Alan Zhou | Student Life

Washington University’s School of Medicine is no longer submitting data used for national medical schools rankings to U.S. News & World Report (USNWR).

The decision comes after the past month where multiple prominent medical schools including Harvard, Stanford, and Duke, announced they would stop submitting data to the ranking.

The ranking, which ranks schools by quality, student success, and research activity, has recently come under criticism. Harvard Medical School Dean George Daley said the ranking creates “perverse incentives” for institutions to report misleading data.

Dean David Perlmutter released a statement on Jan. 26 stating the medical school will no longer continue to submit data to USNWR, citing issues with the medical school’s holistic philosophy of education and how it interacts with the rankings.

“Commercialized rankings have not kept up with these transformations,” Perlmutter wrote. “They recognize the values and aspirations of the past, not the skills and tools that will carry us into the future.”

Joseph Krambs, president of the Class of 2022 and member of the Committee of Medical Student Education (COMSE) said the rankings are primarily used for business rather than educational value, and that education itself is not necessarily a priority to the ranking. 

“I sort of see it as a marketing and fundraising tool for institutions, because it’s not really limited to medical schools, or undergraduate institutions,” Krambs said. “It’s also applied to hospitals and other businesses…20 percent of [the ranking data] comes from the GPA and MCAT scores. It doesn’t really say anything about preparedness or medical training or the medical profession, other than to say that people who come into this institution are good test takers.” 

Krambs also said that because WashU as an institution prioritizes creating holistically skilled physicians beyond just statistics, the rankings that focused on things like GPA and the MCAT were incongruent to these aforementioned values.

“[WashU] looks at diverse backgrounds as an advantage. The goal is to ultimately train the best physicians, and I think the best physicians are the ones that can empathize and, as a student body, come from a diverse background,” Krambs said. “One of the things that U.S. News and World Report did was create a very rigid structure. And because this is a massive marketing and fundraising tool for institutions, you had to score highly or you had to maintain your rank.”

Perlmutter reflected this in the statement where he commented on USNWR’s shortcomings in accounting for the medical school’s comprehensive education. 

“Here at WashU, we’ve adopted a curriculum that is expansive, prioritizing active, individualized learning paths and meaningful pedagogical relationships with peers and mentors…[USNWR]’s methodology fails to account for so many of our most deeply held institutional values,” Perlmutter wrote.

First-year medical student Elisa Kodama said that while rankings could play into one’s decision for medical school, students generally consider more than just that, so not submitting data to the rankings will not negatively impact the school. 

“I also hope people will consider a bunch of other factors. I know that I did because it is kind of a long commitment to base off a running list,” Kodama said. “Hopefully, if there is a shift away from rankings, it will have positive impacts on how people choose their schools to make sure it’s a true fit and not just for a number.”

Leah Tolby, first-year medical student and COMSE member, said that she views the medical school not submitting data as a piece of a bigger trend.

“This kind of ranking mindset is pretty pervasive throughout a lot of education,” Tolby said. “I know for some people for undergrad, the rankings can be a really big source of pride or anxiety. I think it’s something that a lot of people can kind of relate to; it isn’t necessarily unique to medical school. And I also think a lot of this is started by law schools no longer reporting data to U.S. News. I think it’s a bigger issue than just medical school.” 

Kodama agreed with Tolby and said that statistics, like scores and rankings, are perhaps going to become less critically important to education as time goes on. 

“I don’t know if this has any truth to it, but I’ve seen vaguely suggested online that [the] MCAT may not be required in future applications,” Kodama said. “I don’t think any schools have actually done that, but things dropping from rankings kind of gives me that same essence.” 

Krambs said the steps away from these sorts of scores and rankings would benefit WashU education broadly.

“What it allows them to do is look for students that come from disadvantaged backgrounds, that come from a diverse perspective, a different culture, without weighing the MCAT and GPA super heavily,” Krambs said. “I think what that’s going to do is enrich the student body. But I think it depends on the administration to look beyond the metrics that they’re used to looking at.”