does rank matter below tier 1?

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callie13

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ok, so it seems that nobody on here has a standard way to read a matchlists - read carrigallen's idea. the problem seems to be that you don't get to see where people applied, how hard they worked in med school, etc. and i am not sure what i want to go into so i am confused and i bet other people are too.

so it seems clear that a school like harvard, jhu, washu will let get you in the door to a lot of residency programs provided you do your work, etc.

and it would seem that to get the same opportunities from a "lower tier" school you would have to push yourself a little harder.

what i want to know is what happens with the schools in the middle? is there any advantage to going to schools between 20-40 over going to unranked ones? does a middle tier name carry any weight at all?

i've heard a lot of schools in the middle bashed - nyu, mssm, brown georgetown, dartmouth - so it would seem to me that these names carry no clout with residencies?? is this correct?

i do plan to work hard in med school, but i am curious as to whether any schools besides the obvious top 10 can help pave the way to a good residency.
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i've heard a lot of schools in the middle bashed - nyu, mssm, brown georgetown, dartmouth - so it would seem to me that these names carry no clout with residencies??

those schools you mentioned are all well known and respectable...if you do the work there then im sure it will only help you that you came from those schools when applying for residencies
 
i know they are definitely well-known and respectable - but there are lots of unranked schools that seem to be equally well-known and respected...

just wondering if it's worth the extra effort to go to a tufts over a george washington?
 
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I have a question.... what is Tier 1 anyway?

Does UCSD count as Tier 1... would I be dumb to pick NYU over UCSD for example? I thought Tier 1 would be anything in the top 40 or so...
 
well the rating residency directors gave tufts is pretty decent....
this is on usnews...and its one the few numbers on there that i pay attn to...

i think it was around a 3.4/5.0 which is pretty solid.

i dont know if GW was on there....i can go check later...after work.
 
regionality also plays a role in residency admissions

"nyu, mssm, brown georgetown, dartmouth" are all northeast schools, so if you went to some lower tier school in utah, you are likely at a disadvantage compared to someone who went to a similarly ranked school in pennsylvania.

also, i dont have a percentage value, but Ive noticed when perusing match lists that most people match to hospitals affiliated with their med school or in that city, so thats something else to keep note of.

Most people consider board scores, AOA, recommendations, clinical grades, away rotations, ECs, and school name to be major factors in residency admissions roughly in that order (though I dont know really, this is all secondhand). So if you do well on the boards and at your med school, even if it isnt ranked, i cant imagine having any problems getting into a good residency, especially if you do an away rotation there.
 
Originally posted by callie13
ok, so it seems that nobody on here has a standard way to read a matchlists - read carrigallen's idea. the problem seems to be that you don't get to see where people applied, how hard they worked in med school, etc. and i am not sure what i want to go into so i am confused and i bet other people are too.

so it seems clear that a school like harvard, jhu, washu will let get you in the door to a lot of residency programs provided you do your work, etc.

and it would seem that to get the same opportunities from a "lower tier" school you would have to push yourself a little harder.

what i want to know is what happens with the schools in the middle? is there any advantage to going to schools between 20-40 over going to unranked ones? does a middle tier name carry any weight at all?

i've heard a lot of schools in the middle bashed - nyu, mssm, brown georgetown, dartmouth - so it would seem to me that these names carry no clout with residencies?? is this correct?

i do plan to work hard in med school, but i am curious as to whether any schools besides the obvious top 10 can help pave the way to a good residency.
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Are you saying tier 1 = 1-20? All of the ones you mentioned but gtown and brown are top 40. I cant believ you put gtown and nyu/dartmouth in the same category :rolleyes:
 
ok, so maybe i don't know what tier 1 means - i had thought it was top 10 or 20?

and nyu's top 30, dartmouth top 40, georgetown and brown top 50... so they don't seem to be so different to me, but i have no idea what these things mean, that's what i posted, i guess.

ps. thanks jlee!
 
Yeah what is Tier 1??

I know this is more clearly defined for law schools.... is there even a definition at all for med schools? or are we just throwing this phrase around?
 
Originally posted by DoctorKevin
Yeah what is Tier 1??

I know this is more clearly defined for law schools.... is there even a definition at all for med schools? or are we just throwing this phrase around?
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"Tiers" of schools are arbitrary demarcations of school quality forced upon us (and eagerly accepted I might add) by the US News marketing machine.


callie, you're crazy if you think Georgetown Med and NYU are equivalent. NYU is hands down better.
 
Originally posted by DoctorKevin
Yeah what is Tier 1??

