UMKC’s med school purposefully chooses to be unranked in the USNWR rankings (http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-medical-schools/university-of-missouri-kansas-city-04058) - this is for both the research rankings list and they also have a separate primary care rankings list. It’s definitely not by accident. The school can change their mind at any time and choose to be ranked just like the rest, but they don’t want to. You can ask them yourself why this is exactly the case, but it is a valid question for people to ask. This is in contrast to all other Missouri allopathic med schools - Wash U, SLU, and Mizzou, who choose to be a part of the rankings. You can see what exactly contributes to that ranking here, which is 2 pages: http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/articles/medical-schools-methodology. You can see what unranked means quoted from that link:
So in dividing up medical schools, you can usually divide them into those in the top-tier, those in the middle-tier, and those in low (a.k.a. bottom) tier. The tier usually helps you much more than an individual ranking which can fluctuate on a year-to-year basis - i.e. there isn’t that much difference between a med school that is ranked #7 vs. a med school that is ranked #9, but there will be a huge difference between a Top 10 med school and a middle-tier med school, for example, or if you were comparing a solid middle-tier med school and a bottom-tier med school, even though certain things everyone has to do – i.e. taking class exams, taking boards, rotating thru required clinical rotations with evaluations, etc.
So each of those categories can then even be further subdivided:[ul]
[]Top-tier - Top 5 school, Top 10 school, Top 20/25 school
[li]Middle-tier - i.e. strong middle-tier, lower middle-tier, etc. (this category usually includes a lot of the strong med schools that just happen to be publicly funded by the state)[/li][]The low/bottom tier which is usually not stratified any further.[/ul]
Where each category largely differs and is much more relevant to you as a med student, is in these areas, which are eventually important and do contribute to matching into certain specialties, especially the competitive ones:[ul]
[]promotion and curriculum policies for students (basic sciences cut down to 1 or 1.5 years so you get more months of elective time, Pass/Fail only grading in the basic science years for lower stress/lower competitiveness/more teamwork, getting to choose when to take Step 1 when you want to before/after clinicals)
[]resources and opportunities available (getting involved in basic science or clinical research going on in the specialty you want, getting really involved in student organizations which get money to do certain projects, getting another terminal degree - PhD, MBA, MPH, etc., ability to rotate in the third year at very well-known and/or well-regarded hospitals who then have connections and networks to other residency programs).
[li]reputation (what some people call “prestige”) in terms of how residencies view those graduates coming from certain med schools usually based on previous experience, or because they have really well-known people in the field who can write them good letters. Schools with good reputations tend to able to recruit these bigwigs.[/ul][/li]Top tier medical schools includes places that are medicine meccas in terms of research and medical residency training - Harvard, Stanford, Hopkins, UCSF, Penn, Yale, Wash U in St. Louis, etc., but as you go further down it also includes publicly state funded med schools that have really good medical centers or good research going on: Mayo, University of Washington, UCSD, UVa, Michigan, Emory, Baylor College of Medicine, UT-Southwestern, etc.
UMKC, no doubt, would fit into the bottom/low tier category for several reasons:[ul]
[]the school doesn’t bring in a lot of external/extramural funding that doesn’t come from student tuition
[]the school’s mission and has been from the beginning is mainly to put out clinical physicians that serve the community especially in primary care areas, hence the much greater emphasis in the curriculum in primary care – Year 1 & 2 Fundamentals of Medicine, Internal Medicine outpatient clinic half-day per week in the last 4 years; 2 months of inpatient Internal Medicine every year in the last 3 years, required 2 Family Medicine rotations - one in Year 4 and one in Year 5
[]the overall research foundation/base of UMKC’s medical school is quite weak in comparison to other medical schools both in basic science research and clinical research - although there are certain narrow specialty areas in which they have increased it in, which I previously listed. You can compare this to medical schools that have a very good research foundation, both in basic science AND in clinical research and whose students in much huger numbers, tend to go for, and be very successful at, getting specialist-type residencies since they can easily participate in these endeavors.
[]not many bigwig physicians, physician-scientists, or full-time researchers who are attracted and more likely to work in places that support their work[/ul]
Now someone here previously stated that they don’t care about research, and asked so why does it matter, because when they become a physician, they don’t want to do research or become a full-time research scientist. Most graduating physician residents, in general, will not become full-time researchers, when they become board-certified attendings. Most of them also will not be working in academic medical centers connected to a medical school.
From the vantage point of a medical student, the purpose of having research at their medical school, whether it is in basic science or clinical research, is different. Specialties that tend to be more competitive, need another way to further differentiate and stratify candidates. When all applicants to their specialty have the best grades, stellar board scores, are at the top of their respective class, what’s left? Well another one of those important factors is research, especially in the student’s specialty of interest, which shows your commitment not only to the field, but in also contributing and furthering the knowledge in that field.
Even if you’re going for something like GI, Cardiology, or Heme/Onc, which are competitive subspecialties in Internal Medicine, research and publishing are one of the parts of your application that you have to have in order to realistically compete for those limited number of fellowship slots. It’s sort of “paying your dues” so to speak, to get the competitive specialty you want, even though you may do no research later at all on when you’re an attending.