U.S.News ranks 'Best Medical Schools 2019'
By Alyssa Rege
U.S. News'
rankings for the top medical schools for research and primary care are
part of the publication's annual "2019 Best Graduate Schools" lists,
which recognize the top institutions for several graduate programs,
including business, education, law, engineering,
nursing and medicine. The publication also published new rankings this
year for graduate programs in other popular disciplines, including
biological sciences, chemistry, public affairs, social work and
criminology.
Researchers
noted this year's list decreased emphasis on medical schools' perceived
reputation by 10 percentage points, and added four
new factors to measure the amount in nonfederal and non-National
Institutes of Health research grant funding institutions received.
Here are the top 10 medical schools for research,
including ties, as ranked by U.S. News.
1. Harvard Medical School
2. The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (Baltimore)
3. NYU School of Medicine (New York City)
3. Stanford (Calif.) University School of Medicine
5. UC San Francisco School of Medicine
6. Mayo Clinic School of Medicine (Rochester, Minn.)
6. Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia)
8. David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (Los Angeles)
8. Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
10. Duke University School of Medicine (Durham, N.C.)
Here are the top 10 medical schools for primary
care, including ties, as ranked by U.S. News.
1. UNC School of Medicine (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
2. UC San Francisco School of Medicine
3. UW School of Medicine (Seattle)
4. David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (Los Angeles)
5. Baylor College of Medicine (Houston)
5. OHSU School of Medicine (Portland, Ore.)
7. University of Michigan Medical School (Ann Arbor)
8. Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia)
9. University of Colorado School of Medicine (Aurora)
10. UC Davis School of Medicine (Sacramento, Calif.)
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Methodology: 2019 Best Medical Schools Rankings
For the U.S. News rankings of the Best
Medical Schools for Research,
the 144 medical schools accredited in 2017 by the Liaison Committee on
Medical Education and
the 33 schools of osteopathic medicine accredited in 2017 by the
American Osteopathic Association were surveyed in fall 2017 and early
2018. Of those 177 schools, 124 responded and provided the data needed
to calculate the rankings based on the indicators
used in the medical school research model.
U.S. News surveyed the same 177 medical schools at the same time for the primary
care rankings, and the same 124 schools provided the data needed to calculate those rankings.
Both
rankings are based on a weighted average of indicators, which are
outlined below. The medical school research model is based on 12
indicators,
and the primary care model is based on seven indicators.
Four
of the data indicators are used in both the research and primary care
ranking models. They are the student selectivity admissions statistics
(MCAT,
GPA and acceptance rate) and faculty-student ratio. The medical school
research model factors in research activity; the medical school primary
care model adds a measure of the proportion of M.D. graduates entering
primary care specialties.
Quality Assessment (weighted by .30 for the research medical school model and .40 for the primary care medical school model)
• Peer
assessment score (0.15 for the research medical school model, a
decrease from 0.20 last year; 0.25 for the primary care medical school
model): In fall 2017, medical and osteopathic school deans, deans
of academic affairs and heads of internal medicine or directors of
admissions were asked to rate programs on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5
(outstanding). Those individuals who did not know
enough about a school to evaluate it fairly were asked to mark "don't
know."
Respondents
were asked to rate program quality for both research and primary care
programs separately on a single survey instrument. Thirty-one
percent of those surveyed responded.
A
school's score is the average rating of all the respondents who rated
it; average scores were then sorted in descending order. Responses of
"don't know" counted neither for nor against a school.
• Assessment
score by residency directors (0.15 for the research medical school
model, a decrease from 0.20 last year; 0.15 for the primary
care medical school model): In fall 2017, as in previous years,
residency program directors were also asked to rate programs using the
same five-point scale on two separate survey instruments.
One
survey dealt with research and was sent to a sample of residency
program directors in fields outside primary care, including surgery,
psychiatry
and radiology. The other survey involved primary care and was sent to
residency directors designated by schools as mainly involved in the
primary care fields of family
practice, pediatrics and internal
medicine.
]Survey
recipients were asked to rate programs on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5
(outstanding). Those individuals who did not know enough about
a program to evaluate it fairly were asked to mark "don't know."
A
school's score is the average rating of all the respondents who rated
it in the three most recent years of survey results. Responses of "don't
know" counted neither for nor against a school.
The
medical schools themselves supplied the names of all of the residency
program directors who were sent either of the residency program director
surveys.
This
year for the first time in the medical school primary care rankings,
schools that received fewer than a total of 10 ratings from residency
program directors in the three most recent years of the residency
program directors survey received the lowest score achieved by any
ranked primary care medical school for the purposes of calculating the
rankings. These programs display an "N/A" instead of
a residency program directors assessment score on usnews.com.
Ipsos Public Affairs collected the assessment data.
Research
Activity (weighted by 0.40 in the research medical school model only,
an increase from 0.30 last year; not used in the primary care
medical school ranking model)
This
year for the first time, based on suggestions from medical school
deans, U.S. News added four new indicators of research activity to
account
for all the research conducted at medical schools: total non-NIH
federal research activity, average non-NIH federal research activity per
faculty member, total nonfederal research activity and average
nonfederal research activity per faculty member. Each of
these indicators was weighted at 0.025.
• Total NIH research activity (0.15): This is measured by the total dollar amount of NIH research grants awarded to the medical school
and its affiliated hospitals, averaged for 2016 and 2017. An asterisk next to this data point in the rankings tables on usnews.com indicates that the medical school did not include grants to any affiliated hospitals in its 2017 total.
