The rankings at BestMedicalDegrees.com adhere to a unique methodology. We created a formula using reputable data points to assess each institution's value. This guide provides sources and ranking criteria to explore our methodology.
To develop these rankings, we examined three main factors: academic quality, affordability, and online flexibility. Within those categories, we consider several subfactors, such as enrollment rate or student loan default rate, which come from reputable national databases. Then we plug those data points into our proprietary formula. You can find out more about how we calculate this formula below.
While these rankings should help students as they research potential schools, these lists are not entirely comprehensive. We do not include every school, especially if that school did not have enough data to make an objective calculation. Finally, no editorial or outside influence affected these rankings — we did not allow any school to pay for a higher score.
About Our Data
Our ranking data comes from publicly available, reputable courses. The U.S. Department of Education runs the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which provides the most comprehensive compilation of higher education data from across the country. The NCES collects several data measurements, such as graduation and retention rates, student-to-faculty ratios, and demographic information.
We pulled much of the data from the NCES in December 2020 to create these rankings. As part of the assessment process, our quality assurance team checked each school. If an institution fails to provide a significant amount of data, the team eliminates it from these rankings to make these calculations as accurate as possible. If you want to double-check any data points for yourself, you can find a specific school through the NCES' integrated postsecondary education system, an easily searchable tool where you can find datasets for institutions or reports on national education figures.
A Breakdown of Our Ranking Factors and Subfactors
The tables below explore exactly how we create these rankings for the best medical degrees. We consider these factors and subfactors for three types of rankings for online programs: general "best of," affordability, and best value rankings. You can also see how we weighed each metric to calculate the rankings.
"Best of" Rankings
Affordability Rankings
Best Value Rankings
Subfactors for Quality
- Enrollment rate
- Full-time retention rate
- Student-to-Faculty Ratio
Subfactors for Affordability
- Avg. net price for students awarded grant or scholarship aid
- Federal student aid default loan rate
- Avg. amount of grant and scholarship aid awarded
- Median debt for graduates (six years after entry)
Subfactors for Reputation
- Percent admitted total
- Admissions total
- Mean earnings of graduates six years after enrolling*
Subfactors for Program Selection
- Percent of students enrolled in online programs at specific level
- Percent of students enrolled online overall
- Percent of degrees offered at specific level
*Weighted more heavily for Best Value rankings