What does top tier really mean?

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Top tier schools are the schools that ppl would give their left nut to go to (sometimes the right if they are desperate enough)
 
Top tier just means schools that are recognized by other schools or residency directors as schools that, through both clinical and research opportunities, can produce quality residents.
 
I would look to the MSAR or if you like political prestige, the USN&WR rankings. I rough estimate would be the top 50 or so schools they consider as the top 50 in America. That is rather arbitrary, but schools such as Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, JHU, Washington U in St. Louis, Penn, and Stanford are just a few among others.
 
Probably top 25 or so. Admissions are extremely competitive and people really would give their first-born to go. Research opportunities are also increased. They also have a quite a bit of scholarship money to through around.

But I guess it's mostly the hope that a big name will land you a better residency. That's probably 50% true.
 
Just to make it clear: I have no top tier schools!
 
I always thought Harvard and Johns Hopkins were kind of in their own little league up there?
 
Itistime said:
Top tier just means schools that are recognized by other schools or residency directors as schools that, through both clinical and research opportunities, can produce quality residents.
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Actually there are no rankings systems that reasonably capture this data. Nor could they since how a radiologist rates a school may be irrelevant to someone who wants to go into ortho and vice versa. There are small components of residency director opinions in the US news ranking but since they don't break it down specialty by specialty (as people do when they apply to residency) and since the amalgum of specialties they represent is not pro rata based on the size of the specialties, nor does it constitute a representative sample of residency directors, this data is more window dressing than any real value. And does not constitute much of the rankings anyhow -- the amount of research dollars drives the US news research ranking.

There are no tiers of med schools. However folks on SDN and other discussion boards often describe the top 10, top 20, top 25, whatever, etc schools listed on the US News research rankings as the top tier. Thus there is no common definition, and nothing based on fact or science. You can call things top tier if you want, but really need to define it because everyone uses his/her own definition.
 
Top tier schools are the ones ordained by God to be so.
 
I vote for ECU, Howard, Meharry, and Marshall as top tiers!!!



Bc honestly tryig to sep. schools into tiers ispointless.
 
Tndoorijones said:
What schools qualify as top tier exactly?
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Teirs in ranking med schools, unike law or business, do not exist. Applicants can be accepted by competitive Ivy league med schools, but not even granted an interview by low funded state schools. Also, unlike law or business, where your income can be dependent by the school you graduated from, medicare and insurance companies don't care whether you graduated from Harvard or a school in a third world country. You will be reimbursed the same amount regardless of where you got your education.
 
amwatts0322 said:
Top tier schools are the schools that ppl would give their left nut to go to (sometimes the right if they are desperate enough)
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I would gladly give my left nut (and possibly right) to get an acceptance at any medical school.....so to the OP: All schools are top tier!!!!! wahooooooo!!!!
 
What's the point of establishing a cut off for "top tier" schools?

If you decided that top-25 on USNWR was the top-tier, would you feel better if you went to school #25 as opposed to #26?
 
amwatts0322 said:
I vote for ECU, Howard, Meharry, and Marshall as top tiers!!!



Bc honestly tryig to sep. schools into tiers ispointless.
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Well my point was really that what is top tier is variable and highly dependent upon the person...It's all relative. There's no reason to prioritize one school over another because everyone else thinks that its a good school. What do YOU (not you specifically, more like the general 'you') think about it?
 
If you go to a bar on a Friday night, and drop where you go to med school, and people are really impressed and start buying you drinks, then you go to a top tier med school.
 
Top tier = where ever you matriculated.

Let's be honest - no matter where you go and how highly said school is ranked, you're going to pimp your school like it's the greatest thing on the planet.

So at the end of the day, does any of it really matter? As far as I'm concerned, LCME accredited = the only tier. 😀
 
Screw top tier. A fraction of you aren't going to pass anatomy, some more of you are going to completely fail out. Who cares about "top tier"
 
if they're LCME accredited, they're top tier
 
searun said:
If you go to a bar on a Friday night, and drop where you go to med school, and people are really impressed and start buying you drinks, then you go to a top tier med school.
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Close, though the general public doesn't know UCSF is a top 10 and probably think Princeton is.
 
CubaLibre said:
if they're LCME accredited, they're top tier
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While I agree that all medical schools provide an excellent education, I am afraid there are tiers. If you hang around administrators at these top tier schools, you will hear them talk about their peer institutions all the time and they make academic and administrative decisions taking into account what these other institutions are doing. It's subjective. But even administrators at schools generally not considered top tier have an idea which intitutions are. There is a reason schools boast when their students match at certain institutions and not others.
 
CHILLMD said:
While I agree that all medical schools provide an excellent education, I am afraid there are tiers. If you hang around administrators at these top tier schools, you will hear them talk about their peer institutions all the time and they make academic and administrative decisions taking into account what these other institutions are doing. It's subjective. But even administrators at schools generally not considered top tier have an idea which intitutions are. There is a reason schools boast when their students match at certain institutions and not others.
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yea, i hear what you're saying. but i'm speaking in terms of how school rank affects the individual student. It really doesn't do much. Whereas the law student at a tier 3 school may struggle to find work after graduation, mostly every medical student from accredited programs will match into a field. And all schools match competitive residencies.
 
eternalrage said:
Screw top tier. A fraction of you aren't going to pass anatomy, some more of you are going to completely fail out. Who cares about "top tier"
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my vote is that you fail out.
 
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