Curriculum and Ranking

[Entol]

Related to the "overrated/underrated" thread, here's a question worth considering:

Does it bother anyone that a school can completely overhaul its curriculum, making sweeping changes the material emphasized and how it is presented, and still maintain approximately the same ranking on USNews? I know the rankings are heavily based on research dollars, but seriously, I would like to think that curriculum changes affect the school's ranking somehow. (maybe the graduates under the new curriculum are better prepared for clinics for example and then residency directors start to rate them higher? I dunno)


Just a thought..


-Entol

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[Gleevec]

If schools had to report their USMLE scores, and US News factored that in, then maybe.

But for now, looks like curricula changes dont matter a bit, even though they should.

 

[Neuronix]

I don't think it should get factored into the rankings for a couple reasons.

The first is that opinions are pretty subjective about what is the best cirriculum. This means that everyone is going differ about which cirriculum is best. How can they rate that? Besides, I think cirriculum has little to no effect on the opinion of a residency program towards a med school. Some cheerleaders claim residency directors favor their med school's cirriculum, but I don't buy it.

The second is that USMLE scores correlate better with USNews ranking than anything else. The top ranked schools all score extremely well, despite having extremely varied cirricula.