Chronicle of Higher Education, ‘U.S. News’ Medical-School Rankings Are Out — Except They’re Not Really Rankings:
U.S. News & World Report’s annual “Best Medical Schools” lists were published on Tuesday, and, for the first time, the schools don’t have ordinal ranks. Instead, they’re organized into four tiers. Within each tier, the schools are listed in alphabetical order.
Although some rankings critics have touted tiers as a better alternative to ordinal ranks, U.S. News analysts don’t appear to agree, necessarily. Instead, it seems as if “Best Medical Schools: Research” and “Best Medical Schools: Primary Care” are tiered this year because too many schools didn’t supply the magazine’s analysts with the data they needed to create rankings. …
Twenty percent of last year’s top-100 medical schools for research and primary care didn’t return U.S. News’s statistical survey this year [27% of law schools did not submit data to U.S. News]. Schools that didn’t fill out the survey are listed as unranked. Among them are some of the country’s best-known doctor-training programs, such as Harvard University’s, the Johns Hopkins University’s, and the University of Pennsylvania’s. …
Another notable change this year was that U.S. News analysts dropped reputational surveys from their assessment of medical schools. … [B]ecause U.S. News’s lists of best medical schools for specialities, such as anesthesiology, family medicine, and surgery, are based entirely on reputational surveys, those lists are now gone. …
Last year, for its 2023-24 “Best Medical Schools” publications, U.S. News assigned ordinal rankings for nonsubmitting schools anyway. This year the publication still has ranks for “Most Diverse Medical Schools,” which are calculated from the percentage of each school’s student body that identifies as a racial minority underrepresented in medical schools, such as Black, Hispanic, and American Indian. …
Could the undergraduate lists, too, end up tiered because of a lack of data? Last year, at least, those responsible for submitting undergraduate-related numbers to U.S. News seemed to have less of an appetite for rebellion than law- and medical-school deans did.
Prior TaxProf Blog coverage:
- Law School Rankings Revolt Spreads To Medical Schools: #1 Harvard Will Not Send Data To U.S. News (Jan. 18, 2023)
- What Do Dramatic Changes To U.S. News Medical School Rankings Methodology Portend For Law Schools: 'Transparency Credits' For Non-Boycotting Schools, Faculty Citation Counts? (Dec. 20, 2023)
