As medical school applicants apply to, interview at, and ultimately decide which institution to attend, careful planning and research is essential. The internet is easily accessible and multiple studies have shown the importance of websites in recruitment for residency,5,8,9 which likely applies to students applying for medical school as well. This will likely be of growing importance in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, as in-person methods of evaluating prospective institutions are being replaced with virtual means. Medical schools spend a substantial time and effort recruiting competitive and diverse students throughout the year with advertisements, information sessions, carefully planned interview days, second-look weekends, phone calls, financial aid offers, and more.[19] While these efforts will continue to be important, maintaining a medical school website with adequate information and quality is paramount, particularly for today’s prospective student. For example, a survey of medical school students applying for residency found that 41% of applicants decided not to apply to at least one program solely based on the quality of its residency website, and 78% of applicants claimed information provided in the residency program website influenced their decision to apply to a particular program.[20]
A recent study examining prospective students’ medical school preferences reported the most important factors for medical school choice were academic prestige, location, and the “intangibles,” such as “gut feelings” and personal interactions.[21] According to our study, medical schools rarely included US News and World Report rankings on their websites, average USMLE Step 1 score, or USMLE Step 1 pass/fail rate. These factors, which are associated with the prestige of the school, should be incorporated onto medical school websites. With regards to location, medical schools provided descriptions of the location of the medical school nearly 70% of the time. This becomes increasingly important with online interviews as many applicants may not be able to see the area for themselves. Another area for improvement for medical school websites could be providing state-by-state demographic information, which was only listed 19% of the time. However, the “intangibles,” such as “gut feelings” and personal interactions were student wellness resources listed, clubs and interest groups, and social media links which were listed 90%, 81% and 84% of the time. This shows medical schools are likely aware of the “intangibles” and attempt to address them with more personal and social content.
With the rise of social media for recreational and professional purposes, integrating social media effectively and efficiently could help medical schools recruit desired applicants and help applicants learn more about different schools. We found 84% of medical schools’ websites contained links to a form of social media representing their program, but 16% of programs did not have a directly accessible social media page for their program. This suggests an area for improvement. Having a social media site available for applicants could prove useful to students and programs, as a study done involving nearly 1000 medical students applying for residency showed that 68% of students reported using social media to learn about programs and 10% reported that the information found in the social media pages influenced their decisions on where to apply.[22] Similarly, a survey of medical students applying for residency suggested social media as an efficient method for highlighting social activities to improve recruitment.[23]
Information on current enrolled medical students, such as class demographics and state-by-state data, may be the only exposure of such applicants to the unique personalities and backgrounds of students in the program before deciding to apply to a program. Class demographics and state-by-state data were only listed on 61% and 19% of medical school websites, respectively. Medical schools may benefit from improving these sections of their websites. We also found medical school websites do not have much information pertaining to individual students. However, many residency websites often include photos of the class, photos of each individual student, and small, personal descriptions of each resident. This is an area for medical school websites to give more personalization to their program. Of course, maintaining appropriate confidentiality of the students should be considered.
Additionally, we found curriculum and research were not adequately addressed on medical school websites. For example, attendance policy was only listed on 27% of websites, grading policies were listed on 34% of websites, and research requirement information was listed on 25% of websites. As medical education becomes more personalized to the needs of individual students, understanding the individual needs of students, details such as lecture attendance policy, grading policies, and research requirements are helpful details that could help applicants choose which programs to apply to based on their unique learning style.[24–26] These details are essential as applicants choose to which programs they will apply. Also, while many of these topics are discussed during interviews, these details can be forgotten or unclear, and a more robust website would be useful in addressing these important questions when medical students are deciding which school to attend. Including more information on curriculum and research could help medical students decide which programs to apply to and attend and help programs recruit students who are a better fit for the curriculum of the school. Recent articles have suggested that residency programs expand the amount of information for applicants during the COVID-19 interview cycle, and perhaps the same should apply to medical schools.[27]
While some aspects of medical school websites are lacking, we found medical school websites are very accessible through the MSAR database and the AOA website. Of the 192 medical schools examined in our study, 89% of medical school program listings in AOA or MSAR provided direct links, while only 10% were absent or non-functional, and 1% were indirect links. However, the number of multiple-step, absent, and non-functional links could still be improved.
The top 25 schools in the United States according to United States News and World Report 2021 had more study variables listed on their websites than non-top 25 schools, such as information on the research requirement and average financial aid. In addition, allopathic websites were more likely to contain variables relating to curriculum, research, demographics, admissions information, and faculty, while osteopathic websites were more likely to contain information in the financial aid and social categories. Future investigation should determine why these differences exist, and whether these differences affect prospective student recruitment.
Future research should aim to determine how the COVID-19 pandemic and lack of online information on medical school websites could be affecting the number of applications submitted per applicant.
Limitations of our study include the subjective nature of analyzing medical school websites. However, we feel our method of data collection was standardized sufficiently to control for ambiguity. Another limitation was the lack of established standardized criteria for evaluating websites. Every item that could be important to a medical school applicant was not analyzed. As a solution, we included a variety of items and developed search criteria based on studies evaluating residency website content and the recent experience of the authors of our study. Lastly, only including items listed directly on the medical school website rather than on external links could underestimate the presence of items on websites in our study. However, this was an important factor to determine the accessibility of information and user-friendly status of the websites. Our study does not address accuracy or quality of information contained on websites. Notwithstanding these limitations, we believe our analysis provides valuable insight for medical school directors, website developers, and medical school applicants. Future areas of study could include an in-depth analysis of social media use among medical schools, how website quality affects the number of medical school applications, and why differences in website content exist between different programs, such as allopathic, osteopathic, and US News and World Report top 25 schools.