NHSC and HPSP Scholarship Confusion

[Broadstreet1]

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This winter I was accepted to an out-of-state dental school, and I've done the math to know it's going to run me upwards of 400k in tuition. It's an all-around good school in a pretty densely populated area, so plenty of patients and diverse cases available, and they don't accept many out-of-staters so I'm pretty pleased to have been admitted. The only problem is the tuition - my in-state school would only have run me about 250k, but unfortunately I was put on the alternate list for that school and for the sake of making plans for the fall I'm operating on the assumption I won't get in.

I've been looking at different service-for-tuition scholarship programs to try to reduce the cost, but the repayment terms of a lot of them seem pretty confusing tbh. I'm not entirely sure I want to specialize, but from what I've read the NHSC is not specialization-friendly, so I'm afraid if I did receive that aid and then down the road I did decide I wanted to be an orthodontist or something I would be out of luck. The HPSP allows you to specialize as far as I can tell, but I'm confused as to whether the time you spend in residency is then added to your service commitment (i.e. 4 years of predoctoral + 4 years of specialty residency = 8 years of service to repay? I'm only 22, but if I graduate at 26 and then have 4 years of residency and THEN 8 years of repayment I'd be 38 by the time I was done with the military, and this seems like too much time as I would like to settle down and just enjoy my life at some point.) Please correct me if I'm wrong about this because I'd be delighted if this wasn't the case.

I always knew professional school would be very expensive and I'm not crazy about the idea of having kids or living extravagantly so having a lot of debt during my young years doesn't necessarily scare me, but I just want to be smart about this and not find out later that I had opportunities I missed. Any suggestions/advice would be very much appreciated!

 

[artist2022]

Moving to military dentistry as you'd likely get better info from people currently on HPSP

 

[Tooth Ferry]

This winter I was accepted to an out-of-state dental school, and I've done the math to know it's going to run me upwards of 400k in tuition. It's an all-around good school in a pretty densely populated area, so plenty of patients and diverse cases available, and they don't accept many out-of-staters so I'm pretty pleased to have been admitted. The only problem is the tuition - my in-state school would only have run me about 250k, but unfortunately I was put on the alternate list for that school and for the sake of making plans for the fall I'm operating on the assumption I won't get in.

I've been looking at different service-for-tuition scholarship programs to try to reduce the cost, but the repayment terms of a lot of them seem pretty confusing tbh. I'm not entirely sure I want to specialize, but from what I've read the NHSC is not specialization-friendly, so I'm afraid if I did receive that aid and then down the road I did decide I wanted to be an orthodontist or something I would be out of luck. The HPSP allows you to specialize as far as I can tell, but I'm confused as to whether the time you spend in residency is then added to your service commitment (i.e. 4 years of predoctoral + 4 years of specialty residency = 8 years of service to repay? I'm only 22, but if I graduate at 26 and then have 4 years of residency and THEN 8 years of repayment I'd be 38 by the time I was done with the military, and this seems like too much time as I would like to settle down and just enjoy my life at some point.) Please correct me if I'm wrong about this because I'd be delighted if this wasn't the case.

I always knew professional school would be very expensive and I'm not crazy about the idea of having kids or living extravagantly so having a lot of debt during my young years doesn't necessarily scare me, but I just want to be smart about this and not find out later that I had opportunities I missed. Any suggestions/advice would be very much appreciated!

You can pay back specialties concurrently rather than 1 after the other.

I would be pretty wary of joining if your only goal is to specialize. Things are changing right now and there's no guarantee they'll keep any specialties. You're also too late for a 4-year scholarship. Some services may offer 3 years but those tend to be more competitive.

 

[Broadstreet1]

You can pay back specialties concurrently rather than 1 after the other.

I would be pretty wary of joining if your only goal is to specialize. Things are changing right now and there's no guarantee they'll keep any specialties. You're also too late for a 4-year scholarship. Some services may offer 3 years but those tend to be more competitive.

Thanks, I honestly don't know if I want to specialize I just wanted to make sure I have the option. If they didn't keep the specialties I would be confused as to where the military would source their specialists from as the financial incentive to give up a private practice and move around would need to be huge. They could leverage peoples' debt to get them to join but if they're already done with residency that debt has already been sitting around for several years and has accrued interest... so that doesn't seem cost effective for anyone.