Top 20 Medical Schools

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Kizmet, Jul 11, 2017.

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  1. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

  2. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    I always thought San Fran at #4 was suposed to be the hot ticket for med. Not super well-known in other fields, but you get that sometimes, like UNLV for Hotel and Restaurant Management. I went to a school for undergrad that has a reknowned engineering program but only in a niche field. When I've told people from certain parts of Asia that I went to such-and-such university, they sometimes say "Wow, WHAT a school!" Then I tell them I never set foot in the engineering building in four years and the whole rest of the university is perfectly average, the third best university in a state with very average universities, and then they are confused and a bit disappointed.
     
  3. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

    I'm skeptical about rankings like this. Especially ones that start out with a paragraph like this article begins with. Is this really a list of the "best" medical schools (whatever that means) or a list of medical schools most attractive to foreign students? (Those aren't typically the same thing.) How can UK medical schools all suddenly all get worse, simply because the UK tightened up issuing student visas? Why were UK medical schools previously considered the 'best'? Because they taught medicine well or because they attracted lots of students from Asia or wherever it is?

    I would be inclined to grade schools separately on medical research and on physician preparation. Those two aren't necessarily the same thing. And those scores are apt to differ depending on whether one is examining preparation of general practitioners or specialists. There are medical schools that don't produce a lot of medical research but do produce very good physicians. And vice-versa.

    UCSF may not be well known among the general public outside the Bay Area, but it's huge among scientists and medical professionals. You can bet that everyone at Harvard Medical School knows all about it.

    FTF notes that UCSF isn't well known in subjects apart from medicine and the medical sciences. That's because it doesn't offer them.

    https://graduate.ucsf.edu/list-programs

    UCSF is the biomedical specialty campus in the UC system. It began back in the 19th century as UC Berkeley's medical school, then spun off and became a separate UC campus. It's analogous to the U. Mass. medical branch in Worcester or the SUNY medical campuses. In recent years UCSF has been expanding aggressively into biotechnology, biochemistry, genomics and quantitative biology. It's produced something like 5 Nobel prizes in those areas. It's #2 in the US for all universities in NIH research funding. It also produced some of the early biotechnology. Genentech spun off of UCSF (and then got in a big lawsuit with its parent over ownership of some patents).

    In the last few years UCSF's built an entirely new campus in the Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco, filled with new research buildings. Now that those are in, they are building a set of new teaching hospitals just to the south. And there's a whole collection of private corporate biotech research buildings going up in the surrounding blocks as well, just to be around the action. (The Golden State Warriors are building their new basketball arena nearby too.) It's a huge transformation for an area of the city once filled with abandoned rail yards. The joint's jumpin'.

    [​IMG]

    It's extremely well-regarded in physician preparation too. Here in the Bay Area, UCSF and Stanford are thought of very much as peer institutions in medicine and various related biomedical subjects. The 2017 US News rankings have UCSF as #3 in the US for both medical research and training primary care physicians.

    I'll say that the best general practitioner that I've ever met in my own life was a graduate of UCLA. Extraordinarily thorough. One time he just looked at a patient and suggested a possible diagnosis for a puzzling condition that had stumped a number of other physicians. It turned out to be right. Impressed me.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 11, 2017
  4. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    Med school rankings and nursing rankings I've seen do bifurcate those exactly as you suggest, so obviously you're thinking's right in line with the experts on this; discovered this recently while looking up schools for a daughter of mine who aspires to be an MD (annoyingly proud father alert). My university ranks nationally in terms of prep for their nursing program, very well-regarded, but they're not even on the radar for research rankings nationally.


    Had no idea that was the case, always assumed they were just another university with a full range of offerings (but at least I did know they had a majorly elite med school).
     
  5. Aroon

    Aroon New Member

    Do you want to know the top medical schools in the world or in a particular place or country?
     
  6. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    Given that this is explicitly about U.S. schools, the latter.
     
  7. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    As I have recently been reminded, this board may predominantly be about US schools but certainly not "explicitly." There are hundreds, maybe thousands of threads about non-US schools to be found here. I would suggest that Aroon visit google with his question. I'm sure there are multiple lists of Best Medical Schools..."
     
  8. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    Yes, but I was referring to this thread.
     
  9. Aanya Devendra

    Aanya Devendra New Member

    According to me, a medical career starts with finding the med school that best fits your needs. Today many students are preferring to study medicine in the Caribbean countries. Caribbean has been gaining popularity as a study abroad destination as students search for authentic experiences that are unavailable back home. In order to have the best study abroad experience possible, it is vital that you have a clear idea of what you want so that you can choose the program that is most suited for you. After all, studying abroad is often one of the best college memories one can have, and you certainly want to do it right!

    A few best Caribbean medical schools are Caribbean Medical University, Trinity School of Medicine, Texila American University, Ross University School of Medicine and many more.
     
  10. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    Hey, just a wild guess, but do you know someone named Maria Butina?
     
  11. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

    According to me, one of the problems with "Caribbean countries" (a vague geographic category) is that a number of them have let themselves become domiciles for what I would classify as medical mills.

    To their credit, they have recognized the problem and to combat it, the CARICOM countries have created a medical accreditor called the Caribbean Accreditation Authority for Medicine and Health Programs. By all accounts they run a pretty tight ship and align their standards with the LCME, the US medical school accreditor.

    Do you represent one of these? Or another one, the one that's owned and operated from India? There have been several posts on Degreeinfo in recent weeks pushing "Caribbean medical schools", all written in a very similar style.

    Of the four schools you name, only two (Trinity on St. Vincent and Ross on Dominica) appear to be accredited by the Caribbean Accreditation Authority for Medicine and Health Programs. So those two might represent low-end options for students who can't get admitted to a more conventional medical school. It's hard to imagine how they could be considered "top 20 medical schools", but might conceivably qualify as "one of the handful that would accept me as a student". Not very inspiring.

    http://www.caam-hp.org/assessedprogrammes.html

    Of Ross and Trinity, only Ross seems to be recognized by the California Medical Board as an acceptable foreign medical school. So out of your four, only Ross would would qualify me to practice medicine here in California and in the other US states that use California's list.

    http://www.mbc.ca.gov/Applicants/Medical_Schools/Schools_Recognized.aspx
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2018
  12. japhy4529

    japhy4529 House Bassist

    Perhaps it's time to clear the trolls from DI? I know it's like playing a game of whack-a-mole!
     
  13. cookderosa

    cookderosa Resident Chef

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