Tiers of schools (don't hate me for this thread!)

[junkct]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Ok, I know how EVERYONE hates hearing about med school rankings and tiers and whatnot, but I'd really like to know what people would group as "top tier", "upper middle tier", "middle tier", and "low tier"... e.g. would top 10 schools on USNWR be "top tier" and the next 15 schools be "middle tier" or what?

And don't tell me "OH you stupid @#%!^*&!! Tiers don't matter!" Because honestly, everywhere I go (yes, even on SDN and MDApps) every self-proclaimed advice-giver always says stuff like "you should put in more low tier schools" or "take out some of the top tiers and replace them with middle tiers". Obviously there has to be some sort of general standard for these tiers.... so what is it?


Note: I don't mean this post to be rude in any way. I'm just a little frustrated when people tell me to apply to X amount of top tiers and Y amount of middle tiers, and then when I ask them to give me a better idea about the tiers, they tell me that rankings don't mean anything... sigh, what else can you expect from pre-meds?

 

[LizzyM]

Rather than tiers, think of the schools in terms of your chances of being admitted. There is a very helpful spreadsheet (you'll find the link here http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=527971)
that lets you enter your stats and home state and then classifies schools based on your situation.

 

[junkct]

Rather than tiers, think of the schools in terms of your chances of being admitted. There is a very helpful spreadsheet (you'll find the link here http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=527971)
that lets you enter your stats and home state and then classifies schools based on your situation.

Yeah, only problem is that I'm "High Chance" for most of them and "Go For It" for a few of them... I want to apply to a handful of the top tiers and a good amount of upper-middle, but I can't really see where to make the cutoff based on that... I mean, I would def consider Penn a top tier, but it's ranked pretty far down on that thing.

Around where would you make the cutoffs?

 

[LizzyM]

Yeah, only problem is that I'm "High Chance" for most of them and "Go For It" for a few of them... I want to apply to a handful of the top tiers and a good amount of upper-middle, but I can't really see where to make the cutoff based on that... I mean, I would def consider Penn a top tier, but it's ranked pretty far down on that thing.

Around where would you make the cutoffs?

If it appears on that list pretty far down although you consider it a top school, it is because it tends to accept/matriculate (depending on the data set you use) students who don't have stats quite as high as some other schools. This may reflect the school's philosophy of placing a high value on other characteristics rather than going for the applicants with the highest numbers.

Take your LizzyM score and place the majority of your applications with schools that are at or slighly below your score. Place 10-20% of your applications with schools that are a couple of points above your score and 20-30% of your applications in schools that are a couple points below your score. Pay attention to OOS, etc. If you have so many to choose from, then make the cut according to location, size, academic philosophy (grading, lectures vs. small group, etc), and other personal preferences.

 

[TooMuchResearch]

Yeah, only problem is that I'm "High Chance" for most of them and "Go For It" for a few of them... I want to apply to a handful of the top tiers and a good amount of upper-middle, but I can't really see where to make the cutoff based on that... I mean, I would def consider Penn a top tier, but it's ranked pretty far down on that thing.

Around where would you make the cutoffs?

Based on the LizzyM Score given on the spreadsheet, a nice set of arbitrary categories is:
<70, 70-72, >72

 

[junkct]

If it appears on that list pretty far down although you consider it a top school, it is because it tends to accept/matriculate (depending on the data set you use) students who don't have stats quite as high as some other schools. This may reflect the school's philosophy of placing a high value on other characteristics rather than going for the applicants with the highest numbers.

Take your LizzyM score and place the majority of your applications with schools that are at or slighly below your score. Place 10-20% of your applications with schools that are a couple of points above your score and 20-30% of your applications in schools that are a couple points below your score. Pay attention to OOS, etc. If you have so many to choose from, then make the cut according to location, size, academic philosophy (grading, lectures vs. small group, etc), and other personal preferences.

Based on the LizzyM Score given on the spreadsheet, a nice set of arbitrary categories is:
<70, 70-72, >72

Both of these sound pretty legit to me. Thanks!

