[Editor's Note: This guest post was submitted by Dr. Shirag Shemmassian, a medical school admissions expert and founder of Shemmassian Academic Consulting. I've been trying to compile some information on medical school scholarships (other than ours) for a long time and am pleased that Dr. Shemmassian has saved me the trouble! We have no financial relationship, but if you talk to him, you can tell him to buy an ad from me.]
If you’ve heard people lament how “Being a doctor isn’t what it used to be,” or “The golden age of medicine has passed,” you’re not alone.
Physicians and non-physicians express concerns about the future of the profession in part because of increasing medical school tuition and practice costs. There are countless articles on the rise of medical school debt—and college debt before that—as well as health insurance premiums.
At the same time, medical school enrollment is increasing. Clearly, financial concerns are not deterring students from pursuing a fulfilling, high-income career path.
Nevertheless, anecdotally speaking, interest in medical school scholarships and other ways to pay for medical school is also at a record high. Parents routinely ask how they can reduce their own financial burden, and also help their child pursue their desired medical specialty in their desired location—with fewer money concerns—when the time comes.
But how exactly can you find and obtain free money to pay for medical school? The three most common ways are:
- Apply to medical schools that offer merit scholarships
- Apply for federally funded scholarships
- Search for private scholarships
We’ll cover each scholarship category and how to increase your odds of receiving them.
Medical School Merit Scholarships
In 2018, NYU School of Medicine made headlines when it announced its decision to go tuition-free moving forward. Applications to NYU shot up and many families became hopeful that other schools would follow it and the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. Time will tell.
Regardless, some medical schools offer merit-based aid to their most promising applicants in an effort to recruit them. While not an exhaustive list, they include:
- The University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine
- University of Cincinnati College of Medicine
- Duke University School of Medicine
- Emory School of Medicine
- Mayo Clinic School of Medicine
- University of Miami Miller School of Medicine
- University of Michigan Medical School
- Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
- The Ohio State University School of Medicine
- University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine
- University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
- Stanford University School of Medicine
- UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine
- Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
- Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
Of course, the majority of these schools have some of the highest average GPA and MCAT scores and are therefore incredibly hard to get into. Moreover, most of their students receive no merit aid. And while consideration for merit scholarships at these schools requires no additional materials, the same attributes that make you an attractive candidate for admissions will increase your likelihood of receiving these awards.
First, medical schools expect a high level of academic achievement. Merit scholarships are typically given to students who have at least a 3.7 GPA and 515 MCAT score.
Second, they want to award students who have demonstrated longstanding commitment and achievement through extracurricular activities. For instance, you can demonstrate an outstanding research record through publications and strong research recommendation letters, or a history of impactful healthcare entrepreneurship. The possibilities for developing an extracurricular specialty are limitless.
Medical schools also want to enroll students who exhibit qualities typically observed among excellent physicians, such as leadership, empathy, humility, and interpersonal warmth. If you present a compelling narrative about your background and fitness for medicine, along with how you intend to impact the medical and patient communities throughout your career, you’ll stand out to award committees.
Federally Funded Medical School Scholarships
There is a well-documented shortage of primary care physicians, especially in rural areas, as well as in the military. To address these gaps, the federal government offers full scholarships to medical students who commit to working in medically underserved areas or as active-duty physicians in the military.
If you’re confident about wanting to work in these settings, applying for related federal scholarships is a great way to substantially reduce your medical education costs. On the other hand, it’s important not to be short-sighted. While avoiding large tuition payments and debt is enticing, long-term commitments to working in settings that don’t excite you can lead to major regret.
On the military side, the Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP) provides a full scholarship for students who agree to eventually serve in the military as a physician, for at least three years. A year of active-duty service is required for each year you receive the scholarship.
If you’re interested in working in medically underserved areas, consider the National Health Service Corps Program (NHSCP). This full scholarship requires a minimum of two years of work as a primary care physician in areas with physician shortages. A year of such work is required for each year you receive the scholarship. The Indian Health Service also provides similar opportunities.
