE scores aren't really school dependent. If anything, the places that give the longest summer vacation probably give more advantage than anything the school can do teaching-wise. So don't use USMLE scores to try to rank med schools -- you are going to do just as well regardless of where you go. It's an individual journey. people want to believe that the med school is going to make them or break them, but really you are spending a lot of money for them to structure a pace and you still have to do all the learning on your own. Heck, half your class probably won't attend most lectures anyhow, so clearly the input from the school is pretty nominal.
As for residency placements, every program publishes its own rank lists. I have posted on many threads as to how rank lists are universally misread and misunderstood by premeds and should not be used by premeds. You can only really interpret a match list by, once you have chosen a specialty, sitting down with an advisor in that specialty and learning, via word of mouth, which programs are reputedly good versus malignant. You can't go by affiliated med school name/rank, because every good med school hospital will actually be piss poor or even outright malignant in at least some specialties, you can't just go by school name. Nor can you pick out just the competitive specialties. Often the best IM program is a better match than the worst rads or anesthesia spot, and you might be better off in a mediocre gen surg program than a malignant ortho program. You can have wonderful and horrible programs in different specialties at the same hospital (in fact this seems to be the norm). So you can't really get much from picking out the big names or specialties. And each specialty has it's own word of mouth ranks. More than that, match lists don't tell you where people could get in, it just tells you what they chose. Meaning a program with no derm matches may simple mean nobody wanted derm, not that the med school didn't give folks that opportunity. Unlike a lot of people at the undergrad or med school stage, folks applying for residency, are a few years older, more often having family or other obligations, and more often make choices not simply based on competitiveness, but also looking at other aspects. And bear in mind, you are picking the path you will likely be in for the next 40 years, so you have to like it. Meaning if you are the top student in your class, but you love peds, you may pick peds, even though you certainly had the option of more competitive specialties. I know quite a few brilliant folks who chose primary care over some other specialty options because they actually enjoy it. And that's really what matters at the career stage, not the ego boost of saying you matched into derm.
So you really aren't going to get a useful residency placement rank list of med schools. And again, it won't matter -- if you do well in school and on the boards, and maybe do research (if you are choosing a path that values research), then ANY med school is going to be an adequate launch pad for your residency. The corollary is that if you aren't a strong student, I wouldn't expect any med school to make the difference in your career either. To re-echo my mantra, this is very much an individual path, and you can make or break yourself, but if you get into an accredited med school, the school won't make or break you. If may give you infrastructure, research opportunities, and access to mentors in whatever specialty you desire, but that's sort of it. Make your decisions based on specifics of the school, not what scores or match lists you think it has because those aren't things that will have any bearing on you -- you will be the one to provide your school with the high USMLE and good match, not the other way round. Hope that helps. Inevitably premeds will pick med schools for reasons they will look back and find foolish years later. Most of the time it works out fine anyhow, but you will probably find that your sense of "best" was off kilter.
