USNWR 2017 Rankings (DO NOT make another thread about this)

Started by WedgeDawg
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ZedsDed said:
When did you take your first hit of that sweet SDN drug? It doesn't look like you've been active all 4+ years you've been a member.
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I wouldn't call it a drug in his case. He is simply aware of how lost a lot of us would be without his contributions. Honestly, I can only imagine how often he reacts like this :smack: when browsing pre-allo lol.
 
USN needs to stop ranking med schools. The quantification of these rankings is completely asinine if you actually consider the purpose of medical education. If I had to create a ranking system I would make it based on these factors (in order of importance): 1) % of students getting their top choice residency 2) # of students getting into top programs 3) Average USMLE scores 4) Affiliated hospital reputation & clinical training strength 5)Research funding 6) Reputation of school amongst residency PDs
 
Swish16 said:
USN needs to stop ranking med schools. The quantification of these rankings is completely asinine if you actually consider the purpose of medical education. If I had to create a ranking system I would make it based on these factors (in order of importance): 1) % of students getting their top choice residency 2) # of students getting into top programs 3) Average USMLE scores 4) Affiliated hospital reputation & clinical training strength 5)Research funding 6) Reputation of school amongst residency PDs
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It's impossible to quantify 1, 2, and 4. 6 is tough because residency PDs can only be familiar with a limited number of schools.

Edit:
If you want to read some quality posts about this topic enter the username "mimelim" and the word "rankings" into a search.
 
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Swish16 said:
USN needs to stop ranking med schools. The quantification of these rankings is completely asinine if you actually consider the purpose of medical education. If I had to create a ranking system I would make it based on these factors (in order of importance): 1) % of students getting their top choice residency 2) # of students getting into top programs 3) Average USMLE scores 4) Affiliated hospital reputation & clinical training strength 5)Research funding 6) Reputation of school amongst residency PDs
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Your rankings would also be completely asinine if you actually consider the purpose of medical education. Because by your standards, the purpose of medical education = getting your students insane boards scores so they can match derm.
 
Rainbow Zebra said:
Pritzker and U of Michigan are both slumming it now. Mere #11. Too funny, per a faculty member at one of these institutions, the spinning has started:

"I understand this may be a spurious result of different ways other institutions (Vanderbilt was cited) are recording their research funding. So, the slip might be more a function of monkey math than any real change in standing."
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OMG they didn't!
 
Pastamahn said:
I didn't look into the methods of that paper too much, but the end result definitely shakes up the rankings a bit.
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Whoops. I just noticed that the link does not provide the full text. In case anyone is interested, this paper was written by HMS and UCSF faculty and states that USN&WR rankings are based significantly on premed success and not graduate success. Basically, the authors used objective criteria (e.g. research funding, publications, academic honors, etc.) instead of premed info and subjective criteria like peer assessment score. It is an imperfect system because, as they point out, only about 15% of physicians are in academia (excluding 85% of med school graduates from the analysis). It also uses data from 1950-2009 and may not reflect the most recent ranking (e.g. Stanford has greatly risen in the past few decades but stays at 6). That said they found some big differences in their top 25. I bolded a couple of ones that seem to disagree by 10 or more spots.
  1. HMS
  2. Hopkins
  3. Yale
  4. UChicago
  5. Cornell
  6. Stanford
  7. Columbia + Penn (tied)
  8. n/a
  9. Duke
  10. WashU
  11. NYU (same as this year's USN&WR! 🙂)
  12. Rochester
  13. Mayo
  14. Einstein
  15. CWRU + Sinai (tied)
  16. n/a
  17. Northwestern
  18. UCSF
  19. Vandy
  20. BU
  21. Brown
  22. Michigan
  23. Baylor
  24. Dartmouth
  25. Virginia
 
lulut1 said:
Whoops. I just noticed that the link does not provide the full text. In case anyone is interested, this paper was written by HMS and UCSF faculty and states that USN&WR rankings are based significantly on premed success and not graduate success. Basically, the authors used objective criteria (e.g. research funding, publications, academic honors, etc.) instead of premed info and subjective criteria like peer assessment score. It is an imperfect system because, as they point out, only about 15% of physicians are in academia (excluding 85% of med school graduates from the analysis). It also uses data from 1950-2009 and may not reflect the most recent ranking (e.g. Stanford has greatly risen in the past few decades but stays at 6). That said they found some big differences in their top 25. I bolded a couple of ones that seem to disagree by 10 or more spots.
  1. HMS
  2. Hopkins
  3. Yale
  4. UChicago
  5. Cornell
  6. Stanford
  7. Columbia + Penn (tied)
  8. n/a
  9. Duke
  10. WashU
  11. NYU (same as this year's USN&WR! 🙂)
  12. Rochester
  13. Mayo
  14. Einstein
  15. CWRU + Sinai (tied)
  16. n/a
  17. Northwestern
  18. UCSF
  19. Vandy
  20. BU
  21. Brown
  22. Michigan
  23. Baylor
  24. Dartmouth
  25. Virginia
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Those bolded ones are super interesting; UCSF, Cornell, and Einstein interest me the most. I noticed that the UC's don't really hold up a candle in these rankings (e.g. no UCSD, no UCLA, UCSF being much lower). I'm not too surprised with UCSD, since it was founded after about a decade and a half after 1950 and it takes a while for people to reach higher ranks in academia. I'd have thought that UCLA might be on the list. I can't wait to get to school to read the full article on the school network.
 
