USNWR Best Med Schools 2022

[deleted1065184]

Not projecting anything. It's a genuine question. I came as an young immigrant to attend graduate school and for me cost was the only factor.

That's totally fine, but your factors will not be the same factors for others. For me, cost was the #1 factor, but the #2 factor was proximity to my support system (esp. my spouse), and the 3rd factor was location (as a Black person, I do not feel comfortable living in cities with very small Black populations). This is a pretty common factor for most people of color from my experience (emphasis on most, because there will absolutely be exceptions). I believe my factors are as valid as yours. And others will have their own factors that are as valid for them as ours are for us.

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[EdgeTrimmer]

That's totally fine, but your factors will not be the same factors for others. For me, cost was the #1 factor, but the #2 factor was proximity to my support system (esp. my spouse), and the 3rd factor was location (as a Black person, I do not feel comfortable living in cities with very small Black populations). This is a pretty common factor for most people of color from my experience (emphasis on most, because there will absolutely be exceptions). I believe my factors are as valid as yours. And others will have their own factors that are as valid for them as ours are for us.

I totally understand. I didn't not say those are not valid factors. I mentioned young in the context of support system. Yes, location is a factor for most but how much varies from person to person.

 

[deleted1065184]

I totally understand. I didn't not say those are not valid factors. I mentioned young in the context of support system. Yes, location is a factor for most but how much varies from person to person.

You said you're not sure how much location and support system need to be factors and then said that your only factor was cost, so I assumed you were viewing them as less important factors. You're right though, you didn't say they were less valid, my apologies.

 

[proudofmykids]

That's totally fine, but your factors will not be the same factors for others. For me, cost was the #1 factor, but the #2 factor was proximity to my support system (esp. my spouse), and the 3rd factor was location (as a Black person, I do not feel comfortable living in cities with very small Black populations). This is a pretty common factor for most people of color from my experience (emphasis on most, because there will absolutely be exceptions). I believe my factors are as valid as yours. And others will have their own factors that are as valid for them as ours are for us.

FYI - In general, applicants refer to people they are in a relationship with as Spouse or Significant Other, not their support system/ other family.

 

[deleted1065184]

FYI - In general, applicants refer to people they are in a relationship with as Spouse or Significant Other, not their support system/ other family.

The spouse/SO is part of the support system, I referred to my spouse as such and so did my other friends who are married and applied/are applying.

 

[proudofmykids]

The spouse/SO is part of the support system, I referred to my spouse as such and so did my other friends who are married and applied/are applying.

I’m just saying that typically spouse/SO get their own weighting separate from the rest of the support system and geo.

 

[deleted1065184]

I’m just saying that typically spouse/SO get their own weighting separate from the rest of the support system and geo.

Gotcha, well either way my spouse was a huge factor lol

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

The spouse/SO is part of the support system, I referred to my spouse as such and so did my other friends who are married and applied/are applying.

and I explicitly asked about young people like my son.

 

[deleted1065184]

and I explicitly asked about young people like my son.

Lol wow so I'm old now? 😭

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

Lol wow so I'm old now? 😭

I didn’t say that 😂

 

[Orims]

so what exactly is fit when comes to medical school especially for a young person? I am not sure how much location and support system needs to be factors? Younger people should be able to adopt to any city and do they really need close by support system?

and I explicitly asked about young people like my son.

Young people can still have spouses/long term partners!

One of my lab mates has been in a relationship with their high school sweetheart for years and where they were located was heavily weighed on their graduate school decision. Even though we both enrolled in graduate school after undergrad (young for sure), having a partner/spouse was not a factor for me when choosing a graduate program but it was for my lab mate.

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

Young people can still have spouses/long term partners!

One of my lab mates has been in a relationship with their high school sweetheart for years and where they were located was heavily weighed on their graduate school decision. Even though we both enrolled in graduate school after undergrad (young for sure), having a partner/spouse was not a factor for me when choosing a graduate program but it was for my lab mate.

