New US News Rankings come out tomorrow...predictions?

Getting into Med School is Hard? Not with BeMo.
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bleargh said:
i doubt 45% increases can be attributed to essay prompts
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I think it can. Very few universities change their essay prompts every year like UChicago does, and even fewer have prompts as quirky. I just read the prompts they used for this year and I think I would have been more receptive to turning in their app had they used these questions last year. That can make the difference in whether someone decides to apply or not.
 
I'll show an example since they have their essay questions posted on their website. This is one from this year:

The late-eighteenth-century popular philosopher and cultural critic George Lichtenberg wrote, "Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers, we outgrow acquaintances, libraries, principles, etc. at times before they're worn out and at times-and this is worst of all-before we have new ones." Write an essay about something you have outgrown, perhaps before you had a replacement-a friend, a political philosophy, a favorite author, or anything that has had an influence on you. What, if anything, has taken its place?
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And this is one from last year:
Chicago author Nelson Algren said, "A writer does well if in his whole life he can tell the story of one street." Chicagoans, but not just Chicagoans, have always found something instructive, and pleasing, and profound in the stories of their block, of Main Street, of Highway 61, of a farm lane, of the Celestial Highway. Tell us the story of a street, path, road—real or imagined or metaphorical.

(2008–2009)
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The first one is much more straightforward: it asks us to write about something we've outgrown, which many of us have experienced. But the second is less concrete and asks us to be more philosophical, and not all of us may have a good story about a road or a street that we can wax nostalgic about. Don't you agree that the second essay sounds much harder?
 
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well i guess i should help by stopping it instead, but scriz man, :laugh:
 
dingyibvs said:
why would you think they have something to hide? theres nothing wrong with attracting more research funding or pumping out students that residency director will like more, is there?
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I may not have been as clear as I hoped previously, but to explain, what I mean is that many institutions will do the "easy things" (ie. admit only applicants with ridiculous numbers, not necessarily matriculate them) for the sake of the rankings, in order to "rest on their laurels" so to speak.

I think there is a mentality out there, on an individual and institutional level, that tends to "want the glory" the easy way, you know, like people who get those little letters on the end of their name (PhD, etc.) primarily to impress or be perceived as something they are not.

I mean, in terms of day to day life, to each his/her own. Go with it if it makes you happy. But as someone looking for an institution to help me learn how to best serve patients in the future, a ranking is not what I believe will help. It frightens me that any institution would make one of its primary goals to be "high in the rankings." It is one thing if the institution follows great practices in admitting students, training physicians, etc., and completely fine, in my opinion, if they happen to acheive a great ranking as a result of great practices focused on improving the educational model of the school, another thing completely though if they don't care how they get the ranking, but do whatever they can to achieve it.

It may seem semantics, but as someone who has taught in the classroom, at the public secondary and private collegiate level, it makes a BIG difference to me.
 
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bamtuba said:
I may not have been as clear as I hoped previously, but to explain, what I mean is that many institutions will do the "easy things" (ie. admit only applicants with ridiculous numbers, not necessarily matriculate them) for the sake of the rankings, in order to "rest on their laurels" so to speak.
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Admit but don't matriculate them? How exactly would a school go about doing that?

Also, I believe the numbers used for US News are of matriculants, not of all those admitted.
 
bamtuba said:
I may not have been as clear as I hoped previously, but to explain, what I mean is that many institutions will do the "easy things" (ie. admit only applicants with ridiculous numbers, not necessarily matriculate them) for the sake of the rankings, in order to "rest on their laurels" so to speak.

I think there is a mentality out there, on an individual and institutional level, that tends to "want the glory" the easy way, you know, like people who get those little letters on the end of their name (PhD, etc.) primarily to impress or be perceived as something they are not.

I mean, in terms of day to day life, to each his/her own. Go with it if it makes you happy. But as someone looking for an institution to help me learn how to best serve patients in the future, a ranking is not what I believe will help. It frightens me that any institution would make one of its primary goals to be "high in the rankings." It is one thing if the institution follows great practices in admitting students, training physicians, etc., and completely fine, in my opinion, if they happen to acheive a great ranking as a result of great practices focused on improving the educational model of the school.

