<p>According to my cardiologist, who had to have a spinal tumor removed, the selection criteria for surgeons should be: How often the facility and the physician conduct the particular procedure, and their success rate, followed by the skill and training of the support staff, including the medical school and residencies of those involved. Myself, I’d go with Harvard because of the higher selectivity, and the depth.</p>
<p>You guys can go to Harvard, but if I had a spinal tumor that the guy I would choose in my area couldn’t do, I would go to Barrow Institute in Arizona where the Harvard and Mayo neurosurgeons go to get trained. Not knowing about Barrow and who they are and what they do is another example of Ivy Leagues getting undue respect in medicine. Though, the Harvard Medical School consortium is an excellent research place.</p>
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<p>I’d choose whichever one was closest to my house. The best physician I ever had has a DO from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, and did his residency at some university hospital in Delaware. I know this because I just Googled him, not that I knew it before hand. But he was compassionate, non-judgmental, gentle, and he explained what he was doing to me as a person and not like I was stupid. He always had 10-minute consultations after every visit with patients in his office, and paid a lot of attention to preventative health. I’m not sure whether he learned that in med school, or his residency, or his 20-30 years of experience.</p>
<p>Especially when doctors’ expertise is largely shaped by their experiences…choosing a doctor based on the public perception of their medical school is kind of silly. Harvard’s only ranked #14 for primary care, and there are a couple of public schools ranked above it (including UAB). Columbia is only ranked #49 for primary care, with the University of Vermont, Eastern Virginia Medical School and UTN Health Science Center ranked above it. Those places are known for their top-notch research and specialty services, not for training doctors to go into the community and spend 20 minutes trying to convince their patients to get an HPV vaccine.</p>
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<p>Are you being sarcastic? I mean, it’s anyone’s prerogative to find out where their doctors went to school and residency before hand, and I do my own research on doctors before I go to - mostly which hospitals they are affiliated with (university or not) and whether they are board-certified. But the only way to know for sure if that’s the reason you’re still breathing is to do some kind of case-control or cohort study comparing people who see doctors from less well-known medical schools with doctors from the top-ranked ones (and they’re not necessarily all Ivies. The top 10 ranked med schools for primary care are all public universities, and there are only two privates in the top 15 and 5 in the top 20). Because my anecdotal data is that I’ve had excellent experiences with physicians from lower-ranked schools and even physician assistants and nurse practitioners.</p>
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<p>I’m in academia, although not faculty. For getting INTO graduate school the prestige of your undergrad doesn’t really matter; what matters is the reputation of your undergrad for preparing quality graduate students, and there is some overlap with the highly-ranked schools. But that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily harder to get in from a mid-ter LAC or public college than from Harvard. For getting faculty jobs, departments are very prestige-conscious, but what’s a top-ranked PhD program isn’t necessarily what people would think is a top-ranked program in the general public - in my field there are just as many public flagship universities in the top 10 as there are privates.</p>
<p>I will contend that the prestige of the undergraduate school does have a realistic influence if that prestige is realistically tied to greater academic performance of the student body in comprehensive terms. Otherwise, everyone would be going to community college, because everyone is on par with everyone else.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus I would like to know your views on EECS Berkeley vs ECE Carnegie Mellon vs ECE Princeton.</p>
<p>I don’t think P has a med school.</p>
<p>'I don’t know, I’d feel like I would want to know where my doctor went to school. If you had the choice between a doctor with an M.D from Ohio State University and one from Harvard Medical School, which would you choose?