I know this is more clearly defined for law schools.... is there even a definition at all for med schools? or are we just throwing this phrase around?
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i think just throwing the term around...

but what is it for law school... top 25 right?
 
Yeah for Law school my friend had a table that said Tier 1, 2, 3, and then 4 I think. Actually I think tier 1 was 1-40 but I'm not sure, maybe it was 1-25...

I know UC Hastings in SF is considered the bottom of the top Tier....
 
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There are too many unknowns with matchlists.

For example, Georgetown may not have a high ranking, but when it comes to placing students in orthopaedic surgery residencies, they're probably one of the top schools in the nation (I think they placed 12 out of 12 last year).

Dartmouth is not ranked highly due to being in a rural town and not getting much research money. The students, however, are matched very well since they probably get great teaching and LOR's thanks to being part of a small class. Looking at their matchlist, all you see is people placed in big schools like Harvard/ Stanford/ UCSF/ Columbia/ Cornell etc.... That's really good for such a small class (78 less the 15 that go to Brown for their clinicals).

Therefore, outside the top 10 (I guess that's what I consider tier 1), just go to the school that you feel will best prepare you for the residencies you think you want to go into (that may be a midtier or a state school). There's nothing wrong with picking a state/unranked school over a mid tier school as long as you know they'll let you do what you want and not try to force you into something like primary care. You also have to make sure that state/unranked school can send you to big time residencies (if that's what you want) and aren't just sending people to regional hospitals in their state.
 
what's NYU's score by residency directors?
 
thanks. For some reason, I think I'm liking NYU over Columbia. Just wanted to see how close that score was.
 
I figure I'll include all the others....


Peer assesment (5.0); Residency director score (5.0)

Mt Sinai - 3.6; 3.5
NYU - 3.4; 3.5
Dartmouth - 3.4; 3.5
Brown - 3.1; 3.4
Gtown - 3.0; 3.4
 
is residency director score a question of how satisfied they are with students from those schools? how do they come up with the numbers - i admit to being totally lost with trying to quantify these things...

and i know choosing based on tuition, city, etc will be the best ways to make the decision in the end - but would a residency director expect higher stats from a GW or an Albany student than from an Dartmouth, Brown, or Tufts student? It seems to me that these schools have a lot of things that are similar about them - the reason i ask is b/c i wish i had known earlier that i wouldn't have had to work quite as hard to prove myself had i gone to a better-name undergrad school. Not exactly regretting the decision, but just wondering if residency will be a similar story or nothing like...
 
Quality assessment (weighted by .40): Peer assessment surveys were conducted in the fall of 2002, asking medical and osteopathic school deans, deans of academic affairs, and heads of internal medicine or the directors of admissions to rate program quality on a scale of "marginal" (1) to "outstanding" (5). Survey populations were asked to separately rate program quality for both research and primary-care programs on a single survey instrument. The response rate was 53 percent. A research school's average score is weighted .20; the average score in the primary-care model is weighted .25.

Residency program directors were also asked to rate programs using the same 5-point scale. The residency program directors surveyed were a geographically balanced selection from the American Medical Association's Graduate Medical Education Library 2002-2003 and a list of primary-care residency program directors from the American Osteopathic Association. The response rate for those sent the research survey was 32 percent. The response rate for those sent the primary-care survey was 25 percent. Residency directors' opinions are weighted .20 in the research model and .15 in primary-care.
 
jlee, thanx again for posting all this stuff - i need to go buy myself one of these magic magazines, though i tend not to trust numbers due to a severe hatred of math.
then again, it's nice to have something that looks "factual" in this random process.
 
Originally posted by callie13
jlee, thanx again for posting all this stuff - i need to go buy myself one of these magic magazines, though i tend not to trust numbers due to a severe hatred of math.
then again, it's nice to have something that looks "factual" in this random process.
Click to expand...

haha i just decided to fold and get the 10 dollar version so i can just check online. its a lot more convenient i guess...
 
I think you should ask this question in Allopathic and/or General Residency Issues. I've been kind of interested in this topic as well. It's funny, all the residents / fellows I talk to (I work at a very highly ranked med school) tell me to go to my state school, cuz they are looking right down the barrel of tons of debt that they accumulated from going to their top-5 or 10 school.

But then I read posts in the residency forums where people claim that their school IS making a difference in terms of who is getting interviews with what #'s.

And I don't know hwo similar the med school process is to residency applictions, but I feel like the undergrad I attended has made a difference in my med school process success esp b/c I have average-esque (for SDN) numbers.

