Major medical schools follow Harvard's lead and pull out of US News rankings trends now
A number of medical schools, including Columbia, Stanford and Penn State, have followed Harvard's lead and withdrawn from U.S. News & World Report medical school rankings.
The schools have all offered similar explanations, arguing that the criteria used to generate rankings do not reward the best learning environments and that its preferences are overly influenced by the prestige and wealth of schools.
It comes just two months after Yale Law School pulled out of the U.S. News law school rankings, which it had topped for 32 years, saying that the list discourages financial aid for low-income students.
The US News list ranks the 'best medical schools' in the country, and is often used by prospective students and parents when determining which colleges to apply to.
It can also influence students' chances when applying for jobs, graduate school and PhD programs, as those who come from the best schools appear to be the most desirable candidates.
This spree of boycotts will see universities cut ties with the U.S. News & World Report, mainly by ceasing to provide it with the data it needs to create its current rankings.
Columbia's medical school was first to make the move after Harvard, announcing its decision on January 20
The schools have said that the criteria used to generate rankings do not reward the best learning environments and that its preferences are overly influenced by the prestige and wealth
Columbia's medical school was first to make the move after Harvard, announcing its decision on January 20, followed by Stanford a few days later on the 23rd and Penn State on the 24th. Later that day the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai also withdrew.
The dean of Columbia's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons Katrina Armstrong said in a statement that the incentives of the rankings are 'misaligned with the highest goals of medical education', and that they 'perpetuate a narrow and elitist perspective'.
U.S. News has two separate annual rankings for medical schools, one focused on research and another on primary care training. Harvard Medical School was at the top of the research ranking when the 2023 results came out in May.
When it announced its withdrawal on January 17, its dean, George Daley, cited 'philosophical' concerns.
Daley wrote in a statement that the ranking system creates 'perverse incentives' for schools to submit misleading data to boost their positions and to divert financial aid away from those with financial need to higher scoring students.
He said he had been contemplating the decision for six years and was inspired by the dean of Harvard Law School, who pulled his school from the lists very soon after Yale last year.
The statement put out by Icahn School of Medicine suggested that U.S. News
