The bias isn’t for being from UT-Austin. It’s from being a TX resident.
Medical schools know from long experience that TX applicants are highly unlikely to matriculate outside of TX. (It’s that low instate cost of med school that keeps ’em in-state.)
Also, TX has its own Tier 1, research intensive med schools in UTSW and Baylor.
(Just for the record, medical schools have more or less stopped reporting their data to USNWR so that site is no longer able to rank them accurately. Not that they ever did.)
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ds accepted to johns hopkins som today. high stats low volunteer hours. also interviewed at hms and penn med but not at stanford or ucsf. so proud but relieved in completing 1st and only cycle.
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My daughter just received another acceptance!
She is very happy and will be visiting both schools in early April. Unless she receives another offer, she’ll need to make a decision soon.
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That’s good news. Congratulations to her!! I hope the costs are favorable. Medical school federally funded loans are just not enough anymore.
Neither school has provided financial aid information yet, and I’m sure either option will be very expensive. Still, we’re very grateful that she has taken a big step toward her dream of becoming a physician.
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Just reminder for all applicants (and their parents)–
Medical schools are NOT required to send out FA offers before the enrollment deadline.
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Agree with @thumper1 that this goal is not very healthy 
despite having similar goals for my kids where one was quite successful but had to live with the other one not being as successful with their own ambitions. As a parent we hope they do well but imparting our own ambitions to our kids has negative effect on how they start thinking of failures despite being successful. Anyone who becomes a doctor in any specific field makes the same money irrespective of where they attend is the only fact we should all remember.
Having said all that, let me give out some results I am aware of based on input from one candidate from UT that I have helped this cycle - this person got into almost every school they applied to except harvard but they have some special circumstances and also beyond standard achievements (Yale, Columbia, Penn, UCSF among several other As). They are primarily my information source hence may not encompass all UT grads - one other Penn (also WashU and Emory), Columbia, Yale, and one Harvard. Unfortunately some of the people who got into these schools may not attend them since they are not getting any FA and have no scholarships and full COA is at 110k per year. With the new loan limits some of these high cost schools are going to see many declining and will probably need to start making adjustments in future.
Texas aka TMDSAS has the oddest results this year. A person with a perfect GPA/MCAT supposedly matched to McGovern so probably not going there since they did get into a T5 in the above list. Several other high stat students matched to lower ranked schools which some I felt were competitive didnt match despite 3-5 interviews.
@Mwfan1921 and @ttb1263
Important Dates:
March 15– By this date, all AAMC (MD) med schools are required to have extended admission offers to enough students to completely fill their entering class. (Med schools typical extend admission to 2-3x as many students as they have available seats.)
April 15– Using the CYMS tool, applicants must indicate PTE at no more than 3 medical schools.
April 30– Using the CYMS tool, applicants must have only ONE PTE school. Applicants must formally withdraw from all but one acceptance by contacting the school they are withdrawing from personally. Applicants holding more than one PTE/acceptance after midnight 4/30 will have their all acceptances withdrawn/cancelled.
Applicants may stay on waitlists after they have narrowed their PTE choice to one school. Should they received an acceptance off a waitlist, they will have a very short window (48 to 125 hours) to make a decision about accepting the off-waitlist admission. (How long the window is depends on the school’s policies and how close it is to the CTE date. Closer to CTE, the shorter the window.) Holding 2 acceptances longer than this window will result in both acceptances being withdrawn.
CTE dates– will vary from med school to med school. Some are as early as April 30; others aren’t until mid-July. Unless an applicant selects CTE on the CYMS tool on AMCAS on or before the individual school’s CTE date, their acceptance will automatically withdrawn.
PTE = Plan To Enroll (non-binding)
CTE = Commit to Enroll (binding)
Financial aid– While most medical schools make an effort to send out FA offers before the 4/30 PTE date, it’s not required.
To be fair, the only FA many/most students will be receiving is certification of eligibility for federal and private student loans.
A minority of med schools only send out notification of grants, scholarships and in-house loan eligibility only after a student has CTE’d to their school. However, committing to a particular school does NOT guarantee any grant aid or discounted loan programs will be forthcoming.