But I shelled out alot of $$ to pay for undergrad not thinking I wanted to go to grad school or having a clear vision of what I wanted to do. I figured now that I will be attending med school, I'd either shell out money for top 10 or just go to my state school. But I dunno.... lot of the schools that fall in the middle are very strong schools and have their own merits... so I just feel super confused!

Thank goodness we have till May to figure this out.
 
Is Cornell considered "top 10"? and UCSD seems to have great placements in CA but not necessarily elsewhere, so I'm guessing UCSD is not commonly in this top 10 category?
 
I'd consider Cornell top 10. Their match list was really strong, from what I remember from interview day. Cornell was great... the people there were super nice! :) The dean of admissions was so cool, he actually spent time talking to us about what Cornell could do to make the admissions process easier (of course, everyone said "less emphasis on grades and MCAT" ;) )

DK, would you really consider going to Cornell over the UCSD in state tuition?
 
Yes, I'd pick Cornell over UCSD instantly without question.

I wrote my LOI to Cornell right after the interview.

This was due to many things about the school itself but also the location. San Diego is a little bit too laid back for me even though its a "big city." Basically I want to be in LA NY or DC of the schools I'm waiting on. Or ideally UCSF. I'd turn down Stanford for Cornell most likely although I haven't gone to my interview yet.
 
Originally posted by DoctorKevin
Is Cornell considered "top 10"? and UCSD seems to have great placements in CA but not necessarily elsewhere, so I'm guessing UCSD is not commonly in this top 10 category?
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sd places awesome in california because everyone that goes there wants to STAY in california....

its a big reason why calikids want to go to cali med schools because that means they have a great chance of landing a reisdency in state.

sd is an awesome school. i consider it a "tier 1" school....top 10-ish...
 
ahh, the good old money issue.

i guess i am telling myself that as long as i am going to be in debt i'd better be going exactly where i want to go. provided, of course, that i can get in.

isn't it funny that we are essentially begging these schools to let us give them 200,000 dollars? and they are rejecting us!!
 
From what I've heard faculty members say about Tiers is pretty much if you walk into any of the top 10 medical schools in the country, you won't be able to tell the difference (so top 10 I guess would be tier 1).

From what I've observed, there is definitely a difference between top 10, 11-25, and 25 and below in terms of facilities, faculty, research, caliber of students, etc.

I've heard the thing about going to your state school from residents too, but the truth is that they would have had to be a lot more steller to land that top 10 match from school ranked #126.

Just my thoughts.......
 
I'm not too familiar with the whole residency process. So when you guys talk about trying to get into a "good" residency, do you mean a residency placement at a top hospital or a competitive residency like derm or ophthalmology? Is it possible to be rejected to all the residency programs that you apply to or are you gauranteed at least 1 placement, even though it's at a lower ranked hospital?
 
Yea I agree somewhat. I also think that for your kids' sake, it's good to have an alumni connection in a great school (whether it is for undergrad or med school)...lord knows that makes a difference in the way an app is looked at...

Also, if you're gonna shell out money, the difference in 100K for an alumni connection as well as prestige may not matter in the long run (most doctors aren't starving, no?) :)

Just my thoughts.

-Ice
 
Let's suppose your state school is top 25 on US News, but you prefer a private school that's ranked ~40. Is this ridiculous, or is there very little difference between a school in the 20s and a school in the 40s? (It's probably stupid to give up in-state tuition, but shouldn't location and preference for a particular school count for something?)
 
I thought top tier was top 15. But I understand that "ranked" PERIOD is the second most important thing when determing placement for good residency programs. Am I totally wrong, yall?

Like, can anyone tell me what kind of real difference for the future does attending a top 50 ranked school make (vs non-ranked)?
 
Can someone tell me where to find these Peer assesment and Residency director scores for other schools?
 
To me, top tier means top 20. If I mean top 10, Ill alliterate and say top 10. But I think top tier generally means top 20 or 25 schools.
 
Originally posted by SunnyS81
From what I've heard faculty members say about Tiers is pretty much if you walk into any of the top 10 medical schools in the country, you won't be able to tell the difference (so top 10 I guess would be tier 1).

From what I've observed, there is definitely a difference between top 10, 11-25, and 25 and below in terms of facilities, faculty, research, caliber of students, etc.

I've heard the thing about going to your state school from residents too, but the truth is that they would have had to be a lot more steller to land that top 10 match from school ranked #126.

Just my thoughts.......
Click to expand...

Well, I think grouping 25 and below in one group is not what you really mean, since those schools do differ by a lot.