It may seem semantics, but as someone who has taught in the classroom, public and private collegiate level, it makes a BIG difference to me.
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the fact is, tho, that prestige attracts applicants, and it is well within the schools' interest to attract the best applicants. perhaps they want the rankings just for vanity's sake, but its hard to argue with the results.
 
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schrizto said:
Admit but don't matriculate them? How exactly would a school go about doing that?

Also, I believe the numbers used for US News are of matriculants, not of all those admitted.
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I thought, but please feel free to correct me if mistaken, that the rankings are based on the avg. numbers of those admitted, not matriculated. They do that by telling kids with 4.0/40's they are welcomed to attend...and those kids proceed to tell them "nah, I'm going to Harvard."

But there are also ways that institutions have for fudging data, etc. to look good.
 
bamtuba said:
I thought, but please feel free to correct me if mistaken, that the rankings are based on the avg. numbers of those admitted, not matriculated. They do that by telling kids with 4.0/40's they are welcomed to attend...and those kids proceed to tell them "nah, I'm going to Harvard."

But there are also ways that institutions have for fudging data, etc. to look good.
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the gpa and mcat is a pretty small part of the formula anyway
 
dingyibvs said:
the fact is, tho, that prestige attracts applicants, and it is well within the schools' interest to attract the best applicants. perhaps they want the rankings just for vanity's sake, but its hard to argue with the results.
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Yeah, not arguing that fact.

I have seen the impact on the education people receive as a result of practices designed to "appeal to the public rankings," from the teaching point of view, and the outcomes can really suck.

This may actually have little carry-over to medical schools (guess I'll find out some of that soon enough :shrug:). I just get a little on edge about places that have the primary goal of "raising their rankings" with little thought to anything else. Not saying this is what Jolt was talking about in his original post, just putting out another point of view.
 
bamtuba said:
I thought, but please feel free to correct me if mistaken, that the rankings are based on the avg. numbers of those admitted, not matriculated. They do that by telling kids with 4.0/40's they are welcomed to attend...and those kids proceed to tell them "nah, I'm going to Harvard."

But there are also ways that institutions have for fudging data, etc. to look good.
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I think the data would be extremely flawed if this were the case because then it would be affected by the number of schools an applicant applies to. The MSAR IIRC lists the MCAT and gpa of those accepted, not of matriculants, but the MSAR doesn't rank schools so that is different.
 
dingyibvs said:
the gpa and mcat is a pretty small part of the formula anyway
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Yeah, but near the top every little bit helps...

Besides, this practice really is not bad, just the mentality that some places end up cultivating when chasing the ever-elusive "top 10."
 
schrizto said:
I think the data would be extremely flawed if this were the case because then it would be affected by the number of schools an applicant applies to. The MSAR IIRC lists the MCAT and gpa of those accepted, not of matriculants, but the MSAR doesn't rank schools so that is different.
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Not sure, but I think the way the rankings handle NIH vs. non-NIH research funding, and other factors, are a little flawed as well.

But really, when it comes down to it, I take the whole thing with a grain of salt and view them for entertainment purposes primarily.

Heck, I'm WL'd at a place that's top 5, but it really does have VERY little impact on the ranking I have given my school list.

But to each his/her own.
 
bamtuba said:
I thought, but please feel free to correct me if mistaken, that the rankings are based on the avg. numbers of those admitted, not matriculated. They do that by telling kids with 4.0/40's they are welcomed to attend...and those kids proceed to tell them "nah, I'm going to Harvard."

But there are also ways that institutions have for fudging data, etc. to look good.
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To play devil's advocate, though, if they reject these kids, people would probably just claim that the school is yield protecting and trying to keep their acceptance rate low!

