As part of my getting financially ready for medical school, one thing that you should do is to review the websites of every school that you are interested in to determine what sort of financial aid options exist. Does the school only offer loans? Does the school have any under-represented minority (URM) scholarships? Are their incentives to pursue a dual degree? What about grants? Does the school have a history of students being awarded the National Health Service Corps scholarship?
When building my list of schools to apply to, part of my consideration were those questions that I listed above and ultimately, the availability of financial aid was one of the criteria that I used to rank schools. Please be aware that some schools do not offer any scholarships and of those who do, many do not offer more than a few thousand dollars in scholarship aid. There are, however, some schools who do offer significant forms of scholarship aid. This is why I stress doing some research on each school before you apply.
Don’t neglect the outside sources of funding either:
Military HPSP (i.e., Army, Navy, Airforce)
State and local health boards and professional societies
Corporations (For example, the Tylenol Cares scholarship)
African American Greek letter organizations (For example, the Alpha Kappa Alpha Educational Advancement Foundation)
Association of American University Women
Even those web-based scholarship search engines such as Fastweb.com
There is a LOT of money out there that goes untouched. If you start looking early and apply often, there is no reason why all of your medical school has to be financed by student loans.
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