 

[TexasPhysician]

The problem with tiers is that there would be different rankings based on different topics. Are you looking for tiers based only on MCAT scores? Are you looking for top research schools? Do you want an exceptional emergency medicine experience? Do you want a school that has great infectious disease possibilities? Do you want top rural medicine schools?

What do you mean by tiers?

This is the problem with all of the different rankings. They are useless unless you find "rankings" based on your needs and wants.

 

[junkct]

The problem with tiers is that there would be different rankings based on different topics. Are you looking for tiers based only on MCAT scores? Are you looking for top research schools? Do you want an exceptional emergency medicine experience? Do you want a school that has great infectious disease possibilities? Do you want top rural medicine schools?

What do you mean by tiers?

This is the problem with all of the different rankings. They are useless unless you find "rankings" based on your needs and wants.

but that's exactly the point of tiers in my opinion. while different schools differ in various aspects, there is still a general ranking of schools. the top 10 schools will probably be consistent across most rankings, as will the top 20. but the exact order of those 20 will vary. However, the top 10 are clearly in the same tier, which is a different tier than those of the next 20 schools.

 

[Appless]

besdies what LizzyM already said, tiers in the sense of what most applicants and people on SDN think are based on acceptance rates and basically GPA and more so MCAT averages if you really get down to it. The top tiers such as John hopkins, harvard, washu, northwestern, michigan, columbia, etc etc are all basically in the 36+ MCAT average range. These schools are also all highly ranked and rank high with research and probably NIH Grants and the like. Mid tiers/upper mid are what people would think or more around the 33-35 range while the lower tiers/lower mid consisting of the 30-32 range or so. There are some exceptions to this obviously (UCLA comes to mind) but in general most of what people call top/mid/low tiers can fall into this range. GPA isnt as useful as many schools have a 3.7+ GPA average. Just my take on it.

 

[Law2Doc]

but that's exactly the point of tiers in my opinion. while different schools differ in various aspects, there is still a general ranking of schools. the top 10 schools will probably be consistent across most rankings, as will the top 20. but the exact order of those 20 will vary. However, the top 10 are clearly in the same tier, which is a different tier than those of the next 20 schools.

Bad bad bad assumptions. The US News rankings are only meaningful if they are based on meaningful criteria. They aren't. They are heavily based on things like research funding, which may have no impact on your life as a student there. I mean, so what if X school has a huge grant given to some adjunct faculty who works in a lab across town and never employs med students -- how does that make your experience there better? There may be a hierarchy of med schools from which you could create tiers, but US News rankings aren't a good enough starting point that you can really distinguish between school number 10 and school number 20. At best, maybe (and that's a huge maybe) you could break them out broadly, if you assume that the US News rankings loosely approximate prestige and take the leap that a more prestigious program is somehow better. So you could say the top 25 are all pretty prestigious, and then the next 25-30 are a bit less, and so on. But you are kidding yourself if you think you can be more fine tuned than that to break them into eg groups of, say, 10 and feel that they have something more going for them than the next 10. The data isn't good enough to have small brackets or sharp cutoffs. Even if the data was measuring something work breaking into tiers. Use the rankings for what they are and don't get carried away and fall into the trap that if a school is ranked 20 it is appreciably better than a school ranked 30. You probably get the same education in either place, won't have appreciably different opportunities, probably have the same facilities, comparable faculty, etc.

 

[JJMrK]

besdies what LizzyM already said, tiers in the sense of what most applicants and people on SDN think are based on acceptance rates and basically GPA and more so MCAT averages if you really get down to it. The top tiers such as John hopkins, harvard, washu, northwestern, michigan, columbia, etc etc are all basically in the 36+ MCAT average range. These schools are also all highly ranked and rank high with research and probably NIH Grants and the like. Mid tiers/upper mid are what people would think or more around the 33-35 range while the lower tiers/lower mid consisting of the 30-32 range or so. There are some exceptions to this obviously (UCLA comes to mind) but in general most of what people call top/mid/low tiers can fall into this range. GPA isnt as useful as many schools have a 3.7+ GPA average. Just my take on it.

This is pretty much how I broke it down and how I'm picking my schools.