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<p>I would NOT choose based on that at all. What if the OSU doc was top of his class and did his residency at Mayo or similar? </p>
<p>As PG says, med school education is flat in this country. I think some think that a higher ranked SOM means that it provides a better education. Rankings are not really a reflection of what’s going on in the classroom.</p>
<p>As for JK’s beloved, it does sound like she’s working in academic medicine. Since the top ranked med schools are where the MD/PhD’s are often from, it doesn’t surprise me that many are from ivy and ivy-like med schools. I’m guessing that she’s including Stanford, UCSF, UChi, as well. </p>
<p>Anyone with even a small amount of sophistication knows that just because the doctor went to OSU doesn’t mean he was “dumb.” Maybe he got a scholarship. Maybe his family didn’t have the money. Maybe he grew up in a milieu where no one went away to college. Maybe Harvard wasn’t on his radar screen as an 18 yo. </p>
<p>I repeat, medicine is “flat.” In my husband’s specialty, the leading lights are affiliated with the U of Cincinnati and with some school in Texas, I think Baylor. Other doctors don’t bow down to doctors who went to Harvard. Stop confounding the Wall Street notion of tiered schools with the medical field. It just makes people look naive to do so. </p>
<p>“actually, I do note where my docs went to u/g, med school, residency, if they are board-certified, and at which university-affiliated hospital they have admissions privileges, all this before I make the first appointment. I assure you it’s one reason why I’m still breathing. I’ve some damn good, highly educated, up-to-date, docs who use the finest hospitals in the region.”</p>
<p>Board certified trumps all. If you went to Harvard undergrad and Harvard med and you aren’t board certified in your specialty, you know less about your specialty than the guy from State U who is board certified. </p>
<p>I have to admit, I never checked where my two personal physicians attended school or residency. So, I checked last night after reading all of these posts. Turns out, both my internist and ENT are DOs. I didn’t know that earlier. I am not familiar with any of the DO schools other than the one in my state. They trained at residency programs I never heard of. I don’t know if they are board certified. Board certification is very important. But I have the advantage of taking care of patients referred to me. My personal physicians always sent me the best managed patients. Their level of quality was superior and consistent. So, it was very easy for me to choose the best doctor for my own health.</p>
<p>mom2, sort of academic, and, yes, she is including “ivies” like the ones you mention. And, again, I’m just reporting an observation. In fact, I am an academic (although not in medicine), and my dept colleagues pay almost no attention to rank in hiring. They read the work and judge for themselves the quality of the mind and potential for publication, among other things. They might read a cover letter a little longer, pause over a publication a little longer, if the PhD is from an “ivy.” That’s it.</p>
<p>juillet, I am not being sarcastic, and do not confuse what I said with anything to do with ivies. My first criterion is that they be associated with a university hospital, which means to me that they are keeping up on the latest in the field because they are publishing as well. They are seeing the cases that are harder to diagnose and resolve because their clinics are the ones the difficult cases are being sent to from non-university hospitals. They are also teaching docs, quite often, and that too forces them to stay current. And perhaps because I’m a professor, I think many professors have better communication skills than non-profs and so will better interact with me. Second is board certification, for similar reasons. These docs weren’t satisfied that they knew it all and went to the trouble to increase their knowledge and get and maintain their certification. Yes, I am biased against most med schools (and residencies) because I want the most knowledgeable, experienced physicians. That means exposure to patients, usually large cities, and faculty who are actively involved in research and publication because they will be most aware of the most recent developments in the field. Those faculty will turn out physicians who are better prepared on average. I check residency for similar reasons and u/g college can rule out that the physician was a dullard. I have had dumb physicians and they make me nervous. Of these criteria, the most important is university hospital followed closely by board certified, then a little less important is med school/residency. Then in the distance is u/g.
Then I go visit and check out the parchment on the walls and all the interpersonal skills that you want in a woman who holds your life in her hands. Finally, when I was choosing a cardiologist, my Beloved insisted upon meeting and approving her since some day she would have to work with her over me. She’s worked with physicians all her life and can’t be satisfied when it comes to our health. </p>
<p>That many of my family’s physicians came from JHU’s medical school is as much a matter of where I live as anything else, but my family has received excellent care from JHU docs. I also have excellent physicians who went to med school or interned at Harvard, Colorado, Pittsburgh, and Wake. You’re young yet, you don’t have so many physicians I hope, but I’d bet that in NYC many of the docs you’re seeing from your insurance plan are from big name med schools too. Some selection has already been made if you work in a large metro area and have decent medical insurance.</p>
<p>I don’t know the details of how med schools are completely funded. What it seems to me is that there are a lot of gov’t dollars flowing in to make sure that they’re all excellent. Maybe that’s why the education is flat? Maybe the fed dollars are tied to a req’t that X,Y,Z are all taught a certain way? I have no idea who/what is making sure that they’re all teaching the same thing.</p>
