Your Top Ten Medical Schools and How To Use Your List

Student after student that I talk to is always interested in the top ten medical schools in the US. It is an interesting question. To illustrate the point I want to make lets use some examples. Let's say you were deciding between University of Washington Medical School and Princeton Medical School. Which one is better do you think? Where would you rather go assuming money was not a problem either way? Where do you think your education would be best?

Maybe you guessed it before I got here, but the fact is that Princeton does NOT HAVE A MEDICAL SCHOOL. So your education would be worth 0 there, whereas University of Washington is highly sought after for both research and clinical experience as well as many other things that they seem to do better than most everyone else. So, I want to present you with new knowledge since you are here seeking the top ten medical schools. And that is this: the top ten medical schools in the country are different from every applicant...let me say that again The top ten medical schools in the country are different for every applicant. If you are doing your research of medical schools correctly, you are looking for schools that are a good fit for you. Schools that, when you interact with them, make you feel like you belong there. The school should have programs, curriculum, and reputation that fit what you are trying to accomplish. Let's talk a bit more about these things so you can make your personalized top ten medical schools list.

Why Do You Want a Top Ten Medical School

When you press a little bit for people who are looking for a top ten medical school, they typically will give you one of two answers. They are either looking for the best education possible (which is a good thing to look for by the way) OR they are looking for a school that will sound really good and give you a good reputation with just that fact that you studied there (nothing wrong with that either if that is what is important to you). So why do you want to attend a top ten medical school? Is it for reputation? Is it for quality of education? Or is it for easier entrance in residency? All of these are good reasons, let's look at each.

I want to go to a top 10 medical school for its prestige

If you fit into this category there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Prestige is exceptionally important to doctors. They judge each other every single day based on where they go to school and who they studied with. It is part of a never ending way of judging other doctors. Is it right? Is it fair? WHO CARES! The fact is that it's done, and if it is done, it is something you should pay attention to.

When should you worry about prestige? Well, it helps anytime but here are some good times to really worry about it. If you are planning on becoming a scientist doctor, where you go to school will be very important. You will be giving lectures and conferences and saying "Graduate of Harvard Medical School" is a bit more impressive than saying "University of Arizona".

So what are those top ten medical schools that win for prestige? Well, split this into 2 cat orgies, lay people and doctors, there is some difference in how they will act toward each school.

Lay people tend to think that under grad and grad schools are the same (hence my Princeton example above) which is not true, but if you want to hang a sign for your patients then you should go to a school that sounds good as an under grad. Schools like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Brown, UCLA and well known medical institutions like Mayo, and Johns Hopkins.

On the other hand, if you want to impress doctors there are schools that have a good reputation as medical schools specifically. Schools like UCSF, Washington University in St Louis, University of Washington in addition to Harvard, Yale etc listed above. If you need more ideas about the which schools have the most prestige as a doctor...they will say...it doesn't matter where you go, but if you keep pushing them they will cave.

Your Personal Top Ten Medical Schools

This is way...WAY more important to 99.9% of applicants trying to get into the best medical schools they can. Fact is that there is a tremendous amount of difference between medical schools. Your job is to know what would help you the most to maximize the effectiveness of your education, and find the school that best delivers that. I'll help you do that. Lets actually make a new page for this since it is so important. Let's go here and find out how to best apply this concept to our school research.

Click Here to return from top ten medical schools to the medical school home page.
Click Here to return from top ten medical schools to the list of medical schools.