<p>How do I find out if a specific school is best for studying pediatrics? Would the number of students who study that area be indicative of how good the school is? What else should I look for when looking at medical schools to apply to?</p>
<p>U.S NEWS TOP 100 PROFESSIONAL SCHOOL LISTINGS SPECIAL EDITION</p>
<p>Also a few I can name from reading that magazine are the following:</p>
<p>Baylor ( Houston, Tx)
UPenn( Philadelphia, Penn)
Duke
^^ those were in the top 10*</p>
<p>Honestly, I wouldn't choose a med school based on its rankings in any specialty. Despite what you may think, you really don't know what kind of doctor you will become.</p>
<p>1.) How US News calculates this is a total mystery. I have no idea and it may be based off of ludicrous criteria.</p>
<p>2.) NCG is right on the money - you need to pick the best overall medical school for you, not the best one for a specialty ranking because premeds change their minds way too often. Of the kids who come into medical school with a firm understanding of what they want to do, one admissions officer told me that around 10% would end up doing that - the rest picked something else.</p>
<p>3.) The rankings are, in order: Harvard, Penn, Hopkins, Cincinatti, Baylor, WUSTL, Colorado, UCSF, UCLA, UW (Seattle), Stanford, Case, Columbia, Feinberg, Duke (#15, not top 10), UM (Ann Arbor), Pitt, Yale, Vandy, UA (Birmingham), UNC (Chapel Hill).</p>
<p>Spot on advice by BDM and NCG (hey welcome to the initial club!)</p>
<p>the other thing I would add is that, focus on just getting in at ANY school. Most applicants don't end up with but one acceptance so it's not like you'll really have a lot of choice in the matter of where you'll attend. If, and only if, you are one of the lucky ones to get accepted at multiple schools, then you add the quality of their pediatrics clerkship as something to help in making your decision. Realize too that residency is really what matters in how "good" (and I use that term reluctantly) of pediatrician you'll become...not medical school. </p>
<p>Things to consider in examining pediatrics M3 clerkships include how long the clerkship is, is there an option to doing an outpatient/office based clerkship or do you have to do an inpatient clerkship, what type and how long do you get exposure to specialties in peds, do you get to work with all ages of children, and so on. As always there can be a lot of variation from medical school to medical school.</p>