True, again I was asking a generic question. How many traditional path or 1 or 2 gap year students worry about support system and then location?

 

[ingobingo]

True, again I was asking a generic question. How many traditional path or 1 or 2 gap year students worry about support system and then location?

I have some friends who prioritize being close to family and want to be within a relatively close distance of them (i.e. like a 6-7 hour train/drive away max). It just depends on the support structures that you turn to for your own personal wellness.

 

[efle]

True, again I was asking a generic question. How many traditional path or 1 or 2 gap year students worry about support system and then location?

For some people it's really desirable to stay near family but there's a lot more to it. Imagine giving up a robust ethnic/cultural community you grew up with to go somewhere that has almost no presence of your group. Same thing for LGBTQ in different locations, or even just being service and primary care oriented when some big ivory towers don't even have FM residencies. A lot of people are in serious relationships by the age of 23-25, and often the partner is committed into another professional track or has a great job that limits their mobility. Maybe you have hobbies or other interests that factor in - a lifelong surfer and water polo player is going to have much more access to their favorite pastimes at UC Irvine than Johns Hopkins. I'm sure there's more examples I'm not thinking of. This all gets bundled into the "fit" of a program to weight against cost, academic resources, prestige brownie points, or whatever else you care about.

 

[deleted1065184]

For some people it's really desirable to stay near family but there's a lot more to it. Imagine giving up a robust ethnic/cultural community you grew up with to go somewhere that has almost no presence of your group. Same thing for LGBTQ in different locations, or even just being service and primary care oriented when some big ivory towers don't even have FM residencies. A lot of people are in serious relationships by the age of 23-25, and often the partner is committed into another professional track or has a great job that limits their mobility. Maybe you have hobbies or other interests that factor in - a lifelong surfer and water polo player is going to have much more access to their favorite pastimes at UC Irvine than Johns Hopkins. I'm sure there's more examples I'm not thinking of. This all gets bundled into the "fit" of a program to weight against cost, academic resources, prestige brownie points, or whatever else you care about.

Yes, all of this!

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

For some people it's really desirable to stay near family but there's a lot more to it. Imagine giving up a robust ethnic/cultural community you grew up with to go somewhere that has almost no presence of your group. Same thing for LGBTQ in different locations, or even just being service and primary care oriented when some big ivory towers don't even have FM residencies. A lot of people are in serious relationships by the age of 23-25, and often the partner is committed into another professional track or has a great job that limits their mobility. Maybe you have hobbies or other interests that factor in - a lifelong surfer and water polo player is going to have much more access to their favorite pastimes at UC Irvine than Johns Hopkins. I'm sure there's more examples I'm not thinking of. This all gets bundled into the "fit" of a program to weight against cost, academic resources, prestige brownie points, or whatever else you care about.

got it. Only location my son ruled out is Rochester, MN Academic opportunities, cost and prestige are our fit criteria I guess.

 

[efle]

got it. Only location my son ruled out is Rochester, MN Academic opportunities, cost and prestige are our fit criteria I guess.

Which is very normal too. Hence my spicy take that Harvard probably has 99% yield on cross-admits to typical U of States elsewhere, despite "fit" often being called the most important part of choosing.

 

[prufrock2891]

As I said last year...

1. Like last year, I have assigned equal weight to research and primary care rankings and simply added them together to make the total score.
2. Every school on USNWR is covered, including those that have "Ranking Not Published (RNP)" designations.
3. Though the residency director ratings may be better than the aggregate USNWR rankings, there are reasons to be skeptical. How are program directors polled on these rankings? It is hard to imagine many PDs sitting down and forming a rank list of 185 institutions with any kind of significant reproducibility or resolution. More transparency in the methodology of these ratings would be useful.
4. Please let me know if there are typos or other errors and I will fix them ASAP.
5. I added step 1 and step 2 scores when they were available (bold means they're updated)

also for the record, I stand by what I said on SDN - While speculation about this may yield interesting results, I'd like to remind people that USNWR rankings have faced very legitimate criticisms and this study (Gollehon NS, Stansfield RB, Gruppen LD, et al. Assessing Residents' Competency at Baseline: How Much Does the Medical School Matter?. J Grad Med Educ. 2017;9(5):616–621. doi:10.4300/JGME-D-17-00024.1) showed that "Our results suggest that residents' medical school of origin is weakly correlated with clinical competency as measured by a standardized OSCE."