Finally, the NIH’s Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) is a great option if you love research and are interested in pursuing an MD-PhD. While you’ll likely have to be in school somewhere between 7-9 years—8 years is the average—an MSTP grant will pay for your entire medical education.
Private Medical School Scholarships
Competition is great, but not when it’s for limited scholarship opportunities.
Unfortunately, most students look for scholarships in the same places as everyone else. They’ll search their school’s website for in-house offerings, Google “medical school scholarships” and click a few links on the first page, and so on.
However, the more eyes there are on a certain scholarship opportunity, the greater the competition and lower the likelihood you’ll receive it.
The reverse is also true. The harder to find or more “niche” a scholarship is, the easier it is to obtain it. Moreover, scholarship application deadlines are spread throughout the year, so it’s wise to search regularly and organize opportunities in a spreadsheet.
It’s common to hear, “There’s so much free money out there. You just have to find it!” The problem is, no one tells you where or how to find it.
Online Scholarship Databases
Websites like Scholarships.com or Unigo list various medical school scholarships. But while they compile a wide array of opportunities, they’re where most people look, which means greater competition.
Similarly, scholarships that are incredibly easy to apply to, like those that require no essays, are much less likely to award you. Instead, these low-threshold opportunities are typical ways for companies to grow their mailing lists. In the private scholarship world, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
Financial Aid Offices
Medical school financial aid offices typically have a list of scholarships that their students have received over the years, or scholarship organizations that have reached out to them in an effort to generate applicant interest. Speak with your school’s financial aid staff anytime after you’ve been admitted to inquire about available scholarships.Manual Searches
The best opportunities are typically found when you manually search for private niche scholarships. Typically, niche scholarships have highly specific eligibility criteria that filter out most potential applicants. For instance, they might be reserved for women from a certain ethnic minority background, or individuals interested in oncology research.
I recommend you write down various aspects of your background, including ethnicity, place of residence, gender, community service history, research interests, disabilities, and so on. Then, perform online searches for as many combinations of these details as possible. For instance, you can search for, “Scholarships for Colombian medical students” or “Scholarships for medical students with disabilities.”
Make sure that you don’t limit your search to “medical” scholarships, but rather that you search for medical school, graduate school, and general higher education scholarships. You might come across particularly lucrative opportunities, like the Soros Fellowship for New Americans or the White Coat Investor Scholarship, whose 2019 grand prize winner took home over $42,000 in cash.
Once you identify a list of scholarships that you’re eligible for, you should apply to however many you can. Application requirements typically include some combination of recommendation letters, a CV, and an application essay.
Fortunately, many of the essay prompts will be similar and can be satisfied by your medical school personal statement or another essay you wrote when applying to med school. In other words, they shouldn’t be too difficult to apply to. Additionally, you can use the content of your medical school scholarship essays to write your ERAS personal statement. That said, you should never blindly recycle your work. Scholarship organizations have specific missions and are looking to award applicants who are aligned with their mission, through previous work and future aspirations.
Final Thoughts
Medical school scholarships offer a great way to reduce your financial burden during your years of education and beyond. While a few thousand dollars here and there might not seem like much if you’re facing six-figure debt, every dollar counts.
You’ll increasingly thank yourself once you graduate since your loan principal and interest payments will be lower. And that means a shorter path to financial freedom.
Did you receive a scholarship award for medical school? How did you find scholarships to apply for? Comment below!
I found out that there was a scholarship through my high school for students going for higher education. It was only a thousand dollars a year but I remember the application being simple and easy. That 4k also saved all the interest that would have accumulated on it as well.
And yes I did send a thank you note.
Now that I think about it I should look into donating to the fund now that I have the means to do so.
I love this! Oftentimes, people think that $1000 here or $2000 there doesn’t really make a long-term dent, but I disagree. It’s not just about the money today, but also the interest you avoid in the future.
So cool to hear the that you’re inspired to give back now that you have more resources.
