U.S. News released its 2012 best medical schools report today. The lead article in the med school component of the rankings reports a few of the highlights. You’ll see that Harvard Medical School again snagged the first place spot among the best research universities. While that seems to be pretty constant year-to-year, there were other minor jumps in the rankings, including Stanford University School of Medicine which jumped from 11th place last year to 5th place, now tied with Duke, UC San Francisco, and Yale.

Meanwhile, acceptance rates are way down, with Stanford accepting only 3.3% of applicants in 2010 and the Mayo Medical School accepting a mere 2.2%. The only school in the top 20 research institutions to accept more than 10% of applicants was Washington University in St. Louis (#4).

The primary care rankings also experienced very few significant changes, with the exception of three large jumps: Brown University Alpert Medical School jumped from 49th to 28th; University of Virginia went up 19 spots from 39th to 20th; and East Carolina’s Brody School of Medicine went from 28th place to 10th.

UC San Francisco and University of Washington in Seattle were the only two schools to make it to the top 10 of both research and primary care institutions.

And now for the rankings.

2012 Best Medical Schools – Research

1. Harvard University

2. University of Pennsylvania

3. Johns Hopkins University

4. Washington University, St. Louis

5. Duke University

5. Stanford University

5. UC San Francisco

5. Yale University

9. University of Washington, Seattle

10. Columbia University

10. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

2012 Best Medical Schools – Primary Care

1. University of Washington, Seattle

2. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

3. Oregon Health and Science University

4. UC San Francisco

4. University of Colorado, Denver

6. University of Minnesota

7. University of Nebraska Medical Center

8. University of Massachusetts, Worcester

9. University of Pennsylvania

10. East Carolina University (Brody)

10. University of Alabama, Birmingham

10. University of Iowa (Carver)

Please see U.S. News‘ article, “Medical School Rankings Methodology,” for details on how the med school rankings were determined.

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