US News Rankings Methodology

[Jeffy]

So is the only difference between the Primary Care and Research rankings the fact that the lists are influenced by "% Graduates Entering Primary Care" and "NIH Research Grants," respectively? The editors use these two statistics to differentiate between the two lists but otherwise all other contributing factors to a school's final score are the same? Bullsh*t.

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[mshheaddoc]

So is the only difference between the Primary Care and Research rankings the fact that the lists are influenced by "% Graduates Entering Primary Care" and "NIH Research Grants," respectively? The editors use these two statistics to differentiate between the two lists but otherwise all other contributing factors to a school's final score are the same? Bullsh*t.

agreed That is why you don't go by just these "ranking" they are BS.

 

[Jeffy]

WTF happens if a school just doesn't send a lot of people into primary care residencies because, surprise surprise, their students can go into ANY specialty and overwhelmingly choose Optho, Ortho, Derm, Rads, etc.?? All of a sudden these top schools look like schmucks compared to a ton of DO schools and otherwise unheard of state MD schools with respect to Primary Care training.

It amazes me that people could make life-changing decisions based on a model they don't understand, oh yeah, which also happens to contain so many flaws in it.

 

[Truce57]

I went to #3 grad program based on US News rankings. Turns out it was truly a crock of **** because those rankings were nothing more than "reputation" rankings based on faculty surveys from other schhools. Mr profs weren't good for anything, and I hated my two years there. I swore off US News then, except for their non-speculative information.

 

[SanDiegoSOD]

WTF happens if a school just doesn't send a lot of people into primary care residencies because, surprise surprise, their students can go into ANY specialty and overwhelmingly choose Optho, Ortho, Derm, Rads, etc.?? All of a sudden these top schools look like schmucks compared to a ton of DO schools and otherwise unheard of state MD schools with respect to Primary Care training.

You hit the nail on the head... Hopkins is ranked second in research, but ranked 43rd in primary care. 43rd? Are you kidding me? Hopkins has an excellent clinical program, superior to many above it on the list. To have % of students accepting primary care residencies as the main criteria is simply silly.

 

[Jeffy]

You hit the nail on the head... Hopkins is ranked second in research, but ranked 43rd in primary care. 43rd? Are you kidding me? Hopkins has an excellent clinical program, superior to many above it on the list. To have % of students accepting primary care residencies as the main criteria is simply silly.

No joke. All of these great schools are getting shafted.

 

[Pinkertinkle]

Hopkins is third in research now, haha.

 

[drguy22]

ya a US news bashing thread

 

[CalH22a]

Where did you find the methodology the editors used to rank the schools? I'm curious to see how they approached it.

 

[Jeffy]

ya a US news bashing thread

In the four years or so of looking at those rankings, I somehow never noticed that oh so minute detail. Although I always looked at 'em rankings with plenty of doubt, that diff. between the two lists finally demonstrated to me how incompetent the rankings are.

Sure, they're decent indicators of trends and can be useful and blah blah, but seriously, they're pretty ****ty otherwise.

 

[mrezai]

The only thing that I find useful about the US News rankings aside from the factual information is the reputation scores, 'cause, let's be honest, as much as we hate to admit it reputation does count for something... a residency director might take a second look at you or might overlook a few scattered bad grades because of the competitiveness of the program. But, as one of the admissions people said at Georgetown when they were mentioning their very good match stats: it's not the school that gets into a residency programs, it's the studnet.

So, yeah.. everything with a grain of salt.

 

[BigRedPingpong]

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