This may be a long post, but I want to respond just to give my 2 cents
I hope then you will understand my good will behind this post, and that I am trying to help you understand why we may think this way. I think a lot has changed in the past ~20 years in medical school admissions (assuming you applied for the 2003-2004 cycle or somewhere near), and that you will have good will to try to understand us too.
I understand the sentiment of this post - there are definitely multiple law school "tiers" that people discuss, and I agree that law schools that are not top tier have difficult times finding jobs. Referring to this
public data, there are over 150 schools that have graduates' employment rate of <70% at the time of graduation, and over 70 schools that have the graduates' employment rate of <70% 10 months after graduation. Furthermore, with limitations of job openings at prestigious firms, it would only make sense that school prestige for law school would matter a lot. This explains why people are so fixated in T-14 law schools, as prestige for medical schools matter. Furthermore, the bar pass rate for all the law schools range greatly -
from ~40%-100% for first time pass rate, which does also hint that maybe, there is a difference in quality of education in different institutions. This may explain your concern and your intuition to attend top schools for law for two reasons:
1) number of jobs available 2) differences in quality of educations
However, medical school is a different story. First, regarding the employment rate, we should look at match rates for medical schools across the country. NRMP shows that the average match rate for US MD and US DO schools
are around 90% (93.9% and 90.7% respectively), while IMG match rates are 61.6%. It would be hard to prove that this data is high only because of top 20 schools "carrying" the average, as the lowest ranked school (according to US News, wanted to emphasize that in no means this school is "third tier trash") still has a match percentage of 96% (link 1,
number of students matched, link 2,
class size). Thus, we see that despite which schools they come from, whether it be a T20 or a lowly-ranked school according to US News, the schools are able to match extremely well. You do mention how "for-profit" schools and schools founded in towns that we never heard of are also "third tier trash schools," but seeing a for profit school (Cal Northstate), they were able to match
~99% post-SOAP, which is still an impressive number compared to the employment rates in law school (I know this is post SOAP, but the
idea is the graduates were able to get a job. SOAP sucks and I understand this number may hide the pre-SOAP). Secondly, the quality of education - we see the bar pass rates have extreme fluctuation, but USNews reports an
average 87% pass rate for both Step 1 and Step 2 for the
10 ranked schools with lowest USMLE pass rates.
Thus, if a medical school is able to 1) provide a medical education sufficient enough for students to pass USMLE exams and 2) allow graduates to match pretty well, wouldn't it be not fair to call them a "third tier trash" school? The idea of "third tier trash" school is the fact that schools are just created to gather money and pump out grads who may or may not get jobs, but so far the "third tier trash" schools that you mentioned have been giving sufficient medical education and sufficient number of grads who match well. In no means I am defending for-profit schools though, as I am skeptical about their business model, but they are not evidently troublesome as Caribbean MD schools.
I want to address two things, first, this is not a school founded by "Walmart," but a
nonprofit organization founded by Walmart heir Alice Walton. This shouldn't matter much, but I think with the negative perception of Walmart, calling the school simply a "Walmart Medical School" could subconsciously have a negative look to it. Second, opening schools in a place in a place where there are physician shortages may be crucial in bringing people in - I unfortunately do not have evidence for this off my mind, but I do remember seeing a study talking about how the best way to encourage people to stay within the area is to open education systems around it. This parallels the vision of this school where the article states: "Alice Walton's vision begins here in Arkansas with the School of Medicine as an integral part of the growing and vibrant Northwest Arkansas community effort to become a premier healthcare destination." It wants to encourage people to practice there, so opening a school there would make sense.
Don't let the name Walmart deceive you: there are qualified people preparing to open the school:
Those involved in the project include Founding Dean Elly Xenakis, M.D., who is formerly the division chief of the maternal-fetal medicine division, and residency program director in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
Colleen O'Connor, who is formerly the associate dean of curricular Affairs at the Duke University School of Medicine has been named executive vice dean. Adam Rindfleisch, M.D., who is formerly an associate professor in the department of family medicine and the medical director in integrative health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health was named vice dean for education.
Opening everywhere may be an exaggeration, there seems to be
three schools proposed in 2020, definitely an increase but not "opening everywhere"
We can't openly say that "Walmart" is a third tier trash school when we did not give a chance; if the students pass the USMLE first time at a high rate, and are able to graduate with a good match list, why would it be trash? As stated above also, qualified individuals are helping to prepare open schools. It produces the physicians like it promised, hopefully in the Arkansas area as their vision follows. Clumping all for-profit schools, schools that open in small towns are issues.
However, I do agree with the concerns of your last point:
So are all the schools opened in towns that don't even have a real hospital and force all their graduates to go off site for the entire 3rd and 4th year. I still don't think they would be a "third tier trash" school as you mentioned because schools that have these systems are still able to produce students who pass the USMLE/COMLEX well (I believe ICOM would be an example). However, it can be definitely a challenge.
With acceptance rates still
single digits for most schools, I think this is an over exaggeration. However, your next few points about the trend, I cannot argue - this is speculation, and it's something that may be possible. Yet I believe this is an issue that does not cause huge concern at the moment as all the schools so far have been producing a high percentage of physicians matching in difficult specialties with good USMLE pass rates.
And lastly, with students having to rack up 300+ hours of clinical hours, 300+ hours of non clinical hours, an MCAT score above ~70% percentile, a competitive GPA of around 3.7, 300+ hours of research and much more to make their application even viewed seriously by an ADCOM nowadays, I do not thing any students who attend a US medical school you should ashamed of themselves.
Finishing off, I understand the concern of your post - it seems like you are concerned with medical school that will be created to only take money and provide an insufficient number of physicians. We are too, and that is why SDN strongly advises against Caribbean MD schools as it does everything that you seem to despise. Furthermore, you seem to be concerned with an increased number of medical school that would render all lower tiers useless, but the numbers simply don't tell that story... yet. Maybe I'm an optimist, but it is too early to assume that medical education from here is just going downwards.
