<p>What is the HYPS of medical school? What are the dream schools that every doctor would do anything to go to? I've noticed that mostly everyone on CC wants to go to JHU, so does anyone have any other schools they can think of? Also, is it true that HYPS aren't as prestigious to the medical community as they are on the street? From what I hear, schools like Penn, Duke, and Wash U garner more prestige among those highly involved with medicine than HYPS.</p>
<p>UCSF is my dream school! I don't like JHU for the location so I won't even be applying. </p>
<p>Trust me, you will have no problems coming from Yale or Stanford Medical School. I will be applying to both of those schools and not higher ranked schools like Harvard, Upenn, or Duke.</p>
<p>I know that I wont have any problems, but I'm just saying that those aren't considered AS prestigious possibly than Penn or Wash U. The best analogy I can think of is how for undergrad, someone who goes to Wash U will do very well, but its still not considered AS prestigious as HYPS for undergrad.</p>
<p>It varies. I would not have fit in at UCSF, and I think Penn's got a top-notch program. That's not because NCG is wrong; it's because he's different from me.</p>
<p>Medicine is a trade school. Different schools have different strengths. If you want to do research, then the USN rankings are actually pretty reasonable.</p>
<p>And graduates from Princeton's med school actually do have a really hard time. Don't go there. I know, I know, I tell you that prestige doesn't matter, but Princeton really will give you problems.</p>
<p>Duke and University of Michigan are my dream schools.</p>
<p>I think residency cares about the board scores and the grades in the first and second year, not where you go for medical school (although it may help you a little more edge if you attend a prestigious one).</p>
<p>University of Iowa was always kind of "out there" on the horizon for me. It's very well respected in the Midwest amongst people who know what they are talking about. I like the idea of their residential communities (the best analogy I can give is that it's sort of like Harry Potter where you're placed into one of the 4 or 5 "houses").</p>
<p>Growing up in Kansas City, I always just assumed I would go to KU, in HS I got interested in Missouri-Columbia's program because of their curriculum design. </p>
<p>When it actually came time to apply though, my current school was the most comfortable and the place that felt "right". I had a lot of people from undergrad that I knew going here, and it just so happens that my school has been moving up in the USNWR Primary care rankings, getting up there with schools like Iowa, Baylor and others that I have a lot of respect for. The rankings don't mean much, but it's a nice thing to have some recognition.</p>
<p>My dream med school is the University of Washington - Seattle.</p>
<p>My top choices are Stanford, Wash U (big reach!), UCSF, and Mount Sinai.</p>
<p>The schools I'm applying to are not because of their USNEWS ranking, because that's mostly about research. If you want to be a practicing physician, look at "primary care" rankings, and maybe even the rankings in the specialty you're thinking about. That's what's important. Who cares if people were impressed that you went to Harvard Med? If it makes you a crappy doctor (not saying that it does, but some people might not fit in there and become bad doctors), it's not worth it.</p>
<p>I am not the biggest fan in the world of the way the primary care rankings are calculated, since the percentage of students who actually enter primary care is not a particularly good measure of whether they COULD enter primary care or not -- i.e. Mayo kids would not have problems matching into Family Practice residencies if they applied for them.</p>
<p>The specialty rankings do not publish their methodology at all, and so I'm rather suspicious of those as well. For what it's worth, the "Internal Medicine" rankings (the path to cardiology, ICU, etc.) look more like the research rankings than the primary care rankings.</p>
<p>But this is all moot, since my conversations with doctors indicate that none of this matters except in quite exceptional circumstances.</p>
<p>I agree the methodology is poor. Particularly since Internal Medicine, Family Practice, and Pediatrics are all part of that "% of students entering primary care" section. I'm sure that if I go into peds that I want to further specialize but I contribute to my schools overall rate of students entering primary care, even though that's not what I want to do.</p>
<p>I also don't think though that's a measure of ability to enter into primary care fields. If anything it's probably best a measure of the types of students that go to that school (my own school does have a lot of people from small towns who are interested in going back as FP's), in combination with little things that schools do to encourage people to enter those fields (eg, my school's required rural primary care block in between M1 and M2, the fact that our FP clerkship is done in rural towns throughout the state, the opportunity available to also do the pediatrics clerkship in cities/towns other than where my school is located). </p>
<p>You can also argue that the research rankings are poor as well since they only look at NIH grants, rather than all research grants received. Probably not going to change the top 10-15, but could make a big difference farther down.</p>
<p>I think the Dean of Admissions at Weill Medical College made a good point when he told me that I could always go to a research-oriented school (ie your Stanfords, Harvards, Cornells, etc.) and later go into primary care but I won't be able to conduct research if I go to a primary-care oriented school and later change my mind.</p>
<p>Just remember: medical schools are trade schools, and medicine varies widely. The dichotomy is not clean between research and practice; different schools will have different specialties.</p>
<p>(To exaggerate wildly, UCSF is strong in ID, Columbia in Ortho and Neuro*, Vanderbilt in Transplant, Baylor in Cardiothoracic & Cardiology, WUSTL in Immunology & Radiology, Keck & Feinberg in Trauma, etc.) So there might be slight variations among residencies looking for students.</p>
<p>*At least in my school's terminology, "Neuro" is neurosurgery. If you mean neurology, you have to say the whole word.</p>
<p>See the 2001 Academic Medicine article entitled "America's Best Medical Schools: A Critique of the U.S. News & World Report Rankings."</p>
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Rankings of American medical schools published annually by the news magazine U.S. News & World Report are widely used to judge the quality of the schools and their programs. The authors describe and then critique the rankings on methodologic and conceptual grounds, arguing that the annual U.S. News medical school evaluation falls short in both areas. Three categories of program quality indicators different from those used by U.S. News are presented as alternative ways to judge medical schools. The authors conclude that the annual U.S. News & World Report rankings of American medical schools are ill-conceived; are unscientific; are conducted poorly; ignore medical school accreditation; judge medical school quality from a narrow, elitist perspective; and do not consider social and professional outcomes in program quality calculations. The medical school rankings have no practical value and fail to meet standards of journalistic ethics.
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