This ranking is based on feedback from pre med students that have applied and have been interviewed at FAU med program.

The FAU program has gotten some good comments. It is listed on the ranking as the "University of Miami School of Medicine - Boca Raton Campus".

As new as the program is, this is very refreshing. With all the negative crap we have been reading about FAU, its nice to read something positive. Look at some of the comments of students that have been interviewed.

http://www.studentdoctor.net/interview/process_read.asp?school=223

FAU's program ranks 16th based on the student comments. This is great, as new as it is.

http://www.studentdoctor.net/medical-school-rankings.asp


If things look that good now, wait till the state of the art hospital is built on campus.

It looks as if FAU is in good company. If you read the ranking system info they basically say that all rankings are worthless. Even if they are worthless, it says something to me to be on the same end of the scale as schools like Duke and Northwestern.

GO OWLS!!!

The rankings might be worthless since they are based on student comments but they do have some value since these students are evaluating the professors, other students, facilities and the program in general. It looks like other med students read these comments when making a decision. The FAU campus was first choice for a number of the students.

The Boca campus ranks higher in student's evaluation than the Coral Gables campus of UM.

faualum said

 It looks like other med students read these comments when making a decision. The FAU campus was first choice for a number of the students.

Coincidentally, I also post on the Student Doctor Network (SDN) Board and I can tell you a little about these rankings.

Basically, whenever a new person comes onto the SDN baords and wants premed advice, it usually comes out that they're hoping to get into a "top medical school", as if it were that or nothing at all.

The rest of us, of course, are just trying to get into A medical school, let alone a godly medical school like UCSF.

We relay that the US News Rankings and related sites don't tell the full story and even though, for instance, UF's medical school is ranked higher than USF, more people prefer USF for a couple of reasons I won't go into here.

The premeds, much like high school seniors, don't believe this. So SDN compiled a list of rankings based on their own data collected from medical school interviews across the country. It's actually better data than the US News.

In this case, we have a relatively small sample of people rating the FAU-UM campus. When the number of ratings swells to, say, 200 people, expect FAU's star to drop a bit because you always have people who aren't going to like our campus for one reason or another. The only university I've seen that has gotten consistently high-rated there is Loyola University in Illinois… not a top school by US News standards but everybody who is in the know (the SDN people) know it's a top school because they go above and beyond for their students.

Getting back to how this impacts FAU… FAU's medical school campus attracts a lot of people because of the small class size. It's currently 32 people… compare that to 100+ class sizes at all other schools. Med students at FAU get doted on like princes and even people who interview there know it.

However, FAU's medical program was created to stem a doctor shortage and they're not going to do that very well if they stay at 32. Once FAU's class swells to 100+ like most colleges – like FAU's medical school was designed to do via the intention of the Legislature that created it – it will seem like every other medical school. At that point the star will really fall because it will be competing with medical schools 20x its age with facilities that have more money than God.

It's unfortunate but really, the best thing that could possibly happen is for FAU to expand to 64 students, cap it there, and take over the program completely to dissolve the UM connection.

But I don't see that happening.