Harvard Medical School Withdraws From U.S. News’ Rankings - Forbes

The Harvard Medical School (HMS) volition nary longer enactment successful U.S. News & World Report’s rankings of aesculapian schools, dealing the latest stroke to the influential acceptable of higher acquisition rankings issued annually by that publication.

In a letter written to the Harvard assemblage connected Tuesday, George Q. Daley, the dean of HMS, said the schoolhouse would nary longer lend information to the publication. While acknowledging respective concerns astir the methodology down the rankings, Daley said that the crushed for his determination was much fundamental.

“Educational leaders person agelong criticized the methodology utilized by USNWR to measure and fertile aesculapian schools. However, my concerns and the perspectives I person heard from others are much philosophical than methodological, and remainder connected the principled content that rankings cannot meaningfully bespeak the precocious aspirations for acquisition excellence, postgraduate preparedness, and compassionate and equitable diligent attraction that we strive to foster successful our aesculapian acquisition programs,” helium wrote.

In U.S. News’ 2023 ratings for aesculapian schools based connected research, Harvard placed first.

Daley added that helium had “contemplated this determination since becoming dean six years ago. The courageous and bold moves by my respected workfellow Dean John Manning of Harvard Law School and those of adjacent instrumentality schools compelled maine to enactment connected behalf of Harvard Medical School. What matters astir to maine arsenic dean, alumnus, and module subordinate is not a #1 ranking, but the prime and richness of the acquisition acquisition we supply astatine Harvard Medical School that encourages idiosyncratic maturation and lifelong learning.”

The HMS determination comes connected the heels of akin moves past twelvemonth by instrumentality schoolhouse deans astatine respective prominent universities specified arsenic Yale, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Northwestern, Georgetown, Columbia, University of Michigan, and the University of California, Berkeley, each of whom said that they would nary longer enactment successful the rankings due to the fact that they were flawed and did not correspond the values of ineligible acquisition they wanted to instill successful students. Those moves rapidly prompted U.S. News to marque a fig of changes successful its instrumentality schoolhouse ranking methodology going forward.

In effect to Harvard’s announcement, Eric Gertler, CEO and enforcement president of U.S. News, said that “Our ngo is to assistance prospective students marque the champion decisions for their acquisition future...We cognize that comparing divers world institutions crossed a communal information acceptable is challenging, and that is wherefore we person consistently stated that the rankings should beryllium 1 constituent successful a prospective student’s decision-making process. The information is, millions of prospective students annually sojourn U.S. News aesculapian schoolhouse rankings due to the fact that we supply students with invaluable information and solutions to assistance with that process.”

Daley acknowledged the request for students to person accurate, transparent accusation astir their aesculapian schoolhouse choices and said that HMS would publically stock cardinal accusation connected its admissions website. He added that “comparable details for each U.S. aesculapian schools, including HMS, are disposable successful their raw, unweighted signifier via the Medical School Admission Requirements (MSAR) Reports for Applicants and Advisors, portion of the Association of American Medical Colleges website.

Now the question becomes whether the HMS determination volition pb different aesculapian schools to extremity their information successful the rankings, resulting successful a domino effect akin to that seen with the instrumentality schools.