US News ranking for 2002 (if it means anything)

[Cambrian]

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Well perhaps this is old news but I checked out the US News ranking today.

<a href="http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/beyond/gradrank/med/gdmedt1.htm" target="_blank">http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/beyond/gradrank/med/gdmedt1.htm</a>

It is interesting to note that UCSF is consistently high ranking in both research and primary. They are so good !!!
I just wish I got in. They rejected me. I am so depressed. <img src="graemlins/pity.gif" border="0" alt="[Pity]" /> <img src="graemlins/pissy.gif" border="0" alt="[Pissy]" />

 

[ConstantlyWaiting]

I was under the impression that this was 2001? Or have the rankings not changed a bit since last year?

 

[ItsGavinC]

New USNews rankings typically come out in print on the newstands in mid-March. I assume the online version would be out then also.

 

[merlin]

I have always been curious about this. Do schools really change in status all that much from year to year? Is there a significant change of rankings over a period of a year?

 

[none]

Sure they're status changes from year to year. A school could say...kill one of their healthy human research subjects.

 

[coop]

these are the old ones... the new ones come out in late march/early april

 

[Scooby Doo]

Originally posted by none:
•Sure they're status changes from year to year. A school could say...kill one of their healthy human research subjects.•••

Haha...I am finally starting to like you none...

hahaha...sweet comment 🙂

 

[Wahoo]

Originally posted by none:
•Sure they're status changes from year to year. A school could say...kill one of their healthy human research subjects.•••

Speaking of that... How much in NIH funding has Hopkins lost due to that "little" mistake? Do you all think they'll drop much in the rankings because of it? If so, how much?
I'm not considering Hopkins, but I'm curious how much this sort of research error can alter a school's ranking.

 

[AmateurChef]

Although the rankings give a general evaluation of a school (eg. ranked 4th vs 50th), but year-to-year changes are totally bogus. USNWR has taken a lot of flak for their "evaluations," mostly because their criteria can be pretty ambiguous.

 

[Trek]

I think there's another school in the NE- maybe the university of pennsylvania but i forget that had similar problems of subjects passing away during trials. From what I've read, they don't seem to have suffered too many ill effects of this. --Trek

 

[edmadison]

To address the issue "if it means anything", the ratings are huge -- just ask any college admisions director. Many people make their choice of where to go school based primarily on the rankings. To that end, many schools have hired consultants to "hack" the ratings, i.e. they make minor changes in their policies that make big changes in the somewhat arbitrary ranking catagories. For example, for college rankings, the percentage of those accepted matriculating is a factor in the school's competitveness. To hack that catagory, many college have drastically increased the number of students that are accepted to early admisions programs. Since they have to accept this helps that schools ratings.

An article in one of the major news magazines addressed this issue a few years back. Cornell Univerisity hired one of those consultants, made changes a moved way up in the rankings. Their admission staff noted both a rise is "quality" of their applicants and matriculants.

US News has a lot of power

Ed

 

[merlin]

For anyone interested, I think the article that emadison is referring to is an article in the September 2001 issue of the Atlantic Monthly. I believe it is a very accurate assessment of the detrimental effects that the US News ranking system has had on the admissions process. Although the article talks about undergraduate admissions, I assume the analogous situation has happened on medical school admissions. It definitely leaves something to think about. Cheers.

 

[grasshopper]

random comment: trek--I think you may be referring to the u-penn gene therapy trials where the guy was like 19 and died because nobody managed to notice that the viral vector was still carrying the virus? It practically halted gene therapy trials everywhere for quite a while, I think, but I always wondered how u-penn managed not to suffer. hmm.

 

[Sir William Osler]

i think that these two examples-jhu and upenn--will be only very short term effects. they will not alter the quality of the institution one bit. In fact, they will probably increase the quality in the long run since new governing bodies are going to prevent the repition of similar mistakes. i cant imagine it affecting the rankings one bit.

 

[DrSuga]

i worked with the PI of the clinical trial that resulted in the death of thge 19 yr old patient at UPenn this summer. as it turned out, the PI himself (jim wilson) was the one who was sued/got in trouble, not Penn. consequently, it was his personal NIH funding that was hurt, not the entire institution's as in the hopkins case. not that this has anything to do with med school, but i thought i'd add my $.02 while people were discussing the subject.

 

[snowballz]

If you want to know the worth of the US News rankings..they reported my old school had 9% biology majors. We don't even have a biology major!!!

Alicia

 

[DarkChild]

Lol - must be a small school