Is there any way you could PM me the google doc link to this so I don't have to go to SDN to look at it every time

 

[efle]

Is there any way you could PM me the google doc link to this so I don't have to go to SDN to look at it every time

h ttps://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1V8vXA7aTHY89ct3n1UCMygyp-3KiveQf0MO07K7R-3I/edit#gid=0

take out the space after h

 

[deleted1025488]

True, again I was asking a generic question. How many traditional path or 1 or 2 gap year students worry about support system and then location?

Less worry about it until they get trucked in medical school. I think 'support system' (usually described as staying close to either some friends or family) was one of the most common things my older friends in med school told me to consider as I've talked to them throughout the past year as my app cycle approached. Not saying it's for everyone, but I think a solid 80% say they've been legitimately depressed due to loneliness after they went cross country for medical school. Maybe it's their fault for thinkings it's like undergrad where you're thrown into a bucket with lots of friends and activities show up here and there, or whatever, but yeah. Who knows.

 

[efle]

Less worry about it until they get trucked in medical school. I think 'support system' (usually described as staying close to either some friends or family) was one of the most common things my older friends in med school told me to consider as I've talked to them throughout the past year as my app cycle approached. Not saying it's for everyone, but I think a solid 80% say they've been legitimately depressed due to loneliness after they went cross country for medical school. Maybe it's their fault for thinkings it's like undergrad where you're thrown into a bucket with lots of friends and activities show up here and there, or whatever, but yeah. Who knows.

The importance doubles if the school is doing remote preclinicals. It's hard enough moving to a new city when you spend time with all your classmates in person. I can't imagine being in a new city and spending all day alone in an apartment streaming zoom lectures

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

Less worry about it until they get trucked in medical school. I think 'support system' (usually described as staying close to either some friends or family) was one of the most common things my older friends in med school told me to consider as I've talked to them throughout the past year as my app cycle approached. Not saying it's for everyone, but I think a solid 80% say they've been legitimately depressed due to loneliness after they went cross country for medical school. Maybe it's their fault for thinkings it's like undergrad where you're thrown into a bucket with lots of friends and activities show up here and there, or whatever, but yeah. Who knows.

well, my kid decided to go across the country instead of close by higher ranked school saying it's better fit. I guess our support is not needed

 

[deleted1064759]

well, my kid decided to go across the country instead of close by higher ranked school saying it's better fit. I guess our support is not needed

Was the farther school at least cheaper? Discerning fit is a bit tricky from virtual interviews, especially when the class group chats are still in that professionalism stage of discussions and you don't know what people are really like.

As a conservative applying to medical school, I frankly found fit to be highly overrated and just used COA. Fortunately for me, the cheapest school happened to be the highest-ranked, despite another top school's dean matching the offer over one phone call, so I didn't really have to choose between COA and 'fit'.

Would I have fit in better at UTSW, Vandy, or another Southern T20? Perhaps, but I could always meet like-minded people through my hobbies or at the gym .

 

[efle]

Was the farther school at least cheaper? Discerning fit is a bit tricky from virtual interviews, especially when the class group chats are still in that professionalism stage of discussions and you don't know what people are really like.

As a conservative applying to medical school, I frankly found fit to be highly overrated and just used COA. Fortunately for me, the cheapest school happened to be the highest-ranked, despite another top school's dean matching the offer over one phone call, so I didn't really have to choose between COA and 'fit'.

