U.S. News Medical School Rankings

We are writing to let you know that the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has chosen to withdraw from the U.S. News & World Report medical school rankings, effective immediately.

The leadership of Icahn Mount Sinai has long believed that the U.S. News medical school rankings have a harmful impact on medical education. The rankings provide a flawed and misleading assessment of medical schools; lack accuracy, validity, and relevance; and undermine the school’s core commitments to compassionate care, unrivaled education, cutting-edge research, a commitment to anti-racism, and outreach to diverse communities.

Medical education cannot be reduced to a set of numbers that purport to reflect its quality. Candidates to medical school want to know about culture and climate, mentorship, opportunities for research and community service, wellness initiatives, curricular outcomes, and the depth and breadth of student support.

Our counterparts at many other institutions agree, and several other medical schools, including those of Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, and the University of Pennsylvania, have recently announced their intention to no longer participate in the rankings.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are important factors in our decision. We believe that the quality of medical students and future physicians is reflected in their lived experiences, intersecting identities, research accomplishments, commitment to social and racial justice, and a set of core values that are aligned with those of our school. The U.S. News rankings reduce us to a number that does not do justice to these profoundly important attributes, instead perpetuating a narrow focus on achievement that is linked to reputation and is driven by legacy and privilege. Our school is committed to disrupting those very systems and structures, realizing that they have historically excluded many people and groups from the profession of medicine.

The integrity of research is an important factor in our decision. The rankings reduce our scientific innovation, discoveries, entrepreneurship, and clinical impact to one number: our total federal funding. This does not adequately represent the hard work, dedication, creativity, and benefit to humanity of our research enterprise and the many novel diagnostics and therapeutics it has produced.

For now, our decision to withdraw applies only to the medical school rankings, but we will re-evaluate our participation in other U.S. News rankings over time.

In the near term, U.S. News is likely to continue ranking schools that have withdrawn by using publicly available data. As we withdraw from the rankings, we are prepared to make significant investments to ensure that our vision, mission, values, and accomplishments define our reputation and are widely known. In the long term, we firmly believe that the many benefits that will accrue from the decision to withdraw will far outweigh the inequitable benefit that some schools have enjoyed as a result of the rankings.

Dennis S. Charney, MD
Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
President for Academic Affairs
Mount Sinai Health System

David Muller, MD, FACP
Dean for Medical Education
Marietta and Charles C. Morchand Chair
Department of Medical Education
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai