In its latest rankings of top U.S. medical schools, U.S. News & World Report has named the University of Nebraska Medical Center a Tier 1 institution for primary care training.
In a shift from its former numerical rankings, the magazine is now grouping medical schools into four tiers. UNMC was one of only 15 institutions in the top tier for primary care. Those institutions were in the 85th percentile or higher of medical schools ranked.
UNMC also was named a Tier 2 medical school for research. There are 16 medical schools in Tier 1 and 36 in Tier 2, which consists of medical schools ranked between the 50th and 84th percentile.
UNMC also was ranked ninth of 168 medical schools in the percentage of graduates practicing in rural areas.
Interim Chancellor H. Dele Davies, MD, said he was pleased to see UNMC continue to be among the nation’s leaders in primary care and practicing in rural areas.
“While UNMC’s national profile continues to grow, these rankings reflect our commitment to our core mission – transforming the lives and improving the health of our fellow Nebraskans,” he said. “Our Tier 2 research ranking also reflects the hard work of our research faculty, students and staff and the increasing impact and recognition of our commitment to breakthroughs that have a positive impact on the lives of men, women and children around the world.”
Interim Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Jane Meza, PhD, said: “The rankings demonstrate the expertise and dedication of our faculty and students and our commitment as an academic medical center to meeting the needs of the underserved in Nebraska, both rural and urban.”
Bradley Britigan, MD, dean of the UNMC College of Medicine, agreed.
“The message here is the effort that is put in, both of our educators to provide the best academic experience possible for our students and of our students for their superlative performance,” Dr. Britigan said. “We take pride in this recognition.”
UNMC also was ranked 54th (of 168 schools) in medical schools with the highest percentage of graduates practicing in primary care.
U.S. News explained its new methodology:
“Medical schools are newly presented in evaluative tiers in lieu of ordinal rankings. Each school’s tier was derived from its overall score, calculated as always by summing the weighted normalized values generated across several factors of academic quality, outlined below. There are four tiers, with tier 1 medical schools the highest performing and tier 4 the lowest performing. Within each tier, schools are sorted alphabetically on usnews.com.”