<p>Avant...you couldn't be more wrong. Oldperson is exactly right.</p>
<p>There are only 125 medical schools in the US. All will provide the knowledge, experiences and skills necessary for a student to become a doctor. Given that the first time pass rate on Step 1 of the USMLE exam is 93% of US second years and that 93% of US fourth years successfully placed into residency programs through the Match (most students that don't match have wrongly apply without a plan B to highly competitive fields like Derm or ophthalmology), the data shows going to a US medical school, ANY US medical school will place you solidly into the job market. </p>
<p>I can tell you from first hand experience, a great deal of medical education is aimed squarely at getting students prepared for USMLE step exams. There are few places in education where "teaching to the test" is as a blatant, unadulterated and down right demanded by students, than medical education.</p>
<p>While students who wish to go into Academic medicine (with its emphasis on research) may be better served by going to more highly recognized research centers, the average patient doesn't care, nor think to ask where their physician completed their education or training. In fact, because of the disconnect between highly ranked (at least by USNWR, which rankings are even more suspect for medical schools than most of their others), and the highly ranked undergrad institutions, patients would likely scoff at doctors who went places like UCSF, WUStL, Baylor, and certainly state schools like Iowa and Washington, even though these are highly respected within the medical community. And there is certainly an argument that could be made that residency training location is more important than medical school. Given my most recent experience with friends who are M4's, I can tell you, at least anecdotally, most M4's were looking far more towards geography than seeking out that #1 residency program.</p>