<p>Hi, I am a rising high school senior who is really interested in pre-med. I was reading through the forums at CC some time ago and I read that if you become a general physician, where you go to medical school doesn't matter you can go to like Johns Hopkins or some no name school and still be about the same kind of doctor. I've read that the "best medical schools" are schools of research and specialize in "research medicine" as opposed to "primary care." I'm curious to what happens to most students who graduate from like Washington University (St. Louis)'s medical school, Johns Hopkins's medical school, or UCSF's medical school - what kind of career path do they take after medical school that separates them from graduates from smaller medical schools? What are careers paths that fall within the category of "research medicine?" Is there any advantage to going to the best primary care medical schools (like the University of Washington)?</p>
<p>I would greatly appreciate any responses!</p>
<p>There's some murkiness to the conclusions you've reached.</p>
<p>There really aren't any "best" medical schools. All of them are extremely good and any sort of ranking system is splitting hairs looking for differences. But there are types of schools which are better for particular types of students. If you know that you want to do research and have a career in academic medicine (that would have a research component to it) then you are best served by going to those schools that are highly ranked in research. </p>
<p>Those schools that have a strong research focus are usually aimed at trying to produce physicians who will continue to do research in the future. Generally this means they will be "academic" physicians - working at University Medical centers and splitting their time between clinical practice and their research interests. However, there are also academic physicians who don't do any research just clinical practice and add on teaching of residents and medical students to their duties. And there are some that do all three - clinic, teaching and research. </p>
<p>There have been quite a few debates on this board, at least in regards to MD/PhD - those people who most certainly want a lot of research in their careers - about the relative importance of going to a highly ranked research school. At best, the only conclusions that have been reached is that it matters, but no one will say how much it matters. </p>
<p>The important thing though is to realize that no doors are closed off to you based on which US medical school you graduate from. If you go to a school that's ranked high in primary care but not research, you can still go on to a successful research based career after residency/fellowship, you can still go to an academic center to teach residents and medical students - being an academic physician in that sense. On the other side of the coin, just because you graduate from UCSF or Hopkins doesn't mean you're forced down a path of research or teaching. One of the docs at my undergrad's student health center went to Hopkins and completed his residency at Mayo and had decided that he was content handing out birth control and antibiotics to college kids every day.</p>
<p>All medical schools have a minimum federal standard to uphold to. Since we're dealing with real patients and lives here, all programs must be quality, or else ppl die.</p>