 

[scattun]

besdies what LizzyM already said, tiers in the sense of what most applicants and people on SDN think are based on acceptance rates and basically GPA and more so MCAT averages if you really get down to it. The top tiers such as John hopkins, harvard, washu, northwestern, michigan, columbia, etc etc are all basically in the 36+ MCAT average range. These schools are also all highly ranked and rank high with research and probably NIH Grants and the like. Mid tiers/upper mid are what people would think or more around the 33-35 range while the lower tiers/lower mid consisting of the 30-32 range or so. There are some exceptions to this obviously (UCLA comes to mind) but in general most of what people call top/mid/low tiers can fall into this range. GPA isnt as useful as many schools have a 3.7+ GPA average. Just my take on it.

This doesn't quite hold up, considering that only Washington University has an MCAT average of 36. All other of your top tier schools seem to be right at 35.

 

[Lukkie]

There are some exceptions to this obviously (UCLA comes to mind) but in general most of what people call top/mid/low tiers can fall into this range.

lol what do you mean

 

[junkct]

Bad bad bad assumptions. The US News rankings are only meaningful if they are based on meaningful criteria. They aren't. They are heavily based on things like research funding, which may have no impact on your life as a student there. I mean, so what if X school has a huge grant given to some adjunct faculty who works in a lab across town and never employs med students -- how does that make your experience there better? There may be a hierarchy of med schools from which you could create tiers, but US News rankings aren't a good enough starting point that you can really distinguish between school number 10 and school number 20. At best, maybe (and that's a huge maybe) you could break them out broadly, if you assume that the US News rankings loosely approximate prestige and take the leap that a more prestigious program is somehow better. So you could say the top 25 are all pretty prestigious, and then the next 25-30 are a bit less, and so on. But you are kidding yourself if you think you can be more fine tuned than that to break them into eg groups of, say, 10 and feel that they have something more going for them than the next 10. The data isn't good enough to have small brackets or sharp cutoffs. Even if the data was measuring something work breaking into tiers. Use the rankings for what they are and don't get carried away and fall into the trap that if a school is ranked 20 it is appreciably better than a school ranked 30. You probably get the same education in either place, won't have appreciably different opportunities, probably have the same facilities, comparable faculty, etc.

well, that's pretty much what I meant when breaking it down into tiers... maybe I was being a bit too fine-tuned when I said top 10, next 10, etc., but the point is that across the board you'll see harvard, jhu, wustl, penn, columbia, etc. all ranked within the top 15, so you can be sure that those are top tier schools, whereas you'll never see USC, brown, dartmouth, etc. ranked up there, so you can be sure that those are of a lower tier.... generally you'll see schools bunched around the same area, but yeah, that's why I was wondering what people considered to be top tier and upper-middle tier and whatnot.

 

[Handy388]

the highest tier of school is the school you can get into.

 

[Law2Doc]

well, that's pretty much what I meant when breaking it down into tiers... maybe I was being a bit too fine-tuned when I said top 10, next 10, etc., but the point is that across the board you'll see harvard, jhu, wustl, penn, columbia, etc. all ranked within the top 15, so you can be sure that those are top tier schools, whereas you'll never see USC, brown, dartmouth, etc. ranked up there, so you can be sure that those are of a lower tier.... generally you'll see schools bunched around the same area, but yeah, that's why I was wondering what people considered to be top tier and upper-middle tier and whatnot.

Well, it depends how you define "top tier". Certainly in terms of "prestige" I agree with you. If you are talking about quality of education, there are many schools in the next grouping that are probably equivalent (although I don't know that the next three you listed are the ones I'd be referring to). Because there are only 120+ US allo med schools, each with only 150 or fewer seats, and at least half of all applicants to med school (a very self selected group to start with) don't even get in, ALL are very competitive. As a result, you can get a very top notch education at the top 50 or so, and it's debatable how to break it up within that grouping -- you will be wrong as often as you are right. So purely talking about prestige, sure, you can use the US News ranking as a very very loose proxy, without fine edges. But if you are talking quality of education, something that is personnel driven, not research dollar driven, you are probably going to miss the boat.