We should be glad that dental schools aren't ranked anywhere. U.S. News and World report tried to rank them, but the schools got together and said they wouldn't have it. Why is it a good thing? Because it's a very faulty and unfair system in the first place. How do you rank a school? Well, you really can't. Some may say that you can rank schools according to exam scores, but in my opinion, exam scores are more a matter of which type of student each school chooses to accept (i.e. Harvard only chooses students who already score very well on standardized exams, therefore they have very good board scores). Rumor has it that MIT has some of the worst professors around, but it doesn't matter because the students are so smart they just teach themselves anyway! As another example of why schools shouldn't be ranked (dental or not) is the example of poor rankings of medical schools. The schools are ranked according to questionnaires sent out to the deans of the school (now that's not biased, is it??), by how much money the schools get for research, and by the hospitals attached to them. Nobody visits the classrooms, evaluates the teachers, or even enters the facilities in order to rank a school. Nobody talks to the students, visits the town, or checks the bathrooms. With this system, a school with the best teachers in the nation won't even rank if there isn't a hospital directly attached to the medical school. Rumor has it that MIT has some of the worst professors around, but it doesn't matter because the students are so smart they just teach themselves anyway!
From what I can tell from all these posts, it seems that some students like the newer schools, some the schools with the best facilities, some the schools with big names, some the schools close to home, or whatever fits them best. I think that this is the key. Different schools produce different types of dentists. Not good, not bad, just different. So instead of searching desperately for a ranking of schools (we all have done it at one point or another) look at a variety of schools, apply to a variety of schools, go where you get accepted, and if you are lucky enough to have a choice, choose wisely. For example, I would choose a "lower ranked" school over a "higher ranked" school if it were in an area where I would be more comfortable living. But that's just cause I'm a little older and have a family.
So to answer your question, why would you look at someone elses list of school rankings when you can create your own?