I actually disagree about the top 10s being the same, it really appears as if Harvard, Hopkins, Penn, Duke, and UCSF are a cut above the rest. And I think the difference between them and other top 10 schools is greater than say Yale and Mayo. I think those 5 are top, then 5-15 are pretty similar, then 15-25, and so on. Just my 0.02 though.
 
Originally posted by Auricae
Can someone tell me where to find these Peer assesment and Residency director scores for other schools?
Click to expand...

usnews.
 
Originally posted by ATPase
Let's suppose your state school is top 25 on US News, but you prefer a private school that's ranked ~40. Is this ridiculous, or is there very little difference between a school in the 20s and a school in the 40s? (It's probably stupid to give up in-state tuition, but shouldn't location and preference for a particular school count for something?)
Click to expand...

well im sure there is somewhat of a difference between 25 and 40. but not enough to stop you from getting into a particular residency if you did go to the "lower" ranked school.

if you are going to be happier at a particular place (you are paying more money to go there) that will hopefully mean that you will enjoy your time there more as a student and will probably lead to better results at the place you are happier at.

so in the end...even though many factors influence us in our decision to pick a med school...in the end its basically going to end up being...where will you be happiest at?

just what swirlin around up in the brain....
 
There is no way that a pre-med can assess the quality of a match list based on the location of the residency matches alone. More information is needed. So many important questions are left unanswered. For instance, was student X, who placed at residency Y, planning on becoming an academic or simply going into private practice? How many of the students in a given year wanted to match in a given specialty (e.g., radiology)? Unless you know, for instance, how many students WANTED to become orthopedists, then the number of matches in orthopedic residencies is a worthless criterion for assessing the quality of a match list. What were the credentials of the individuals who matched in highly competitive specialties (were they MD/PhD? did they have published research? were they AOA?, etc.)? Most importantly, what exactly were the students looking for in residencies? What was most important to THEM? Was it the quality of teaching? The diversity of cases? Prestige? Fellowship placement? Research requirement? Location? Overall happiness of the residents? What the hell were they most concerned about? You cannot answer any of these questions, all of which are very important, by looking at the match lists that schools distribute to interviewees.

The interesting thing is that prestigious institutions do not necessarily have the best training programs for private practice. Indeed, many of these prestigious institutions have residency programs that churn out academic physicians (who, incidentally, earn considerably less money than physicians in private practice) not private clinicians. Some of the very best training programs for private practice are off the US News rankings radar so to speak. You really have to hunt for these programs--talk to physician mentors in the field, contact the programs, etc.

So the bottom line is this: if you want to become an academic physician (and earn less money), then go to a program that places a lot of folks into places like Johns Hopkins, Mass. General, etc. If you're interested in private practice, don't freakin worry about it. In the latter case, go where you'll be happy. In my case, it's UMich med school.
 
I don't know. I liked all of the schools i interviewed at. Some more than others of course but still ... The US News ranking seems so "poor" to me. For example i was very impressed with UVA and i think it could have been higher on the list. I *liked* Cornell but i wasn't crazy about it and i would choose UCLA over it.

So in the end i think that all of the schools in the top 50 of USNews are good schools. The decision should come from what ones goals are and how can the school help you achieve those. For example there are obvious differences between Northwestern and UChicago although both are in the same city and share the same ranking.
 
Originally posted by Tezzie
I don't know. I liked all of the schools i interviewed at. Some more than others of course but still ... The US News ranking seems so "poor" to me. For example i was very impressed with UVA and i think it could have been higher on the list. I *liked* Cornell but i wasn't crazy about it and i would choose UCLA over it.

So in the end i think that all of the schools in the top 50 of USNews are good schools. The decision should come from what ones goals are and how can the school help you achieve those. For example there are obvious differences between Northwestern and UChicago although both are in the same city and share the same ranking.
Click to expand...

I agree with Tezzie. There's an immense amount of weight given to Usnews rankings, which imho, is kinda sad. And alot of schools go with the rankings because to them, it's free advertisement. Half the interviews I went on mentioned where their school ranks or how fast it's going up in the rankings. I for one am going to go to the school where I'll be the most happiest at.
 
It could be worse. You could live in Illinois and find that 4 of the schools didn't send in the questionaire that USNews sent them so they are not even ranked at all. FYI the schools are Loyola, Rush, Finch, and UIC. I believe some of the schools can offer excellent matches after graduating and have respected residency programs, but for this reason, most applicants only look at Northwestern and UChicago. Less competition for me I suppose.
 
