Best Practices for Selecting Biomedical Graduate and Health Professions Degree Programs

Cynthia Warrick, PhD RPh

Decisions students make about graduate and professional degree programs today, will have a major impact on your career, 10 to 12 years later.  When I was teaching in Pharmacy schools, I stressed that students should do a residency or fellowship; or even a graduate degree, because 5 years in retail pharmacy, where pay is the highest, becomes repetitive and confining.  Thirty-minute lunch breaks, working nights and weekends, and the inability to leave the retail setting gets old really fast.  Residencies and fellowships are also very competitive, so when you’re searching for professional schools in medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, etc., be sure and research which to identify the programs whose graduates get their residency matches.  Else, you will begin working right away, because those student loan payments begin 6 months after degree completion.  Ouch!

You should start planning with the end in mind.  What are you passionate about?  Passion is probably the most important variable because graduates today will be working for 50 years or more.  Why? There will be fewer US college graduates because of the costs of higher education and the competitiveness for entry.  In 2023, the total number of applicants to US schools of medicine was 52,577, and 22,981 or 43% were admitted.  For Black or African Americans, 4,672 applied and 1,845 were admitted for 39%. Now that the US Supreme Court has removed race as a consideration for admissions, the number of admitted Black students could even decline.  When you view the matriculants by race and legal residence, most matriculants to medical schools are from states in the South with Texas and Florida with the leading numbers. California had the highest number of matriculants at 2,899 with Texas coming in at second at 1,994.  However, for African Americans, most medical school matriculants came from New York (181), followed by Texas (177) and Georgia (173).  These are the states of legal residence, but not necessarily the state where students were admitted; they may have attended undergraduate school or lived in these states and attended a medical school elsewhere. Knowing where your competition is coming from is helpful too. 

Public institutions tend the have lower tuition because the state supplements the medical and professional schools.  Private schools have higher tuition rates so the students’ cost of attendance will be significantly higher.  According to the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC), the annual average cost of tuition, fees, and health insurance in 2023-2024 was $64,057 for a public resident, and $96,489 for a public non-resident. The average cost for private, resident or non-resident was $80,203. For 4 years of medical school, the costs of tuition, fees and health insurance could be as high as $320,000; and that does not include living expenses.  Health professions programs do not pay stipends, and matriculants must devote 100% of their time to the program (means you shouldn’t try to work), or you just dropped over $100,000 in debt for a year and no degree, with student loan debt over your head.

For 2023-2024, the AAMC application data for the 157 US medical schools shows there were 996,947 applications from 52,577 applicants, which averages 18 applications per student: 77% of applicants were Out of State, 54.5% were women, and the class sizes for each school ranges from 24 at NYU Long Island-Grossman, to 364 at the University of Indiana.  George Washington University in Washington, DC received the largest number of applications, 16,062, for 179 slots. Institutions where 100% of their applicants are in-state were: Mercer (GA), Southern Illinois, Mississippi, East Carolina-Brody, and CUNY.  For the 4 HBCU medical schools, Charles Drew (Los Angeles, CA) had 974 applicants for 61 slots, Howard University (DC) had 8,465 applicants for 127 slots, Morehouse (Atlanta, GA) had 6,992 applicants for 110 slots, and Meharry (Nashville, TN) had 7,520 applicants for 116 slots.  New HBCU medical schools will be opening soon at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD and Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans. 

For top biomedical graduate programs, admissions are different than medical and other professional schools.  While both health professions and research-based graduate program applications are more competitive with undergraduate research, its best to choose a biomedical graduate program by reviewing the faculty research.  There will also be fewer applicants to these programs, simply because students are not aware that tuition and fees are paid, and students receive stipends as a graduate research assistant (GRA) or graduate teaching assistant (GTA).  Let’s dispel one myth regarding PhD programs: most do not require a master’s degree prior to being admitted to a PhD program.  This cuts down on the cost and time to completion.  However, if you have a master’s degree in the same discipline, PhD programs tend to accept credit for a certain number of hours, but not the total hours completed in the masters. 

Preparation for a biomedical graduate program is similar to the planning for health professions programs: science GPAs above a 3.0 are important, but also gaining experience in research as an undergraduate makes applicants more competitive for both.  Start looking at the faculty on the various universities’ website. Many institutions that have medical schools, may also have an MD-PhD joint degree program, that could help lower the cost of the professional program, but also position the graduate with more options after medical school (ie. Teaching and research in a Medical School, health professions, and other biomedical graduate programs); and with the ability after passing the appropriate state board exam, to practice full- or part-time.

Participating in graduate college fairs and discipline specific conferences are great places to meet admissions personnel and get information about various programs. The AACF holds a diversity workshop at its annual meeting.  The next AAMC meeting and workshop: 2024 Diversifying the Next Generation of Doctors: Career Fair and Workshops, will take place on Saturday, November 9, 8:30am to 4:30pm at the Georgia World Congress Center, Building B.  This workshop is for college and high school students, pre-health advisors, school administrators, and will provide information about the Summer Health Professions Education Program (SHPEP), Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), and other AAMC services.  Register at: https://students-residents.aamc.org/minorities-medicine/diversifying-next-generation-doctors-career-fair-and-workshops-0

The Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists (ABRCMS) takes place on November 13-16 in Pittsburgh, PA.  There is an opportunity for virtual student attendance at a reduced fee. https://abrcms.org/register/#registration

These conferences take place every year, so you can plan to attend next year if you miss this year.  Building a network of admissions counselors and faculty at these schools is important to understand how to tailor your applications. Just like most things in life, it takes commitment and effort to the processes that create success!