Finding scholarships is one aspect of my medical application I wish I did more of. I went to a private medical school and the sticker shock compared to a Public med school.
As tuition rates ride along with interest rates for the student loan debt, matriculants of professional school need to be innovative and look for ways to decrease total loan burden. They simply can not afford to.
Psy-FI MD
Amen! Unfortunately, most med students don’t think about scholarships and fellowships until they actually have to start making payments. The earlier you get started and the more you can bring the principal down, the better off you’ll be.
Here are a few paragraphs from an article I recently wrote for doctors about minimizing debt (sorry, the links didn’t come through when I copied and pasted):
Recently, several medical schools have announced that they will be tuition-free. The newly formed Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine began accepting applications from prospective students in June 2019 (with applications due October 21, 2019). The school, located in Pasadena, California, will welcome its first class of students in the summer of 2020. Those students, as well as the four following classes, will attend the school for free for all four years of their medical education. Kaiser’s medical school follows in the footsteps of New York University’s School of Medicine, which in 2018 began waiving tuition fees for all students. NYU will also be opening a three-year medical school on Long Island. NYU Long Island School of Medicine will focus on training primary care physicians and will also be tuition-free. The first class of 30 students at the University of Houston’s new medical school, opening in 2020, will also be tuition-free. Tuition for subsequent classes will be about $25,000 per year.
In April 2018, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons announced a new financial aid policy guaranteeing debt-free graduation for its students, making it the first medical school in the country to institute scholarship-only financial aid. The new financial aid program took effect in July 2018. Since 2008, the Cleveland Clinic has offered all Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western University (CCLCM) students (32 per year) tuition-free education.
Some medical schools offer full tuition waivers for some but not all of its students. Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has committed $100 million over the next decade to provide scholarships allowing as many as half of its future medical students to attend tuition-free and many other students to receive partial tuition support. The scholarship program will begin with the 2019-20 entering class. About 20 percent of students at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, are awarded scholarships that cover all expenses, including tuition, room and board, books and supplies, and more. The scholarships are awarded based on measures of academic merit, not financial need.
I am an Army healthcare recruiter. We have 300 full scholarships a year. This also includes a monthly stipend so that you truly can fucus on medical school. Truly not hard to apply either. If you want more info leave a reply or contact me at [email protected]
Ha ha. I love that you call it a scholarship still. You mean you have 300 contracts a year where people trade money during med school for a service commitment including pay that is typically tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars lower and have to navigate the military match.
I’m a big fan of military service but it’s time to stop calling HPSP a scholarship.
They are not scholarships. They are contracts, and right now I do not recommend anyone take an HPSP with the current changes in the Army Medical corps. The Army is transitioning to a leaner force based on readiness. Translation, doctors are becoming staff officers and being forced away from patient care. Case loads in the surgical subspecialties are low, and the Army is struggling to figure out what specialties it wants. This matters because if you take a contract now, you may not be able to even choose the specialty you want or even remain clinical after a few years. They say they want to offer all specialties, but the results on the ground say otherwise. Retention is poor, anyone who can is getting out, and the remaining staff are working ever more hours. I watch the Medical Corps crumble each day. If you want to perform military service, train as a civilian using other options above and join as a direct accession with the smallest commitment possible with loan repayments. Do not let the Army decide what specialty you will have and what your clinical practice will be. I am sure the recruiter will attempt to say I am wrong. I will close with a question for him: How many general surgeons can you get to recruit for you? I know the answer. 0.
I hope the Army stops this madness and focuses on patient care and maintaining GME. Until that time, I can not recommend you accept an HPSP scholarship or attend USU.
My mother found a scholarship ($10-20k/yr) offered by the local medical society by reading the local newspaper. I also applied to several scholarships (~$5k/yr) through the state scholarship commission. They definitely softened the blow of >$200k of Med School tuition. It was a relatively small investment of time for a relatively large payoff.
This brings back memories! My mother also found a bunch of scholarships for Armenian students that my brother and I continually applied to. Definitely a financially wise way to spend your time.