Anyway, with regards to your earlier post, I mostly agree except that I wouldn't be worried so much about schools "having something to hide" as much as a school prioritizing the wrong things. To make up a ridiculously extreme example, if USNews started including data like "% of graduates who get one of their top 3 residency choices," a school that's majorly concerned with rankings might try to persuade some of their 4th years to rank their residency programs more "realistically" or something (OK, probably too extreme of an example, but hopefully you get my general idea)
 
US News uses the numbers of the entering class, not of those accepted. It's in their methodology:

US News said:
Mean MCAT Score (.13 in the research medical school model, .0975 in the primary-care medical school model) The mean composite Medical College Admission Test score of the 2007 entering class.

Mean Undergraduate GPA (.06 in the research medical school model, .045 in the primary-care medical school model) The mean undergraduate grade-point average of the 2007 entering class.
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http://www.usnews.com/articles/educ...4/22/medical-school-rankings-methodology.html
 
bobsmith said:
To play devil's advocate, though, if they reject these kids, people would probably just claim that the school is yield protecting and trying to keep their acceptance rate low!

Anyway, with regards to your earlier post, I mostly agree except that I wouldn't be worried so much about schools "having something to hide" as much as a school prioritizing the wrong things. To make up a ridiculously extreme example, if USNews started including data like "% of graduates who get one of their top 3 residency choices," a school that's majorly concerned with rankings might try to persuade some of their 4th years to rank their residency programs more "realistically" or something (OK, probably too extreme of an example, but hopefully you get my general idea)
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Yeah, that really came across the wrong way. Not trying to be paranoid. I guess what I'm getting at is that, to me, I'm more concerned about the philosophy driving the institution than the ranking achieved at any cost.

Again, not saying this is going on with the med school rankings, just have that feeling in general from past experiences.
 
Don't the rankings usually come out late April?
 
Hmmm, so it's still not out yet? I'm a little curious and interested.
 
Michigan, Case, and Mt Sinai all jumped up 5 or more spots!
 
mmmcdowe said:
Schools in general take it pretty seriously. I'm personally interested to see if the prediction of Baylor bouncing back happens now that the rice deal broke down.
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i'll be honest, this is what I was interested in the most. A lot of kids at the vandy second look (i can count 5 off from memory) were choosing between vandy and baylor and the financial situation at baylor was pushing them towards vandy. i dont know how bad it is out there or what it means, but they made it sound horrible.

and judging from the leaked rankings...baylor went from 16 to 24. wow.
 
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so people dont need to click...

Top 25 Medical Schools (Research):

1 - Harvard
2 - UPenn
3 - Hopkins
4 - California SF
4 - WUSTL
6 - Duke
6 - Michigan Ann Arbor
6 - Washington
6 - Yale
10 - Columbia
11 - Stanford
11 - UCLA
13 - Chicago
14 - Pittsburgh
15 - Vanderbilt
16 - Cornell
16 - UCSD
18 - Mount Sinai
18 - Northwestern
20 - Case Western
20 - Emory
20 - UNC Chapel Hill
20 - UTexas Southwestern Medical Center
24 - Baylor
25 - Virginia
 
and to add to the discussion...it's one thing to think that ranking doens't matter for med school, because were all gonna get m.d.'s and yadda yadda....but the rankings matter so much for B-school and law school.
 
Jolt21 said:
and to add to the discussion...it's one thing to think that ranking doens't matter for med school, because were all gonna get m.d.'s and yadda yadda....but the rankings matter so much for B-school and law school.
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Yeah, I only have a very basic understanding of law schools, but I get the sense that most of the "big law" firms recruit at "top" schools for the most part. For med school, though, you can pretty much get into any specialty from any school
 
Jolt21 said:
so people dont need to click...

