NYU School of Medicine offers full tuition to all MD students

NYU School of Medicine announced that it is offering full-tuition scholarships to all current and future students in its MD degree program regardless of need or merit, adding that it is the only top 10-ranked medical school in the nation to do so. This amounts to a yearly scholarship of $55,018 for each student.

The initiative was made possible by more than 2,500 supporters, including trustees, alumni, and friends of the medical school.

“[O]ur hope—and expectation—is that by making medical school accessible to a broader range of applicants, we will be a catalyst for transforming medical education nationwide,” said Kenneth G. Langone, chair of the Board of Trustees of NYU Langone Health.

The medical school’s leaders made the announcement August 16 to first-year medical students and family members as a surprise ending to the annual White Coat Ceremony.

“This decision recognizes a moral imperative that must be addressed, as institutions place an increasing debt burden on young people who aspire to become physicians,” said Robert I. Grossman, MD, the Saul J. Farber Dean of NYU School of Medicine and CEO of NYU Langone Health.

School officials recognized that overwhelming student debt is fundamentally reshaping the medical profession in ways that adversely affect health care. Facing crushing debt, many medical school graduates pursue higher-paying specialties, which draws doctors away from less lucrative fields like primary care, pediatrics, and obstetrics and gynecology. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, 75% of all US doctors graduated with debt in 2017, with a median current debt of $202,000 for those in private medical school. As many as 21% of graduates from private medical school have an educational debt of more than $300,000.

Such financial barriers discourage many high school and college students from considering a career in medicine due to fears about the costs associated with medical school.

“A population as diverse as ours is best served by doctors from all walks of life, we believe, and aspiring physicians and surgeons should not be prevented from pursuing a career in medicine because of the prospect of overwhelming financial debt,” Dr. Grossman said.

Offering full-tuition scholarships for MD students follows the school’s 2013 decision to offer an accelerated 3-year curriculum, which is intended to allow physicians to get into the field earlier, and with less debt.

“We believe that with our tuition-free initiative, we have taken a necessary, rational step that addresses a critical need to train the most talented physicians, unencumbered by crushing debt,” said Dr. Grossman. “We hope that many other academic medical centers will soon choose to join us on this path.”