Would I have fit in better at UTSW, Vandy, or another Southern T20? Perhaps, but I could always meet like-minded people through my hobbies or at the gym .

Dude, fit is huge. Your experience at a place like UCSF versus UTSW would be very different

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

Was the farther school at least cheaper? Discerning fit is a bit tricky from virtual interviews, especially when the class group chats are still in that professionalism stage of discussions and you don't know what people are really like.

As a conservative applying to medical school, I frankly found fit to be highly overrated and just used COA. Fortunately for me, the cheapest school happened to be the highest-ranked, despite another top school's dean matching the offer over one phone call, so I didn't really have to choose between COA and 'fit'.

Would I have fit in better at UTSW, Vandy, or another Southern T20? Perhaps, but I could always meet like-minded people through my hobbies or at the gym .

Other school cost is same (both schools gave recruitment aid ). Actually if you are a conservative, fit is more important given schools like UCSF became too liberal and education/research is less important for them!

 

[Putkernerinthehall]

Would I have fit in better at UTSW, Vandy, or another Southern T20? Perhaps, but I could always meet like-minded people through my hobbies or at the gym .

Be careful not to surround yourself with, or associate with, only like-minded people. Can be very limiting.

 

[efle]

Be careful not to surround yourself with, or associate with, only like-minded people. Can be very limiting.

He is the diversity on a university campus lol

 

[7summers]

Other school cost is same (both schools gave recruitment aid ). Actually if you are a conservative, fit is more important given schools like UCSF became too liberal and education/research is less important for them!

Who hurt you?

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

Who hurt you?

come again

 

[efle]

Who hurt you?

lol I think you misunderstand where hes coming from, his kid turned down UCSF to go to one of the much more conservative east coast behemoths

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

lol I think you misunderstand where hes coming from, his kid turned down UCSF to go to one of the much more conservative east coast behemoths

I never disclosed which schools my kid got and which ones he declined. I can tell you his decision making is not based on political leanings of the schools.

 

[efle]

I never disclosed which schools my kid got and which ones he declined. I can tell you his decision making is not based on political leanings of the schools.

Surprised there was no fit difference in his decision, the crew he will be with is very different

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

Surprised there was no fit difference in his decision, the crew he will be with is very different

His fit criteria is academic opportunities and vibe with students not political leanings. He always had diverse group of friends (so do I) and we don't get rattled by politics

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

He is the diversity on a university campus lol

yeap, lot of you will change once start paying taxes on that physician salary.

 

[efle]

I'm of the opinion that you can find like-minded people anywhere. I can get along with just about anyone so I think I will be just fine, even in liberal areas. It certainly helps that my school is P/F all four years + no AOA and my hobbies are very niche. It's also an East Coast research powerhouse and being entrenched in a research-heavy institution outweighs any political qualms I might have about the school, especially with basically a full ride. I found that while schools are outwardly liberal, many interviewers liked talking about the rather conservative hobby I listed on my AMCAS. I was meticulous in adding it in for that specific reason.

UTSW was not even an option for me though since I am not a TX resident. Maybe after med school or residency I'll see about going down South or something.

As long as you're comfortable being in a small minority or keeping quiet on a lot of topics. I have some not-very-leftist friends at my east coast research center and their hot takes and sense of humor are definitely not compatible with most of our class, they'd get eaten alive at UCSF

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

As long as you're comfortable being in a small minority or keeping quiet on a lot of topics. I have some not-very-leftist friends at my east coast research center and their hot takes and sense of humor are definitely not compatible with most of our class, they'd get eaten alive at UCSF

One advise I gave my son when he went to south for UG is, stay out of political discussions and focus on education and fun.

 

[proudofmykids]

As long as you're comfortable being in a small minority or keeping quiet on a lot of topics. I have some not-very-leftist friends at my east coast research center and their hot takes and sense of humor are definitely not compatible with most of our class, they'd get eaten alive at UCSF

At your school, Do you find he left leaning students more vocal than the right leaning students?
pit seems this way on SDN.