Top 25 Medical Schools (Research):

1 - Harvard
2 - UPenn
3 - Hopkins
4 - California SF
4 - WUSTL
6 - Duke
6 - Michigan Ann Arbor
6 - Washington
6 - Yale
10 - Columbia
11 - Stanford
11 - UCLA
13 - Chicago
14 - Pittsburgh
15 - Vanderbilt
16 - Cornell
16 - UCSD
18 - Mount Sinai
18 - Northwestern
20 - Case Western
20 - Emory
20 - UNC Chapel Hill
20 - UTexas Southwestern Medical Center
24 - Baylor
25 - Virginia
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Has Stanford always hovered around #10? I thought it was higher...

edit: just checked the older US News rankings... Stanford fell 5 spots.
 
i would hope a student admitted to vandy and baylor would be intelligent enough not to factor baylor's financial situation into their decision (how bad is it really? perhaps overblown hearsay?)

it has no impact on a medical student, just like a school banking $100 mil more in NIH money. you arent getting any of the cut!
 
Republic of Texas rankings:

1 - UT Southwestern

2- Baylor

Rest do not appear to be ranked
 
Jolt21 said:
so people dont need to click...

Top 25 Medical Schools (Research):

1 - Harvard
2 - UPenn
3 - Hopkins
4 - California SF
4 - WUSTL
6 - Duke
6 - Michigan Ann Arbor
6 - Washington
6 - Yale
10 - Columbia
11 - Stanford
11 - UCLA
13 - Chicago
14 - Pittsburgh
15 - Vanderbilt
16 - Cornell
16 - UCSD
18 - Mount Sinai
18 - Northwestern
20 - Case Western
20 - Emory
20 - UNC Chapel Hill
20 - UTexas Southwestern Medical Center
24 - Baylor
25 - Virginia
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Go NY.
 
are the primary care rankings out too?
 
Things that jump out. UPenn takes over JHU, Mount Sinai rose even more, and Stanford and Baylor especially fell quite a bit.
 
BlueElmo said:
Things that jump out. UPenn takes over JHU, Mount Sinai rose even more, and Stanford and Baylor especially fell quite a bit.
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michigan also jumped a lot. 11 to 6.
 
did george washington and georgetown stay the same?
 
I'm not surprised Case is now a top 20. Their match list this year was just frigging ridiculous. Too bad they rejected me ...... :smuggrin: :laugh:
 
ChiDO said:
what does the match list have to do with ranks....lol
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There is not a direct correlation between match list and ranking. I just found this year's matching quite comparable to those of other top schools(ie lots of "big name" programs). Who knows how it will be next year? During my interview, they mentioned building a huge structure(already started) for research or something so maybe that helped their ranking move up.
 
I predict that I will give 3.23453 x 10^-17 of a **** about the rankings. Quite a large jump from last year's.
 
Jolt21 said:
i'll be the first to give the rankings some validation...

I know for a fact Vandy, Pritzker, an Dartmouth take the ranking pretty seriously.

Vandy - they brought it up during second look here and there. They know they didn't accomplish this task: http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/reporter/index.html?ID=2041 , but they are still looking to move up

UChicago doesn't like the fact that their medical school is the lowest ranked out of all its grad schools, so the administration is working on moving up the list. Heard this from multiple students during my interview.

Dartmouth - Our new President of the College (Dr. Jim Kim) came in with the mindset that DMS could be a top 15 medical school on USNews...this was a breath of fresh air because the students of the undergrad and med school felt that while the rest of Dartmouth was doing great, the former president didn't really care about the med school.

The rankings, if anything, show trends. A school constantly moving up in the #'s is obviously doing something right. I'm not talking about a measly 1/2 spots, but those that have been making significant improvement over the past few years. Same goes with those on the decline.

now choosing #22 over #30 just cause of the ranking...yea, that's dumb.
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Dr. Gabbe is at the Ohio State now and I think his new goal is 20 by 20.
 
JasonE said:
i would hope a student admitted to vandy and baylor would be intelligent enough not to factor baylor's financial situation into their decision (how bad is it really? perhaps overblown hearsay?)

it has no impact on a medical student, just like a school banking $100 mil more in NIH money. you arent getting any of the cut!
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it may impact the hospital, which would then impact your education.
 
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