Best Medical schools
Medical schools, ranked as programmes. The entry route differs so sharply between countries that comparing a US MD with a UK MBBS on a single list would be misleading — they are read here as two separate systems.
Before the ranking matters
- Graduate entry in the US, undergraduate entry in most of the world
- A US MD follows a bachelor's degree plus the MCAT — typically eight years total. UK, Australian, Indian and most other MBBS programmes admit directly from secondary school and run five to six years.
- International places are severely limited
- Many publicly funded medical schools cap or entirely exclude international admissions, and US MD programmes admit very few non-citizens, often requiring funds for the full course to be guaranteed up front.
- Licensing is national, and the degree alone isn't enough
- Practising requires national licensing exams (USMLE in the US, PLAB or the UKMLA in the UK) plus a residency or foundation post. Residency placement, not the school's rank, governs where you end up practising.
These rank programmes, not universities. A school's band here is independent of its university's overall position on this site — professional schools admit separately, are funded separately, and are ranked by different publications on different criteria. Where a row shows a university rank too, treat the two numbers as answering different questions.
Consensus band across US News Best Medical Schools (Research) for the US tier, and QS/THE Medicine for the international tier. Positions are bands, never a single publication's exact number for a single year (2025–26 rankings cycle). Coverage stops at the well-documented top tier; absence means outside that tier, not unranked.
Starring a row saves the university to your shortlist, since that's the level the rest of this site works at. Standalone graduate schools with no undergraduate institution here can't be starred.