If you've ever searched for dental school rankings on U.S. News & World Report, you've probably noticed something conspicuous: they don't exist. While U.S. News publishes widely followed rankings for medical schools, law schools, business schools, nursing programs, and dozens of other graduate disciplines, dental schools are nowhere to be found. It's one of the most common questions prospective dental students ask, and the answer goes back three decades to a principled stand by dental educators who decided enough was enough.

In 1994, the American Association of Dental Schools (now the American Dental Education Association) formally advised its 54 member institutions not to participate in the U.S. News ranking survey. The dental schools' objection was straightforward: the methodology was, in the words of Dr. Dominick DePaola, then-president of the Baylor College of Dentistry, "horribly flawed." When U.S. News attempted to proceed anyway, only about 35 percent of dental school administrators responded to the mailed surveys — well below the 50 percent threshold the magazine needed to consider the results credible. By early 1997, U.S. News officially canceled the dental school rankings. They have never returned.

The core problem was that U.S. News planned to rank dental schools using a purely reputational survey. Questionnaires were sent to deans and administrators asking them to rate peer institutions on a subjective scale. That was it. No clinical training data. No board exam pass rates. No student outcomes. No faculty-to-student ratios. No assessment of facilities, technology, or curriculum quality.

At the same time, U.S. News was using far more complex statistical models for its medical school rankings, incorporating admissions data, research funding, faculty resources, and other quantitative measures. Even Mel Elfin, then the executive editor of the U.S. News campus ranking issues, acknowledged the disparity, conceding that using a purely reputational survey for dental schools while applying a complex statistical method for medical schools was unfair.

Dental educators argued that their field presented unique challenges for ranking. Dentistry combines didactic education with intensive hands-on clinical training in a way that is difficult to capture with a simple reputation poll. The quality of a dental school depends on factors like clinical volume, the diversity of cases students encounter, simulation lab technology, the integration of digital dentistry, community outreach programs, and the mentorship students receive chairside — none of which a reputational survey could hope to measure.

More than 30 years later, U.S. News has never reintroduced dental school rankings. This isn't because they forgot about it. The dental education community has remained consistently opposed to participating in a system they believe would do more harm than good. The American Dental Education Association has continued to hold the position that a meaningful ranking would need to be built on rational, objective criteria rather than the opinions of a small, unrepresentative sample of administrators.

There's also a practical reality at play. U.S. News rankings depend on voluntary participation from the institutions being ranked. Without cooperation from a critical mass of dental schools, the magazine simply cannot produce a credible product.

There's a reasonable argument that the absence of U.S. News dental school rankings is a net positive for dental education. Rankings inevitably create perverse incentives. Medical schools have been criticized for chasing ranking metrics at the expense of their educational missions — inflating research spending, prioritizing selectivity over access, and making decisions based on what will move them up the list rather than what will best serve students and patients.

Without a dominant domestic ranking system, dental schools are free to compete on the merits of their programs rather than on their ability to game a formula. Prospective students are encouraged to evaluate schools based on the factors that actually matter to their individual careers: clinical training quality, board exam pass rates, geographic location, cost and financial aid, specialty program strength, and cultural fit.

That said, the lack of rankings does create challenges. Prospective students, especially those unfamiliar with the dental profession, often feel lost without a definitive list to guide their decision-making. And the vacuum has been filled by international ranking systems like the QS World University Rankings (topuniversities.com/university-subject-rankings/dentistry) and the Shanghai Ranking's Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (shanghairanking.com), which rank dental programs globally but rely heavily on research metrics that don't necessarily reflect the quality of clinical education.

Without a U.S. News ranking to lean on, prospective dental students need to do more legwork — but that's arguably a better approach anyway. The factors worth investigating include INBDE (Integrated National Board Dental Examination) first-time pass rates, specialty residency match rates, clinical patient volume and case diversity, tuition and average graduate debt loads, faculty-to-student ratios, the availability of advanced technology and simulation labs, geographic location relative to where you want to practice, and the strength of alumni networks.

It's also worth noting that every dental school in the United States must be accredited by the Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA), which sets minimum standards for curriculum, clinical training, and faculty qualifications. A degree from any CODA-accredited program qualifies graduates for licensure nationwide. For students planning careers in general dentistry, the name on the diploma matters far less than the skills they develop and their individual performance in school.

Research from the National Matching Services has reinforced this point: when residency program directors were surveyed about factors influencing their decision to interview applicants, dental school of graduation ranked only eighth out of fourteen factors. Class ranking, GPA, and professional evaluations all mattered significantly more.

Sources: "U.S. dental schools refuse to cooperate with newsmagazine's rating initiative," The Baltimore Sun, January 31, 1997. "Relationship between Medical School Diversity and Participation in the US News and World Report Survey," ScienceDirect, 2021.