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Health and Medicine
Date August 29, 2023
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Brown University’s medical school to end participation in U.S. News ranking

Starting in 2024, Brown’s Warren Alpert Medical School will no longer submit data to U.S. News & World Report for its medical school ranking system.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The Warren Alpert Medical School will no longer submit data to U.S. News & World Report for its Best Medical Schools rankings, asserting that the rankings do not align with the Brown University medical school’s values or the qualifications or attributes it cultivates in training physicians. 

In an August 29 letter to the medical school community, Dr. Mukesh K. Jain, Brown’s dean of medicine and biological sciences and senior vice president for health affairs, said the decision is based on “the flawed methodology of the rankings and their negative consequences on medical education.” With the support of Brown’s president and provost, the move comes after years of discussions about whether the rankings comport with the school’s holistic approach to evaluating applicants. In recent months, Jain wrote, the medical school’s leadership team deepened these discussions and consulted with current students, alumni and faculty as well as members of the University’s governing body, the Corporation of Brown University.

“Central to Brown’s decision to end participation is our belief that such quantitative rankings do not adequately capture the quality of education nor the level of support provided to students at any medical school,” Jain wrote. “The rankings also do not reflect the unique foci and missions of all medical schools, instead ranking them on factors that are not equally valued by all schools. At their worst, they perpetuate a culture of rewarding the most elite and historically privileged groups.”

The change will take effect in 2024, as the 2023 rankings have already been published. This decision comes as more than a dozen leading medical schools across the country have also decided to cease providing data to the U.S. News & World Report medical school rankings. While the reasons for no longer participating vary from school to school, at the core of these decisions, Jain noted, is a flawed methodology that disregards or devalues attributes that prepare Brown-trained physicians to care for patients.

Jain cited the U.S. News ranking’s emphasis on undergraduate GPAs and MCAT scores for each school’s enrolled medical students among the specific driving factors in the decision to withdraw.

“While these are two factors among many that can be considered in evaluating applicants, they do not necessarily measure holistically the qualities that will make an outstanding Brown-trained physician,” Jain wrote. “We weigh a much broader set of criteria in reviewing applicants to the Warren Alpert Medical School, recognizing that there are many measures of preparation for medical school and many paths toward a life and career in medicine.”

The Warren Alpert Medical School values humanism and compassion, innovation and discovery, and anti-racism, diversity and equity, as well as social responsibility, and community engagement and service, Jain said — traits that cannot be adequately measured by a quantitative ranking scale. There is also the argument, he noted, that the standardized metrics of the U.S. News rankings may create an incentive for schools to direct their financial aid dollars to the higher GPA, higher MCAT-scoring students who will boost their U.S. News ranking.

Central to Brown’s decision to end participation is our belief that such quantitative rankings do not adequately capture the quality of education nor the level of support provided to students at any medical school.

Dr. Mukesh K. Jain Dean of medicine and biological sciences and senior vice president for health affairs, Brown University
 
Mukesh Jain

“While this has never been a factor at Brown, this can create bidding wars between medical schools and perpetuate inequities in who is ultimately admitted to the highest-ranked institutions,” Jain said. “Participating in a system that may fuel such inequity flies in the face of Brown’s commitment to access and inclusion.”

Additional factors that influenced the Warren Alpert Medical School’s decision to withdraw from the rankings include an overemphasis on research funding from the National Institutes of Health at the expense of research innovation and impact; a faculty evaluation approach that focuses on full-time faculty, which disadvantages schools like Brown that value the learning students gain from the clinical faculty who are practicing physicians in affiliated hospitals or other health care settings; and the lack of metrics that measure how much student support a school provides, what amenities and systems students can access, or how they fare after graduation.

These factors, Jain wrote, “demonstrate a clear misunderstanding of what truly impacts medical education.”

For prospective students who continue to seek accurate and transparent information about the Warren Alpert Medical School, data typically provided to U.S. News can be found on the Class Profile page on the school’s admissions and financial aid website. This information is updated annually.

After 2024, medical school rankings will not be based on new information provided by the Warren Alpert Medical School. However, it is possible that U.S. News will continue to rank schools that do not submit data, Jain noted, using publicly available information and surveys completed in previous years.

“Our mission at the Warren Alpert Medical School is to provide innovative medical education that prepares a diverse physician workforce to radically improve health and wellness for all — not to achieve ever-higher ranking status,” Jain wrote. “This step affirms our commitment to that mission and to our efforts to make medicine more accountable to the communities we serve.”

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