‘Best Medical School’ methodology updated for release of latest annual rankings

Editor's Note

US News & World Report released its "Best Medical Schools" rankings with significant changes after a 2-year delay, MedPage Today reported July 23.

Medical schools are now grouped into tiers instead of ordinal rankings for both research and primary care. This change follows several top schools, led by Harvard Medical School, choosing not to submit data or participate in the rankings, MedPage reports. Also unlike previous years, schools that did not submit data were unranked.

A total of 102 medical and osteopathic schools with eligible data were assessed for research ratings and 99 for primary care ratings. US News noted that 80% of the top 100 schools in both categories participated, while the remaining 20% were labeled as unranked.

The new tier system categorizes schools based on overall scores derived from their percentile performance among all rated institutions, the report explains. Tier 1 includes schools with scores of 85-99, Tier 2 with 50-84, Tier 3 with 15-49, and Tier 4 with 1-14. This method ensures a fair assessment across the entire spectrum of schools, unlike the previous ordinal rankings.

Tiers are based on data from accredited schools and third-party statistics. Influencing factors include faculty resources, academic achievement of incoming students, medical research grants for research ratings, and graduate placement in primary care, MedPage reports. Specialty rankings, such as surgery and psychiatry, were discontinued due to the elimination of peer assessment surveys.

The Medpage report concludes with a list of the top-ranked schools.