Dec
14
Medical School and Residency Question… how much does the school’s ranking count?
ByQuestion: I am just curious and realize that I do not need to worry about this now…but here goes: How much does the medical school ranking matter? For instance, lower ranking medical schools tend to have students matched with residencies more in primary care that specialty residencies….I ask because I have shadowed a few doctors and as far as I know, would like to become a dermatologist which I know is a VERY (kind of ridiculously) hard residency to get into. Would I have a better chance if I went to a higher ranking medical school (such as Georgetown) than say…a state university medical school such as USF?
Just curious. Or…does the residency you get just depend on how well you do in medical school, even a lower ranking one?? Thanks.
3 Comments
December 14th, 2009 at 10:33 am
It depends a great deal on your class ranking and your clinical evaluations. If you are at the top of your class, school prestige is less important than your demonstrated excellence. Middle of class (or worse) you will do better matching for residencies from the “better” medical schools.
December 14th, 2009 at 10:58 am
I think there is a limited bias….harvard and such will help you get into a competitive specialty to some extent. But the truth is that it really TRULY depends on your USMLE Step 1 and somewhat on rotations. I go to a DO school and we had people match to urology (also very comp.) at Tulane (really good) and a host of derm matches are respectable programs. So you dont have to go to a top tier school….just work hard like the rest of us and make the best scores you can.
December 14th, 2009 at 11:15 am
You’re starting with a faulty premise. The ranking of medical schools is a marketing ploy developed to sell a magazine, US News and World Report. This quote is from the AAMC’s stance on the magazine’s ranking survey: “The annual U.S. News & World Report rankings of U.S. medical schools are ill-conceived; are unscientific; are conducted poorly; ignore the value of school accreditation; judge medical school quality from a narrow, elitist perspective; do not consider social and professional outcomes in program quality calculations; and fail to meet basic standards of journalistic ethics. The U.S. medical education community, higher education scholars, the journalism profession, and the public should ignore this annual marketing shell game.”
I’m fairly experienced in researching medical school data and I can find nothing to support your allegation that ‘lower ranked’ schools produce more applications to primary care specialties than ‘higher ranked’ schools. While it’s true that the primary care specilaties receive more applications than the subspecialties, this holds true across the spectrum of all medical schools.
But to address your questions…your medical school plays no factor in a residency program selecting you. The objective selection factors are your USMLE scores and your medical school GPA. The subjective factors are the evaluations you received during your clinical rotations and the recommendations of your medical school. But the final determining factor is the decision of the residency Program Director. For that reason, it’s recommended that you schedule your final rotations at the hospital that provides your residency preference.