KungFuPanda123 said:
Those bolded ones are super interesting; UCSF, Cornell, and Einstein interest me the most. I noticed that the UC's don't really hold up a candle in these rankings (e.g. no UCSD, no UCLA, UCSF being much lower). I'm not too surprised with UCSD, since it was founded after about a decade and a half after 1950 and it takes a while for people to reach higher ranks in academia. I'd have thought that UCLA might be on the list. I can't wait to get to school to read the full article on the school network.
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It makes sense though. Cali schools are highly sought after by the abundant Cali premeds, for location and tuition understandably. I mean, my Cali friend may be passing up U Mich for Davis just to be in California. If you take out the "premed" from the ranking system like this study does, some of those schools drop a bit.
 
piii said:
It makes sense though. Cali schools are highly sought after by the abundant Cali premeds, for location and tuition understandably. I mean, my Cali friend may be passing up U Mich for Davis just to be in California. If you take out the "premed" from the ranking system like this study does, some of those schools drop a bit.
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Wouldn't the UC's go up in ranking if you "factored out" just the pre-med? The average GPA/MCAT for the UC's is lower than many of their peers on USN&R, bringing their ranking down in a sense
 
KungFuPanda123 said:
Wouldn't the UC's go up in ranking if you "factored out" just the pre-med? The average GPA/MCAT for the UC's is lower than many of their peers on USN&R, bringing their ranking down in a sense
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I noticed that very few of the schools in this other ranking have a strong primary care / clinical training bent. Objective measures like those listed without taking into account clinical training (the only real measures for that currently are "subjective" evaluations) are going to benefit the basic science research powerhouses. The UCs have really strong reputations for clinical training, which probably contributes to their USNWR rankings moreso than some other schools.

Edit: notice this list is all private schools until the very bottom. Public schools have other priorities besides just academic metrics. I'm surprised UCSF contributed to this publication.
 
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WedgeDawg said:
Methodology for those interested:

20% is peer rating

20% is residency director rating

15% is total research activity (measured by money)

15% is research activity per faculty member (also measured by money)

13% is MCAT score

6% is GPA

1% is acceptance rate

10% is faculty to student ratio

So basically 40% is reputation, 30% is money, 20% is selectivity, and the other 10% is "resources" (indirectly money)
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p0gono said:
I noticed that very few of the schools in this other ranking have a strong primary care / clinical training bent. Objective measures like those listed without taking into account clinical training (the only real measures for that currently are "subjective" evaluations) are going to benefit the basic science research powerhouses. The UCs have really strong reputations for clinical training, which probably contributes to their USNWR rankings moreso than some other schools.

Edit: notice this list is all private schools until the very bottom. Public schools have other priorities besides just academic metrics. I'm surprised UCSF contributed to this publication.
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I agree that the UCs are hurt in this ranking. Like you I am also surprised a UCSF faculty member co-wrote this. However, as WedgeDawg indicated above, the UCs cannot be gaining much from strong clinical training in relation to USN&WR rankings as the criteria do not account for it. Actually perhaps it is high marks from peers due to this strong training and/or faculty:student ratio (just spitballing since I don't know myself)? I say it because taking out the research components of the USN&WR criteria leaves you with peer assessment measures and faculty:student ratio. As KungFuPanda said, premed factors shouldn't help the UCs that much in comparison to peers whose students have similar ranks.
 
piii said:
It makes sense though. Cali schools are highly sought after by the abundant Cali premeds, for location and tuition understandably. I mean, my Cali friend may be passing up U Mich for Davis just to be in California. If you take out the "premed" from the ranking system like this study does, some of those schools drop a bit.
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Just a side note, I think your friend is crazy to consider passing up Michigan. I went from a UC on the beach (listening to waves crash at night and seeing dolphins from my dorm room) to grad school at Michigan. I loved Ann Arbor. I know everyone has their reasons (location, money, fit, etc.), but I just cannot see Davis over AA.
 
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^I think they got some more NIH funding. I tried looking at past years and places like WashU (which was ranked right behind Penn) went slightly down. So while other places were staying about the same or went slightly down, Penn's slight increase might have been one of the factors that let it rise up from #5 to #3 (technically just one spot up there with UCSF and Hopkins, which were tied at #3 anyways last year)
 
SurgeonOfLife said:
^I think they got some more NIH funding. I tried looking at past years and places like WashU (which was ranked right behind Penn) went slightly down. So while other places were staying about the same or went slightly down, Penn's slight increase might have been one of the factors that let it rise up from #5 to #3 (technically just one spot up there with UCSF and Hopkins, which were tied at #3 anyways last year)
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That makes a lot of sense. I'm sure the Penn towers going up right now probably don't hurt either since that'll open up more faculty positions
 
UW-SEATTLE is always ranked in the top 10 but they have lower stats than others. Also nobody on SDN likes talking about them lol.

