Woke Medical Schools Hate That US News Has Standards

Why are so many elite medical schools leaving the famous US News and World Report rankings?

In recent weeks, the medical schools affiliated with Harvard, Pennsylvania, Stanford, Columbia, and many other prestigious institutions have taken this strange path. The reason is as simple as it is concerning: These schools are more committed to woke ideology than medical excellence.

These medical schools are more-or-less honest about what they’re doing. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai said its commitment to “commitment to anti-racism” and “outreach to diverse communities” compel it to leave the rankings. The University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine said the rankings “measure the wrong things.”

Really? US News and World Report rankings are based in large part on MCAT scores and grade point averages of accepted medical school applicants. These measures are the best known indicator of students’ ability to excel in medical school, which is why US News started ranking them in the first place. The whole point is to help medical schools select and train the best possible future physicians.

Yet these institutions are less concerned with training the best physicians because of woke demands for diversity. Penn put it bluntly when announcing its decision. It stated: “The USNWR measures encourage the acceptance of students based upon the highest grades and test scores… The Perelman School of Medicine aims to serve the needs of a changing world, including diverse communities and stakeholders ranging from prospective students to the patients who rely on the physicians, scientists, and leaders we train.”

In other words, merit doesn’t matter. Academic achievement doesn’t matter. Subjective criteria apparently do. Yet that inevitably means that Penn will recruit students who don’t perform as well on academic and testing criteria. Eliminating the rankings allows them to take in less-qualified students.

Penn is not alone. Elite medical schools are now obsessed with skin color, and they want to recruit more lower-performing minority students without having their rankings hurt. Therefore, they left the rankings, so they can pretend to be elite while lowering standards.

This turn of events should worry every patient – which means every American. The nation’s top medical schools are deliberately downplaying merit in recruiting future physicians. Lowering standards is a surefire path to lower the quality of care that patients receive for decades to come. As Penn said, “The USNWR rankings perpetuate a vision for medical education and the future physician and scientist workforce that we do not share.” It should be deeply concerning that elite medical schools don’t share the vision of training the best possible medical professionals.

When Americans look at a medical school that isn’t participating in the US News and World Report rankings, they should think to themselves: This medical school is a threat to my health.