Global rankings authority U.S. News & World Report on Tuesday published its list of the 2024 Best Medical Schools, but you won’t find where your institution ranks anywhere on the report.
Instead, the news organization organized institutions into tiers because of insufficient data. Nearly 20% of the top 100 medical schools in both research and primary care declined to participate in the statistical survey or submitted a survey that lacked key data, according to U.S. News & World Report.
“A comparative rating of participating schools is more informative than having no listing at all,” according to the report’s methodology.
This year’s list also leaves out reputational surveys. This was forecasted in November 2023 when U.S. News’s Chief Data Strategist Robert Morse announced that such measures would no longer be included in medical school methodology because “recent data indicates that many residency program directors do not consider medical school reputation in residency matching and instead focus on individual metrics such as Step scores, research and letters of recommendation.”
That also means that the list of best medical schools no longer covers specialties such as anesthesiology, surgery and family medicine.
The lists
Now that we’ve covered what’s new with this year’s report, let’s take a look at which schools made 2024’s “Tier 1” list in alphabetical order.
Tier 1 Medical Schools: Primary Care
- East Carolina University (Brody)
- Saint Louis University
- Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center
- University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
- University of California – Davis
- University of California – San Francisco
- University of Hawaii – Manoa (Burns)
- University of Kansas Medical Center
- University of Maryland
- University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School
- University of Minnesota
- University of Nebraska Medical Center
- University of New Mexico
- University North Texas Health Science Center
- Western University Health Sciences
Tier 1 Medical Schools: Research
- Baylor College of Medicine
- Case Western Reserve University
- Emory University
- Hofstra University/Northwell Health (Zucker)
- Mayo Clinic School of Medicine (Alix)
- Northwestern University (Feinberg)
- Ohio State University
- University of California – Los Angeles (Geffen)
- University of California – San Diego
- University of California – San Francisco
- University of Cincinnati
- University of Colorado
- University of Pittsburgh
- University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
- Vanderbilt University
- Yale University
