Medical School Tips for Success

Considering medical school? Use these pointers and suggestions to help you determine if a career in medicine is right for you.

Smart Choices

Embarking on the path to become a doctor is a lengthy process. It takes a total of at least 11 years: 4 years of college; 4 years of medical school; and at least 3 years of in-hospital training. (Some programs require up to 8 years of residency and internship training.)

The medical school applicant pool continues to increase, up to 43,919 in 2011 from 42,742 in 2010, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). Prospective students submitted an average of 14 applications each for the 2011-2012 school year, for a total of 609,312 applications to medical schools.

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Getting In

It's important to build a base of knowledge during your undergraduate academic career. Medical school applicants should have a strong background in math and science, especially biology, general chemistry, organic chemistry, and physics. Being a doctor also requires good people skills, and a solid foundation of liberal arts courses such as humanities and social sciences helps, too.

Extracurricular activities like volunteering at a local hospital or medical clinic may make your application stand out, according to the AAMC, and can also be a good way to develop professional relationships that may lead to medical school letters of recommendation.

About 90 percent of medical school applicants apply during their junior year of college and start medical school right after college. Others take time off after graduation or go through an early admissions or accelerated program while they are still undergraduate students.

Insider Tip

Believe it or not, it may be possible to go to medical school for free. Through research positions, scholarships, certain academic tracks, and more, some students may be able to finagle earning their medical degree for a deeply discounted price—or even for free.

[Get more tips from the U.S. News Medical School Admissions Doctor.]

Reality Check

• Tuition increased at both public and private medical schools from 2009-2010 to 2010-2011, reports the AAMC. For 2011-2012, the median in-state tuition at public medical schools was $27,014, up from $24,150 in 2010-2011; for out-of-state students, it was $47,799, up from $44,816 the year before. Median resident tuition at private medical schools was $44,171 in 2011-2012, up from the 2010-2011 school year's median ticket price of $43,616. For nonresidents, the median tuition was $45,498, up from $43,788 in 2010-2011.

[Explore how to pay for medical school.]

• The number of female medical school applicants peaked this year, when 20,780 females applied for the 2011-2012 school year. Male applicants still outnumber females, though; 23,135 males applied to medical school in 2011-2012, comprising 53 percent of the applicant pool.

• The number of minority students enrolled in medical school increased in 2010, according to the AAMC. Enrollment among Hispanic males, in particular, surged 17.1 percent from 2009; about 1.6 percent more Hispanic females were enrolled than in the year prior. Total enrollment among African-American students jumped 2.9 percent from 2009.

• The demand for physicians and surgeons is expected to increase by 26 percent, an above average rate, between 2008 and 2018, according to the Labor Department's most recent prediction.

• Salaries vary widely by discipline. The mean salary for family and general practitioners was $173,860 per year in 2010, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics; for surgeons in 2010, the mean annual wage was $225,390.

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