U.S. News Posts Updated 2023-2024 Best Medical School Rankings

The U.S. News and World Report has posted the final 2023-2024 Best Medical School (Research) rankings and Harvard Medical School is back on top. The final rankings are significantly different from the “preview” of the 2023-2024 top 15 programs published in April. A U.S. News spokeswoman explained the reasoning behind the changes in an emailed statement to Medpage Today. The preview, “did not include affiliated hospitals for NIH funding," she wrote.

Johns Hopkins and University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman each dropped by one rank to second and third, respectively. Vanderbilt and the University of Washington, which were not included within the top 15 programs in the preview, are now tied for the fifth and 13th ranks, respectively. 

See the top 13-ranked programs below, which due to a multitude of ties includes 17 schools. We also show the final and preview ranks. 

Final Rank Preview Rank School

1 3 Harvard University

2 1 Johns Hopkins University

3 2 University of Pennsylvania (Perelman)

4 6 Columbia University

5 9 Duke University (tie)

5 7 Stanford University (tie)

5 4 University of California—San Francisco (tie)

5 n/a Vanderbilt University (tie)

5 4 Washington University in St. Louis (tie)

10 14 Cornell University (Weill) (tie)

10 13 New York University (Grossman) (tie)

10 7 Yale University (tie)

13 14 Mayo Clinic School of Medicine (Alix) (tie),

13 12 Northwestern University (Feinberg) (tie)

13 9 University of Michigan—Ann Arbor (tie)

13 11 University of Pittsburgh (tie)

13 n/a University of Washington (tie)

U.S. News and World Report Takes Down Law School and Medical School Rankings Previews

The U.S. News and World Report just removed the Best Law School and Best Medical School previews, which were posted earlier this month. In place of the previews, which showed the Top 14 Law Schools and Top 15 Medical Schools: Research, U.S. News posted this announcement, which explains that the organization has received a number of data update requests from law and medical schools:

As U.S. News previously announced, we are dealing with an unprecedented number of inquiries during our embargo period for the 2023-2024 Best Graduate Schools, including requests from law and medical schools to update data submitted after the collection period.

While we address these inquiries, we have removed the preview content for the 2023-2024 Best Medical Schools: Research and 2023-2024 Best Law Schools rankings published here on April 11. As previously noted, the rankings are not final until they are published in their entirety on USNews.com.

The previews’ removal falls after two announced delays in the publication of the full rankings for law and medical schools. The organization has not yet provided an expected publication date for the rankings, although it published other graduate school rankings, including business schools, today. 

U.S. News and World Report Postpones Law and Medical School Rankings Indefinitely

The U.S. News and World Report just announced that the release of the “Best Law School” and “Best Medical School” rankings will be postponed indefinitely. The news comes shortly after the organization delayed the publication of all graduate rankings by a week, from April 18th to April 25th, to account for additional data review and validation. U.S. News still plans to publish all other graduate program rankings, including business schools, on April 25th. 

The withdrawal of many law and medical schools from the rankings earlier this year spurred U.S. News to depend more heavily on publicly available data than in the past. After publishing a preview of the top 14 ranked law schools and top 15 ranked medical research programs earlier this month, the organization allowed school officials the opportunity to review the data under an embargo period. This standard practice led to an “unprecedented” number of questions and calls for additional review, which has apparently led to the delay. 

In a letter written to the U.S. News and shared with Reuters, Harvard Law Assistant Dean Marva de Marothy wrote, "Although we no longer participate in the U.S. News rankings, we expect the magazine to use accurate, publicly available numbers if it intends to continue to make representations about our law school.”