UM School of Medicine Named Top Among Medical Schools for Primary Care Training in US News Rankings

The University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) has been named among the top medical schools for primary care training in the new 2024 U.S. News & World Report rankings. The school was named a Tier 1 institution, which places it among the top 15 institutions in the nation for primary care training.

Instead of numerical rankings, U.S. News is now grouping medical schools into four tiers. Those institutions in the top tier were in the 85th percentile or higher of medical schools ranked.

“This is a tremendous accomplishment and a testament to our commitment to our core mission which is to recruit and educate talented medical students who are representative of the Maryland population and eager to give back to their communities,” said Mark T. Gladwin, MD, who is the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and Dean of UMSOM, and Vice President for Medical Affairs at University of Maryland, Baltimore. “We are particularly proud that more than 70 percent of our students come from Maryland, and nearly 40 percent choose to practice here in the State.”

UMSOM was also named a Tier 2 medical school for research, placing it among the top quartile of medical schools in the nation.

“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,” U.S. News stated on its website explaining the methodology of the rankings. For primary care rankings, they looked at medical school graduates practicing in primary care specialties, and those entering primary care residencies. For research rankings, they considered total research activity per faculty member, total NIH research grants, and average NIH research grants per faculty member.

Both sets of rankings also considered student selectivity, including MCAT scores, GPA, and acceptance rates, as well as faculty resources like faculty to student ratios.

“We are poised to soar to even greater heights as we work to lead research on generational health challenges and other emergent health priorities,” said Dean Gladwin. “These new rankings are an indicator that we’re heading in the right direction, and now we must continue to build continuously across all our departments, institutes, and center to become a national leader among medical schools.”

About the University of Maryland School of Medicine

Now in its third century, the University of Maryland School of Medicine was chartered in 1807 as the first public medical school in the United States. It continues today as one of the fastest growing, top-tier biomedical research enterprises in the world -- with 46 academic departments, centers, institutes, and programs, and a faculty of more than 3,000 physicians, scientists, and allied health professionals, including members of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, and a distinguished two-time winner of the Albert E. Lasker Award in Medical Research. With an operating budget of more than $1.2 billion, the School of Medicine works closely in partnership with the University of Maryland Medical Center and Medical System to provide research-intensive, academic and clinically based care for nearly 2 million patients each year. The School of Medicine has nearly $600 million in extramural funding, with most of its academic departments highly ranked among all medical schools in the nation in research funding. As one of the seven professional schools that make up the University of Maryland, Baltimore campus, the School of Medicine has a total population of nearly 9,000 faculty and staff, including 2,500 students, trainees, residents, and fellows. The combined School of Medicine and Medical System ("University of Maryland Medicine") has an annual budget of over $6 billion and an economic impact of nearly $20 billion on the state and local community. The School of Medicine, which ranks as the 8th highest among public medical schools in research productivity (according to the Association of American Medical Colleges profile) is an innovator in translational medicine, with 606 active patents and 52 start-up companies. In the latest U.S. News & World Report ranking of the Best Medical Schools, published in 2021, the UM School of Medicine is ranked #9 among the 92 public medical schools in the U.S., and in the top 15 percent (#27) of all 192 public and private U.S. medical schools. The School of Medicine works locally, nationally, and globally, with research and treatment facilities in 36 countries around the world. Visit medschool.umaryland.edu.