It bugs me that NIH$$ looks like the most important variable in the USnews ranking. Exactly who are these rankings done for? I could understand this maybe a bit more for PhD programs. Sure, I'd like to do A LITTLE research in school, maybe a summer program or something, but rating medical education based on federal funding for research labs seems ridiculous.

The most likely audience for these rankings seems like premeds. Do they know that we basically care about 4 things:

1. How we'll do with the curriculum.
2. How we'll like the location.
3. How the school will help us get a good residency.
4. If people will go, "OOO... Wow!" when we say where we went to school (although I don't think anybody cares THAT much about prestige;) "

The most important factor to us is probably student assessment, which isn't even considered in US News. We should sponsor this site to do a small scientific survey of premeds and residents (med students will obviously be biased towards their own school".
 
Originally posted by Gleevec
regionality also plays a role in residency admissions

"nyu, mssm, brown georgetown, dartmouth" are all northeast schools, so if you went to some lower tier school in utah, you are likely at a disadvantage compared to someone who went to a similarly ranked school in pennsylvania....
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I'm not trying to contest what you're saying here, might be true, probably is. But there is only one med school in Utah, The University of Utah. And although it does leave some things to be desired ( I for one didn't even apply there) the almighty U.S. News ranks them somewhere in the 40's. I think at worst that puts them in the second tier.
Their undergrad program is third tier, but I didn't think undergrad. institution counted towards residency.
 
What are there, 126 schools? I'm seeing two problems.

1. To keep up with the USMLE, there can't really be THAT much variation in curricula; so basically, they're all minuets on a few different themes.

2. There are something like 126 schools? Um... they're all good. Going to a "bottom tier" school is still the best medical education in the world (with the exception of maybe Sackler, but thats a whole other argument waiting to happen). At the same time, going to a "middle tier" school means that you're going somewhere that has somehow outshined quite a few excellent schools that are considered "bottom tier" only because there are so many to evaluate.
 
It bugs me that NIH$$ looks like the most important variable in the USnews ranking. Exactly who are these rankings done for? I could understand this maybe a bit more for PhD programs. Sure, I'd like to do A LITTLE research in school, maybe a summer program or something, but rating medical education based on federal funding for research labs seems ridiculous
Click to expand...

I hate that too. For one, great researchers don't always make great teachers. Two, some schools have a lot more researchers, therefore, get a lot more money... yet that doesn't exactly have a direct effect on the school's education. So why does it make such a big difference in rankings?

If a school were to be ranked according to research, wouldn't it make more sense to rank it as (reasearch money/ researcher)? Wouldn't that give a better idea of the quality of faculty? Which then of course, wouldn't mean they're good teachers.... :)
 
I totally agree with Tezzie. . US NEWS is so lame. even to rank undergrads... so aribitrary and subjective when it comes down to it. I mean, any school in the top 50 is a really solid school

However, I also understand that ANY US medical school is great and it will produce solid clinicans. It seems so silly to talk about "lower" tier schools, when in actuality, are they REALLY that different from ranked schools except the fact that they may not have as much research money.

The way I look at it is that it is hard to get in anywhere. Even for "lower" tiered schools, 5,000 people apply for 600 interviews and a class size around, let's say 150. I mean, those ratios are pretty consistent across the board regardless of tier.
 
I think my mother is the only who cares only for US News rankings or any school that contains the word "California" in its title!

However, I agree with people who wrote that all schools are decent schools and regardless of rank or lack of rank, they are all hard to get in.

The medschool that I'm accepted to and going to is numero 53 or 54 according to US News. I loved it there when I interviewed, so I'm going to ignore its ranking. Instead I hope I can boost my school's credibility by matching to a top residency. (though their match list is already pretty good!)
 
Originally posted by emily69
I think my mother is the only who cares only for US News rankings or any school that contains the word "California" in its title!

However, I agree with people who wrote that all schools are decent schools and regardless of rank or lack of rank, they are all hard to get in.

The medschool that I'm accepted to and going to is numero 53 or 54 according to US News. I loved it there when I interviewed, so I'm going to ignore its ranking. Instead I hope I can boost my school's credibility by matching to a top residency. (though their match list is already pretty good!)
Click to expand...

I realize that you're trying to make the "don't be so rank-crazy" arguement, and I agree whole-heartedly. But then you lose me when you start talking about increasing the "credibility" of a school that's among the 50 or so best in the country, thus around top 65 in the world. Any school like that probably has a class of amazing students, tens, or hundreds of millions in research money anually, and a high volume hospital. Tulane, and others in that range, don't need a bump in "credibility."
 
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