• Average NIH research activity per faculty member (0.15): This
is measured by the dollar amount of NIH research grants awarded to the
medical school and its affiliated hospitals per full-time faculty
member, averaged over 2016 and 2017. Both full-time basic sciences and
clinical faculty were used in the faculty count. An asterisk next to
this data point in the rankings tables indicates that
the medical school did not include grants to any affiliated hospitals
in its 2017 total.
• Total non-NIH federal research activity (0.025): This
is measured by the total dollar amount of non-NIH federal research
awarded to the
medical school and its affiliated hospitals in 2017. Examples of
non-NIH federal sources include but are not limited to the Department of
Defense, Office of Naval Research, National Science Foundation, U.S.
Department of Veterans Affairs, Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality and the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services. An asterisk next to this data point in the rankings tables
indicates that the medical school did not include grants to any
affiliated hospitals in its 2017 total.
• Average non-NIH federal research activity per faculty member (0.025): This
is measured by the dollar amount of non-NIH federal research
grants awarded to the medical school and its affiliated hospitals per
full-time faculty member in 2017. Both full-time basic sciences and
clinical faculty were used in the faculty count. An asterisk next to
this data point in the rankings tables indicates
that the medical school did not include grants to any affiliated
hospitals in its 2017 total.
• Total nonfederal research activity (0.025): This
is measured by the total dollar amount of nonfederal research awarded
to the medical
school and its affiliated hospitals in 2017. Examples of non-NIH
federal sources include but are not limited to corporations,
associations, foundations, and state and local government funds. An
asterisk next to this data point in the rankings tables indicates
that the medical school did not include grants to any affiliated
hospitals in its 2017 total.
• Average nonfederal research activity per faculty member (0.025): This
is measured by the dollar amount of nonfederal research grants
awarded to the medical school and its affiliated hospitals per
full-time faculty member in 2017. Both full-time basic sciences and
clinical faculty were used in the faculty count. An asterisk next to
this data point in the rankings tables indicates that the
medical school did not include grants to any affiliated hospitals in
its 2017 total.
Primary Care Rate (0.30 in the primary care medical school model only; not used in research medical school ranking model)
The
percentage of a school's M.D. or D.O. graduates entering primary care
residencies in the fields of family practice, pediatrics and internal
medicine was averaged over 2015, 2016 and 2017.
Student Selectivity (0.20 in the research medical school model; 0.15 in the primary care medical school model)
• Median MCAT total score (0.13 in the research medical school model; 0.0975 in the primary care medical school model): This is the median
total Medical College Admission Test score of the 2017 entering class. For the second consecutive year, both the new
MCAT that was implemented starting in April 2015 and the old
MCAT were used in the rankings to compute the MCAT score indicator.
For
both MCAT measures used in the ranking calculations, the median total
scores for both the new and old versions were first converted to a
common
percentile scale and weighted by the proportion of the fall 2017
entering class who reported each test.
• Median undergraduate GPA (0.06 in the research medical school model; 0.045 in the primary care medical school model): This is the median
undergraduate GPA of the 2017 entering class.
• Acceptance rate (0.01 in the research medical school model; 0.0075 in the primary care medical school model): This is the proportion
of applicants for the 2017 entering class who were offered admission.
Faculty resources (0.10 in the research medical school model; 0.15 in the primary care medical school model): Faculty
resources were measured as the ratio of full-time science and full-time
clinical faculty to full-time M.D. or D.O. students in 2017.
For
the second consecutive year, U.S. News used a logarithmic
transformation of the original value for the faculty-student ratio since
it had
a skewed distribution. This logarithmic manipulation rescaled the data
and allowed for a more normalized and uniform spread of values across
the indicator.
After
this indicator was normalized using a log value, its indicator z-score
was calculated from the log values. In statistics, a z-score is a
standardized score that indicates how many standard deviations a data
point is from the mean of that variable. This transformation of the data
is essential when combining diverse information into a single ranking
because it allows for fair comparisons between
the different types of data.
Overall Rank
Indicators
were standardized about their means, and standardized scores were
weighted, totaled and rescaled so that the top school received 100;
other schools received their percentage of the top score. Medical
schools were then numerically ranked in descending order based on their
scores.
Specialty Rankings
These
rankings, which include pediatrics and internal medicine, are based
solely on ratings by medical school deans and senior faculty from the
list of schools surveyed.
This
year for the first time, U.S. News conducted specialty rankings in
anesthesiology, obstetrics and gynecology, psychiatry, radiology and
surgery.
These fields were added based on suggestions from medical schools deans
to better reflect the curriculum taught at medical schools.
Survey respondents each identified up to 10 schools offering the best programs in each specialty area.
Those
schools receiving the most votes in each specialty are numerically
ranked in descending order based on the number of nominations they
received,
as long as the school or program received seven or more nominations in
that specialty area. This means that schools ranked at the bottom of
each specialty ranking have received at least seven nominations.
The
specialty areas of drug and alcohol abuse, family medicine, geriatrics,
rural medicine and women's health are no longer surveyed.
Rank Not Published
For
both research medical schools and primary care medical schools, U.S.
News has numerically ranked the top three-fourths of the schools. The
bottom quarter of the research medical schools and primary care medical
schools are listed as Rank Not Published.
Rank
Not Published means that U.S. News calculated a numerical rank for that
school but decided for editorial reasons not to publish it. U.S.
News will supply schools listed as Rank Not Published with their
numerical ranks if they submit a request following the procedures listed
in the Information
for School Officials.
Schools marked as Ranked Not Published are listed alphabetically.
Unranked
If
a school is marked as Unranked, that means that U.S. News did not
calculate a numerical rank because the school did not supply enough key
statistical
data to be numerically ranked. Unranked schools are listed
alphabetically below those marked as Rank Not Published.
