Required Reading
So you want to go to medical school. It’s not an easy path, not by a long shot, but if you’ve got the determination and the work ethic to get there, then it can be one of the most rewarding experiences you’ll ever have. Not to mention, it’ll help you for the rest of your life by paving the path for you to fill your days with richly rewarding work. But the first step is to actually get in to medical school, and to do that, you have to fulfill the medical school requirements for the schools you are applying to.
The “Best” Resource to Finding the “Best” Schools
The hunt to find the best medical schools can be very trying for student looking to go into medicine. This is not least because many of the measuring tools that are most wildly available are also fairly ineffective at telling a student if a given top medical school will be the best one for that particular student. The best medical schools in the country, on the US News report, are divided into the two lists of “Research” and “Primary Practice,” but even that won’t be enough to tell a student what he or she should choose. For instance, unsurprisingly, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Washington University in St. Louis are the top medical schools on the “Research” list. Any pre-med student would know that these schools are quite good academically, and have a tremendous amount of prestige to go with their names, but that does not necessarily mean that they are right for the student him or herself. The process of finding the best medical schools in the country is much more complex than these lists make it seem.
The “Objectivity” of Medical School Rankings
The list of numbers and names that will determine the future of so many aspiring young doctors is out. Yes, the US News medical school rankings 2010 has come, and the schools stand in their lines like proud, parading soldiers, all pomp and ceremony on the page. The medical school ranking system is designed to provide a fair and unbiased compilation of useful information for picking out medical schools when applying, and to that end, it rates the medical schools against each other in the categories of primary care and research. But the medical school rankings are imperfect, because ultimately the system is not quite as objective as it might sound.
The Economics of Medical School
Supply and demand rule the world, even in the world of health-care. The recent health reforms have struck a major blow in making health care affordable and accessible to all, but there are likely still other ways to increase the availability of health care to America, and even to the world. One of the most simplistic ways to accomplish this increase is with a greater number of doctors. Again, supply and demand has a huge effect upon the nature of the health care system. Part of the reason that health care is so costly is that there are not enough doctors to bring the cost down. This may not be a very large part of the issue, but it is an element of it, and it can be solved by making some changed to the medical school system.