question about rankings

[Entol]

Hey guys,

thought I might as well post this because I'm totally confused about the rankings I see online from USnews.. basically, there's the research one (which seems to be the one everyone pays attention to) and the primary care one (which has really strange schools in the top 10 with schools like Yale nowhere to be seen on the list!)

anyway, about the research one, I'm confused as to the criteria these schools are listed by. I definitely understand that Harvard gets a TON of research grants, so maybe their number one position makes sense, but schools like Mayo med school are way down at 18 or 19, and Mayo clinic is the one that does some extremely cutting edge research in all kinds of cancers.. in fact, if there's a cancer you can't diagnose, thats probably the place you're going to go.

also, how much sense does it make to compare the research grants of a huge school like U Mich or U Penn to a school like Mount Sinai or even private schools like Yale that simply dont have the sheer numbers to compete with those huge schools. in fact, I'd be freaking shocked if those big schools DID NOT get more research grants from NIH or private sources.. they have more researchers! However, it seems like the quality of the research or the work that they've contributed to the field are not even considered (and this list might be determined by recent findings, recent papers, even a list of Nobel Prize winners).

My point comes back to another example I used earlier. If a school like Mayo can get $140 million in grants and a huge school like Duke gets only $200 million in grants, but Duke is #2 and Mayo falls at #18, something doesn't seem quite right.

Also, their methodology section lists Research Activity as 30% of the weighting and this only depends on the amount of $$$, not the money per faculty member or anything. The other part of the rankings is peer assessment (40%), which seems a bit high if you're sorting by who is best at research...



anyway, my basic question boils down to is there any alternative source that ranks these schools or at least does so with a different methodology that might be easier for me to swallow?

-Entol

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[Gleevec]

There really is no other alternative. Resistance is futile.

But seriously, this is why people say don't worry TOO much about rankings.
Primary care ratings dont matter at all (since its just based on % going into primary care, not a good criterion).

Another good way to see the research quality is to view the number of Nobel prize winners and Howard Hughes Medical Investigators. The nobel data is readily available, and the HHMI info is available here: http://www.hhmi.org/cgi-bin/scisearch/scisearch.cgi?qt=&sort=u

Mayo is really good in terms of care, but its an extremely small medical school without an affiliated PhD program (as of yet, I think they are implementing one VERY soon). Also the Cleveland clinic is fantastic, but Case Western is not ranked that high. So just because a hospital is good doesn't mean its associated medical school is good.

It also makes sense that bigger schools will have more money, but your logic on award/researcher doesnt make much sense if you are a prospective student. For you, the absolute total amount of money gives you a relative indication of how much $ the school can spend on you and research in the future.

I personally use a combination of US News Research, US News Hospital, HHMI/Nobel data, and word of mouth of friends/advisors to select the schools I applied to.

But no, there is no one source that will have perfectly accurate methdology. Just consider it the BCS-aspect of medical school rankings.

Hope that helps a bit.

Originally posted by Entol
Hey guys,

thought I might as well post this because I'm totally confused about the rankings I see online from USnews.. basically, there's the research one (which seems to be the one everyone pays attention to) and the primary care one (which has really strange schools in the top 10 with schools like Yale nowhere to be seen on the list!)

anyway, about the research one, I'm confused as to the criteria these schools are listed by. I definitely understand that Harvard gets a TON of research grants, so maybe their number one position makes sense, but schools like Mayo med school are way down at 18 or 19, and Mayo clinic is the one that does some extremely cutting edge research in all kinds of cancers.. in fact, if there's a cancer you can't diagnose, thats probably the place you're going to go.

also, how much sense does it make to compare the research grants of a huge school like U Mich or U Penn to a school like Mount Sinai or even private schools like Yale that simply dont have the sheer numbers to compete with those huge schools. in fact, I'd be freaking shocked if those big schools DID NOT get more research grants from NIH or private sources.. they have more researchers! However, it seems like the quality of the research or the work that they've contributed to the field are not even considered (and this list might be determined by recent findings, recent papers, even a list of Nobel Prize winners).

My point comes back to another example I used earlier. If a school like Mayo can get $140 million in grants and a huge school like Duke gets only $200 million in grants, but Duke is #2 and Mayo falls at #18, something doesn't seem quite right.

Also, their methodology section lists Research Activity as 30% of the weighting and this only depends on the amount of $$$, not the money per faculty member or anything. The other part of the rankings is peer assessment (40%), which seems a bit high if you're sorting by who is best at research...



anyway, my basic question boils down to is there any alternative source that ranks these schools or at least does so with a different methodology that might be easier for me to swallow?

-Entol

 

[Blanch]

The Dean of Admissions at Stanford Medical School wrote a letter to the Editor of U.S. News complaining about the same thing you mentioned, that they don't factor in $ per faculty member. In this way, Stanford argued, they favor size of the school over quality. The letter was published somewhere on the web, but I don't have the link. It will be interesting to see if anything gets changed next year.

 

[Blanch]

My advice about the rankings... make your own.

Take what you want from U.S. News' data, do your own research and add in data of your own (like location, or student satisfaction or whatever you want), and throw it all onto an Excel spreadsheet with your own weights for different things. Don't let some bozo editor trying to sell a few magazines determine your future.

 

[kmnfive]

well its true that they do rank these based on how much money they get. but allot of weight comes from peer assesment, the quality of their staff, student retetion, and other little knick knacks.

but blanch is right, you should not be too concerned about ranks. if its a med school youve heard of, then its good enough.

 

[JJ4]

Some of the reasons regarding funding for research also revolves around the issues of intramural vs. extramural funding.

For instance at a place like Mayo Clinic, a lot of their research funding also comes from private organizations and donations from benefactors (i.e David Geffen, Keck Foundation, Guggenheim, executive patients, and MAYO foundation). Therefore an interesting thing about the way their labs gets funding is that Mayo in fact guarantees X amount of dollars from the Mayo Foundation to each lab depending on its contributions and projected success (i.e. something like the Mayo Cancer Center receives a large proportion of their money in this way). At the same time, investigators also get funding from NIH/NSF and so forth. However, incidently some investigators that do cancer research for instance don't have to rely on NIH dollars as much due to the significant source of intramural funding (obviously there are some other issues regarding this as well).

So being that USNEWS calculates research ranking primarily based off of NIH dollars -- a place like Mayo that's significantly funded through an intramural source isn't represented "appropriately."

Also, Mayo does in fact have a PhD and MSTP program (Mayo Graduate School http://www.mayo.edu/mgs/mstp.html)

 

[MacGyver]

Originally posted by Entol
Mayo clinic is the one that does some extremely cutting edge research in all kinds of cancers.. in fact, if there's a cancer you can't diagnose, thats probably the place you're going to go.

No disrespect to Mayo, but you should have inserted MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston here.

Its the worlds leading cancer center, not Mayo