Top Medical Schools

What exactly are the top medical schools on the eastern coast? (Like top 15ish)

Also, what are some top non-arts (science, math, and technology) colleges besides the IVYs?

Thanks

Medical schools are pretty ‘flat’, unless you are interested in research, not patient care*

Going to Fancy Med or your State U med is not going to make much difference to your career otherwise. When you go for internships people from names you admire are side-by-side with people from places you have never heard of, doing the same work, getting the same pay.

For getting in to med school, the key factors are GMAT and GPA, so if you are deeply determined to go to med school, pick a college where your stats are in the top 25% of admitted students, and that is an environment which plays to your strengths. You want to be a shining star, so that when LoR time comes around the Committee that writes the med school LoRs for everybody in your class will see you as one of their best, not somebody in the middle of the pack (or worse, the last one in before the cut-off). Any college or university in the top 100 (& probably higher) is good enough for getting in to medical school.

The “Ivys” are not “top non-arts” schools. They are literally “Liberal Arts”* universities. If you mean you don’t want a Liberal Arts College (LAC), b/c you think the science won’t be rigorous enough, think again: their record for getting students into med school is very strong. If you want a University b/c of the size, range/depth of course options, that’s fair enough. Just be sure that you understand what they each are.

Finally, unless your family is happy to pay for all of college + all of med school, money is almost always a consideration. Med school is expensive and there are a lot of people looking for financial aid. You want to graduate from undergrad with no, or very little, debt.

**USNWR ranks the two categories separately- #1/2/3 med school for people going into research? Harvard/JHU/NYU. For people going into patient care? UNC-CH, UC-SF, UWa.

**fyi, the “liberal arts” are: Arts (fine arts, music, performing arts, literature), Philosophy, Religious studies, Social science (anthropology, geography, history, jurisprudence, linguistics, political science, psychology, sociology), Mathematics and Natural Sciences (biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, earth sciences

*Typo in #1 MCAT instead of GMAT

Yes, GRADES and MCAT scores and Volunteer Service (volunteer EMT etc.) are much more important to med school admission than where a student goes.

Some top non-Ivy STEM schools, or national universities, mid-size and state flagship, with very strong science programs would include:

Mid-size national universities: Case Western, Carnegie Mellon, University of Rochester, Tufts, William and Mary, Lehigh University, Wake Forest. There are others that could be included, but these are all terrific for what you are looking for. They do have different cultures, and you’d want to look for a good fit, etc.

State flagships: UVA, Maryland, UNC, Penn State, Rutgers, Connecticut but others as well

But there are many, many schools where a hard-working, capable student can prepare themselves well and end up accepted to med school, including small LACs.

Good luck!

LOL, thanks @TTG

Those are not “patient care” rankings, those are “primary care” rankings, the largest component of which is “percentage of grads going into internal medicine, family medicine, ob/gyn, pediatrics, and psychiatry” (maybe not psych) which are also 5 (or 4) of the 6 least competitive specialties to match into. Obviously plenty of kids from top schools go into those fields as well, but having more students who are matching into the more competitive specialties (e.g. neurosurg, plastics, derm, rad-onc) will cause you to drop in those rankings.

“Also, what are some top non-arts (science, math, and technology) colleges besides the IVYs?”

The top STEM universities are not Ivy League schools. I would put MIT and Stanford at the top of the list, but Caltech is not very far behind, with many other very strong non-Ivy’s (Michigan, Berkeley, Georgia Tech, Harvey Mudd, Waterloo, …). I don’t think that I have seen two rankings that completely agree on what is in the top 15.

To me the top medical school in the country is the one that you manage to get into. Of students who start university intending on being premed, only about half end up still being premed when they get their bachelors, and of these only about half get accepted to any medical school.