Fantasy Sports said:
Honestly, its not out of random that WashU is hated on SDN. Its because its the biggest poser med school out there. They think they are Harvard/Hopkins, and then they jack up their stats to try and catch up by manipulating their classes around the US News formula.
On what, pray tell, are you basing your position? Why are Harvard/Hopkins better? Why is it a "poser med school?"
If WashU had near-average stats for its tier of schools (top 10), then I dont think anyone would hate on them, and it would probably then be called an underrated school.
Ah, I see. You are using sound logic. It is a top ten school with high admission averages, so it is overrated. If it were just a top ten school (which you feel it is) with average stats (for a top ten school, that is), it would be underrated. Where, then, would you rank it on "Fantasy Sports' Report Medical School Rankings?"
Overrated to me means a school does not live up to its hype and is not as good as people say it is. Now we must define what criteria we are using to define this:
1. Research. This is an easy one; there are numbers out there to define which programs get the most research money. There are also known nobel prize winners at many schools which I would argue suggests top notch research being done at said institutions. However, there is more to medical school than simply the research being done, as many of the faculty doing this research are not physicians, and that is what medical school trains. We will say this cann be a particular category of schools (a subset if you will), but it can't be used to tell which school's are the best med schools, only which are the best "research med schools."
2. Some people (particularly the Wash U haters here) want to use selectivity. They say Wash U is overrated because of its selectivity. Wash U is probably the most selective, and has the statistics to prove this, so it can't be selectivity alone, as this is an objective criteria that can be validated. There must be more...
3. Another criterion people here (particularly east coasters) want to use is old world reputation. Harvard and Hopkins are legends in medical training, so they are the standard by which we measure programs. However, other people on this forum criticize these programs for this, but it brings up the next criterion...
4. How well can this medical school get me into a residency of my choice. I'll admit that the Harvards and Hopkinses (sp?) of the world can place some people into programs simply by name and associated faculty who write letters. However, I would argue that Wash U carries the same name, so we can't use this as an independent criteria, either. Maybe it seems to suggest something else, though...
5. Education provided. <Gasp!> What, something that actually matters to the physicians we become? Crazy talk. How will we determine this? How about board scores? Well, many schools (like Wash U) tend to attract naturally smart, naturally test-savvy students. You can't really tell how much the school contributed and how much was the student's natural ability? How about MCAT:Step 1 ratio? Normalize the ratio nationally and then break it down for schools. It would take into account how much is the student's testing ability and how much is the school's teaching. Interesting concept, but I've never seen it done (and I really would be interested to see it, too. We'll call the ratio numbers Socialist units, since it is my idea).
My suggestion, just step back and see which schools offer the most bang for the buck. All schools will get you your MD if you put in enough work. You can match into anything anywhere from any school if you put in enough work. The common denominator is how much work you put forth. Therefore, when I was deciding, I chose the cheapest school, and I think all schools that cost more than mine are overrated because I've met 4th year students at all those programs and every last one of them who took out loans to pay for school is in more debt than me, but we are on equal footing as far as where our school got us.