Sent from my SM-G920R4 using Tapatalk
 
UNKmedicine said:
UW-SEATTLE is always ranked in the top 10 but they have lower stats than others. Also nobody on SDN likes talking about them lol.

Sent from my SM-G920R4 using Tapatalk
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Probably because UW isn't an option for the vast majority of us who don't live in-state/in-region. It's the only top-ranked school (as far as I'm aware) that has really strong in-state preference.
 
Why is UW-SEATTLE ranked so high if their mcat and GPA stats are lower than other top 10 schools? I know it receives the 2nd largest NIH funding but why do the majority of their students match into primary care?

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UNKmedicine said:
Why is UW-SEATTLE ranked so high if their mcat and GPA stats are lower than other top 10 schools? I know it receives the 2nd largest NIH funding but why do the majority of their students match into primary care?

Sent from my SM-G920R4 using Tapatalk
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It's not hard to figure out. They don't hide the fact that they feel obligated to provide primary care providers to the WWAMI region.
 
Tots said:
Since schools try to game these rankings so much, its time for USNWR to include average graduating debt in the rating. That way at least we can use the fanaticism about these rankings to benefit students....
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I'm not sure if they do it for med schools, but for UG rankings, I believe Forbes emphasizes where graduates end up after graduation (salary, % employed, debt, etc.), Niche emphasizes student quality of life, and USNWR emphasizes prestige (selectivity, test scores, gpa, etc.). At least that's how I was taught.

So along the lines of what you said, possibly Forbes is better. But I'm just here pointing out other rankings exist and use different metrics. Maybe worth taking a look.

Edit: nvm, I can't find Forbes med school rankings. They have it for business school.
 
SurgeonOfLife said:
Only those schools established in the U.S. before 1767 :cigar:
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😉

But I do think it makes a difference in the USNWR methodology! If PDs have never seen their grads in the wild, it's probably harder to have a high opinion of them? Also I feel strongly that Mayo is especially a case where USNWR rankings are irrelevant.
 
WedgeDawg said:
USNWR 2017 Research Medical School Rankings

0. If anyone else makes a thread in pre-allo about this, it will be locked. Let's keep discussion about it here.

1. Because I know this thread is going to be made at some point, so I'm going to make it myself

2. Because I know as much as everyone pretends not to care, everyone here is at least a tiny bit curious

3. If this thread gets out of hand, I will lock it

Have at it, don't take them too seriously, and don't get crazy

Edit: For reference, I found the older 2016 rankings for the top 25:

Code: 
Old rankings:

1. Harvard University

2. Stanford University

3. Johns Hopkins University (tie)

3. UC San Francisco (tie)

5. UPenn Perelman

6. Washington University – St. Louis

7. Yale University

8. Columbia University (tie)

8. Duke University (tie)

10. Chicago Pritzker (tie)

10. Michigan – Ann arbor (tie)

10. University of Washington (tie)

13. UCLA Geffen

14. NYU (tie)

14. Vanderbilt University (tie)

16. University of Pittsburgh

17. UC San Diego

18. Cornell Weill

19. Northwestern Feinberg

20. Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

21. Baylor College of Medicine

22. UNC Chapel Hill

23. Emory University

24. Case Western Reserve University

25. University of Texas Southwestern Medical School

Source: http://blog.accepted.com/2015/03/16/u-s-news-2016-best-medical-schools-research-primary-care/
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What if MD MAKE another thread about this?
 
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lulut1 said:
Whoops. I just noticed that the link does not provide the full text. In case anyone is interested, this paper was written by HMS and UCSF faculty and states that USN&WR rankings are based significantly on premed success and not graduate success. Basically, the authors used objective criteria (e.g. research funding, publications, academic honors, etc.) instead of premed info and subjective criteria like peer assessment score. It is an imperfect system because, as they point out, only about 15% of physicians are in academia (excluding 85% of med school graduates from the analysis). It also uses data from 1950-2009 and may not reflect the most recent ranking (e.g. Stanford has greatly risen in the past few decades but stays at 6). That said they found some big differences in their top 25. I bolded a couple of ones that seem to disagree by 10 or more spots.
  1. HMS
  2. Hopkins
  3. Yale
  4. UChicago
  5. Cornell
  6. Stanford
  7. Columbia + Penn (tied)
  8. n/a
  9. Duke
  10. WashU
  11. NYU (same as this year's USN&WR! 🙂)
  12. Rochester
  13. Mayo
  14. Einstein
  15. CWRU + Sinai (tied)
  16. n/a
  17. Northwestern
  18. UCSF
  19. Vandy
  20. BU
  21. Brown
  22. Michigan
  23. Baylor
  24. Dartmouth
  25. Virginia
Click to expand...

very interesting. thanks for sharing
 
Psai said:
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91cvs.jpg
 
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