Consider Cost When Applying To Professional School

When choosing a professional school, there are many things to consider: location, proximity to family / support system, curriculum style, weather, small town vs city, etc. One very important factor that often gets overlooked is cost. The total debt for the average medical school graduate was $183,000 in 2015 and is expected to increase steadily from year to year.  While most students are simply focused on getting accepted to professional school, it’s extremely important for you to consider the costs of your prospective medical school and for cost to factor into the schools you apply to. In most cases, cheaper means lower quality. Luckily, that’s not the case with medical schools. While each school has its own nuances, challenges and air of competitiveness which can influence performance; for the most part, the education one will receive should be fairly uniform. So there is no need to fear that you are compromising quality for cost when you choose a school from this list. Furthermore, just taking a look at the list you will see that there are several well-known, well-respected institutions on the list. Here is a recently published list of the top 20 cheapest medical schools.  And because we never like to leave our future dentists outs, here is a short list of the most affordable dental schools.

One  way to decrease the amount of professional school debt is to do well on entrance exams and craft a very competitive application so you can qualify for the very limited number of academic scholarships that exist for professional school. Other options  to consider as you plan ahead for decreasing your total medical school costs are:

1. National Health Service Corps Loan Repayment Program
2. Federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness
3. Indian Health Service Loan Repayment Program
4. Army/Air Force Active Duty Health Professions Loan Repayment Program
5. Army/Navy Healthcare Professions Loan Repayment Program
6. Army/Air Force/ Navy Health Professions Scholarship Program 

These programs are competitive and not guaranteed to remain from one political administration to the next, especially the Federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.