 

[proudofmykids]

One advise I gave my son when he went to south for UG is, stay out of political discussions and focus on education and fun.

By the way, what does “4 PD T10” mean in your signature?

 

[efle]

At your school, Do you find he left leaning students more vocal than the right leaning students?
pit seems this way on SDN.

Oh yeah big time. One big issue during my time in med school was whether to form a campus PD and add policemen to the area due to increasing crime (like parking garage muggings.) Only one side was comfortable being loud about their stance. Not that it affected the institution's final decision at all.

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

By the way, what does “4 PD T10” mean in your signature?

Admitted to four T10s (based on PD ranking). I am not trying to brag, but to counter strong advocacy for gap years and certain ECs on this site.

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

At your school, Do you find he left leaning students more vocal than the right leaning students?
pit seems this way on SDN.

Isn't that the case at 99.9% of the schools in USA?

 

[Putkernerinthehall]

Isn't that the case at 99.9% of the schools in USA?

No, depends on the school and the region. Plenty of vocal right and far-right groups on many campuses, especially during previous presidential administration.

 

[efle]

Lol it’s always hilarious hearing other people’s perception of your school from the outside. No one is going to eat you alive at UCSF. If you argue that COVID is a hoax and climate change isn’t real, you will be challenged. Aggressively. As you should be if you have terrible ideas. No one is eating people alive for jokes unless the joke targets someone for something they can’t change. On any particular issue, everybody should feel free to speak their mind and they do for the most part here. They just know they’re not getting away with having no evidence for what they’re saying, so the ignorant people tend to keep their mouths shut. /rant

I mean I watched how it played out at my much more old school east coast institution so yeah I think the clash would be real at UCSF. The SJW crew isnt just intolerant of ignorance, also of diametric views on topics like whether to increase policing of low income areas where school affiliates are being regularly assaulted and robbed

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

No, depends on the school and the region. Plenty of vocal right and far-right groups on many campuses, especially during previous presidential administration.

Name few.

 

[Putkernerinthehall]

Claremont-McKenna, Pepperdine, BYU, Auburn, Liberty U., SMU, Baylor, Clemson, Biola University, Texas A&M, Oral Roberts, TCU, Wofford, Utah St, U. of Wyoming, U. of Tennessee, Ole Miss, Mississippi St, Idaho St, Oklahoma St, U. of Arkansas, U. of Evansville, Kansas St, U. of South Carolina, U. of Alabama, VMI, and all of the US Military Academies.

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

Claremont-McKenna, Pepperdine, BYU, Auburn, Liberty U., SMU, Baylor, Clemson, Biola University, Texas A&M, Oral Roberts, TCU, Wofford, Utah St, U. of Wyoming, U. of Tennessee, Ole Miss, Mississippi St, Idaho St, Oklahoma St, U. of Arkansas, U. of Evansville, Kansas St, U. of South Carolina, U. of Alabama, VMI, and all of the US Military Academies.

Ok, 1% of the schools

 

[Putkernerinthehall]

You asked for a few, I gave you 30...there are many more though less well known. Point is that if going to a politically conservative college or university is important to someone, they are available. Granted, most are not what I would consider strong / top schools. The reasons for that can be left for another time.

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

You asked for a few, I gave you 30...there are many more though less well known. Point is that if going to a politically conservative college or university is important to someone, they are available. Granted, most are not what I would consider strong / top schools. The reasons for that can be left for another time.

You asked for a few, I gave you 30...there are many more though less well known. Point is that if going to a politically conservative college or university is important to someone, they are available. Granted, most are not what I would consider strong / top schools. The reasons for that can be left for another time.

true, but as you said most of them are not well known small schools not premed or med powerhouses

 

[alexandrs32]

What on earth happened for the current year? Is this a procedure thing or a Corona virus thing?