<p>For state SOMs, that money flow seems to be from both state and fed dollars. Each state seems to have a vested interest in its SOMs, and the feds seem to have a vested interest that all SOMs be excellent. Certainly the tuition isn’t covering all the costs. The difference between instate and OOS is unbelievable at my son’s SOM (OOS have a COA of about $85k per year…and that’s not fully funding their education either. Instate, the COA is about $50k pre year).</p>
<p>The thing is that it makes sense that all the med students are taught the same thing. It would be chaotic if they weren’t. Each newly-minted MD needs to be able to rather seamlessly move into their specialty training without having “holes” in their education from med school.</p>
<p><a href=“http://medical-schools.findthebest.com/compare/24-25-105/Harvard-Medical-School-vs-University-of-Alabama-School-of-Medicine-vs-University-of-South-Alabama-College-of-Medicine”>http://medical-schools.findthebest.com/compare/24-25-105/Harvard-Medical-School-vs-University-of-Alabama-School-of-Medicine-vs-University-of-South-Alabama-College-of-Medicine</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://medical-schools.findthebest.com/compare/1-7-24/Johns-Hopkins-University-School-of-Medicine-vs-University-of-California-Los-Angeles-David-Geffen-School-of-Medicine-vs-Harvard-Medical-School”>http://medical-schools.findthebest.com/compare/1-7-24/Johns-Hopkins-University-School-of-Medicine-vs-University-of-California-Los-Angeles-David-Geffen-School-of-Medicine-vs-Harvard-Medical-School</a></p>
<h1>3 is University of California at San Francisco, and #5 is University of Pennsylvania.</h1>
<p>Lots of focus on medicine here, which the original post did not even mention. So if there is any advantage to the Ivies, we’d probably miss it.</p>
<p>If your driving ambition is to become a distinguished college professor, a member of Congress, CEO of an F500 company, an ambassador, a journalist with your own column in the NYT, a best-selling novelist, or an astronaut, maybe going to Princeton could help…
<a href=“List of Princeton University people - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Princeton_University_people</a></p>
<p>The OP didn’t mention medicine in his first post, but someone else did in a later one:
“But if you study medicine at an Ivy graduate school, that’s gotta be worth something right?”</p>
<p>Thanks Archer. Son is at UAB SOM. He likes it and is doing very well there. He has his sights set on a competitive residency so he’s doing what he can to be at the top of his class. </p>
<p>There is at least one mistake on the USA report. It has a red X on MD. That’s a nutty mistake. It also has a blank for grants/scholarships and I know that it does give scholarships.</p>
<p>The rankings are really useless in regards to choosing a med school to become a physician (unless choosing the academic medicine route). USA is a very fine SOM with excellent facilities. If my son had chosen to attend, he would have received a very good education. The SOM is small and intimate with a 1:1 student/faculty ratio. Those that I know who’ve gone there just rave about it. And, the SOM posts its Match Day results and its grads get very good residencies.</p>
<p>Don’t know what those “smart rankings” are. lol …USNews uses two rankings: one for Research and one for Primary Care.</p>
<p>tk, any idea why Princeton doesn’t have a law school or a medical school? Tell them to get on the ball.</p>
<p>Tk21769, for those professions you are probably right if those students received their graduate education from top tier schools. But also be very mindful that there are kids attending those schools who come from families with connections in “that world”. You know, children of famous or wealthy people will have a distinct advantage when mommy or daddy makes a phone call for them.</p>
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<p>They should all be fine education-wise. Is your post-graduation goal to work in electrical engineering, computer science/engineering, or investment banking?</p>
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<p>No doubt, connections can help. However, you don’t get to be distinguished college professor, a member of Congress, CEO of an F500 company, an ambassador, a journalist with your own column in the NYT, a best-selling novelist, or an astronaut just on the strength of few phone calls from mommy and daddy. If connections help significantly, what it probably takes is a critical mass of connections to other people with resources, talent, ambition, and connections of their own who can vouch for you as a proven performer. That is an advantage the Ivies seem to offer (not that it’s going to help much in a field like medicine.) </p>
<p>Those phone calls help and once they are in, they have to work to prove themselves. I agree with you, this is where I believe the Ivy League has the advantage when it comes to certain industries. Specifically financial and government. They have the connections to get you the interview. But by no means does attending the Ivy League make you better at your profession. There is already a study demonstrating this. Competitive students out of high school continue on to be equally successful as adults. </p>
<p>As for ambassadors:
<a href=“http://m.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-ambassador-nominees-prompt-an-uproar-with-bungled-answers-lack-of-ties/2014/02/14/20fb0fe4-94b2-11e3-83b9-1f024193bb84_story.html”>http://m.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-ambassador-nominees-prompt-an-uproar-with-bungled-answers-lack-of-ties/2014/02/14/20fb0fe4-94b2-11e3-83b9-1f024193bb84_story.html</a></p>
<p>People who have those kinds of connections don’t HAVE to go the Ivies or similar. They already HAVE connections. They don’t NEED to impress the neighbors.</p>
<p>And yes, Kel, I agree that university / teaching hospital affiliation is a very, very good sign in a doctor - that he keeps up. That has nothing to do with eliteness of school. </p>