Medical School Scholarships?

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Lozzo

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  1. Medical Student
I hear all the time about people having full-rides or partially paid tuition for medical school...How do people get these things? Is that just offered by the schools? Do you have to apply for specific scholarships?
 
It's just offered. Some scholarships go to an exceptional student that a school wants to convince them to attend, some (especially from top schools, some of which don't do merit scholarships) are based on ability to pay.
 
Generally be URM or be a statistical bad a**. These are most of the scholarships that I have seen, there are others but they don't usually have near the amount of coverage the merit and URM ones do.
 
this

your options are: have no money so they give you lots of need aid, or

be so attractive they want to make it cheap or free to attend, so that you don't go somewhere else.
New schools do this to attract candidates as well.
 
I personally don't like the idea of need based aid in med school because most of the time it disqualifies students with good-earning parents who won't support them.
You are still allowed to take out loans up to the cost of attendance.
 
I personally don't like the idea of need based aid in med school because most of the time it disqualifies students with good-earning parents who won't support them.

At the same time, students who have parents with high incomes are more likely to have a safety net even if their parents won't pay for their medical school tuition. For example, many such parents would lend their children $5000 in a true emergency, whereas students getting need-based aid most likely have parents who couldn't afford that loan even if they wanted to. It is truly frustrating that student loans in the US are so large. However, because the money for need-based aid is limited, it makes sense to first serve those who need it the most. (The majority of medical school students would qualify for need-based aid if you only took into account their earnings because students usually don't have jobs or don't make much money at them.)
 
I personally don't like the idea of need based aid in med school because most of the time it disqualifies students with good-earning parents who won't support them.
Schools don't like it either, I'm sure. Problem is that the alternative isn't viable - if they just start to believe people when they say their rich parent's aren't willing to support them, suddenly all rich families will start claiming this is the case.
 
Classical supply and demand. If a school wants you and thinks or knows that you are in high demand by their competitor schools, they'll offer you some sort of enticement to attend. There are also established scholarships that some schools have that you apply for.
 
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