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Is it true that applicants can choose PTE but not CTE if he or she is on waitlists at other schools and still waiting for decisions, sometimes even into May? Does it depend on each school’s policy?
Yes, an applicant can remain on waitlists post April 30 so long as they have PTE’d to one school.
Once a student chooses CTE, they are committed to the school and MUST withdraw from all waitlists and other acceptances.
But…applicants must be aware of the CTE deadlines for each school. If they haven’t CTE’d by an individual school’s CTE deadline – the school assumes they will not be attending and will administratively withdraw their acceptance.
(Schools need an exact count of matriculating students ASAP after April 30 so they can prepare for orientation and the first day of classes. Schools need to know if their class is likely to be over-enrolled or under-enrolled so they can make adjustments and start accepting students off the waitlist if necessary.)
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2 posts were split to a new thread: Pre med opportunities at UT
What schools (Texas and top out of states) are often giving merit scholarships
Are you asking about MD and DO schools? There are a few that have free tuition for all…NYU, Hopkins for example. Many of the rest give very modest merit amounts but really, in most cases, they are a drop in the bucket related to the total costs.
If you are a Texas resident, and are eligible for instate costs at the Texas public medical schools, your costs will be less than at other places, BUT it’s not a cakewalk to get accepted to these med schools.
I’m not sure what you mean about a “top out of state” for medical school. IMHO, the best medical school is the one your student gets accepted to.
Frankly, I would not count on a lot of merit money. But that’s my opinion.
@WayOutWestMom can elaborate.
As @thumper1 noted, there are a few free tuition medical schools: JHU, NYU, Einstein, Kaiser Permanente (this year is the last year for KP, though)
Uniformed Service University for the Health Sciences (UHUHS) offers free tuition plus a salary to every student, but the award comes with a requirement to serve in branch of the military for a minimum of 6 years afterwards.
WashU offers scholarships to about 3/4s of its incoming students. The scholarships are based largely on need but do include a merit component.
Many of the Texas public med schools offer some sort of scholarships, mostly based on demonstrated need, but some are merit awards, and there are some diversity-focused scholarships too. Baylor offers several merit scholarships that range from a few thousand $$ to full tuition. Baylor also has 200 smaller endowed scholarships that require students to meet certain characteristics /requirements to receive the award.
Yale, Columbia, Harvard , Weill-Cornell all offer generous need-based scholarships.
Just about every medical school in the country offers a some sort of merit awards, but the awards tend to be less than full tuition and often include a demonstrated need component as well as merit.
Pure merit can be elusive since the quality and competitiveness of applicants change from year-to-year.
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Hopkins is still needbased and not all get free tuition. They have raised the need to over 300k or something like that there are some still paying full tuition from what I have been reading in the other forum for the school.
There is a new school called Alice Walton in Arkansas giving out free tuition.
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JHU does offer both free tuition and full COA scholarships. Thanks to Bloomsberg’s $1B donation.
The Johns Hopkins University received a transformational gift from Bloomberg Philanthropies that makes the school of medicine free for many medical students. In the fall of 2024, Johns Hopkins began offering full cost of attendance financial aid packages (including tuition, living expenses and fees) for medical students whose families earn less than $175,000. Students from families earning less than $300,000 receive scholarships that cover the cost of tuition.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/som/offices/finaid/applying-for-aid/med-students/faq
Hopkins uses the CSS Profile. Family taxed and untaxed income and assets are used to determine eligibility for FA.
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Alice Walton only accepts students from Arkansas or rural area of adjacent states. And the class size is tiny–only 48 students.
AWSOM, like Kaiser Permanente, is offering full tuition only to its first 5 matriculating classes. Walton matriculated its first class in summer 2025.
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pay back by working as a federal employee but not joining the military.
The VA HPSP is new–last year was its first year of existence. It is a small program and quite selective with veterans of military service given a strong preference for the program.
It pays up to $40K year toward tuition plus a living expense stipend. Loan payback is a minimum of 1.5 years working at a site assigned by the VA for each year of scholarship received.
I believe the specific program you’re referencing is loan payback program not a scholarship program.
The VA will repay up to $40K/year in federal loans for every year spent working at the VA. But the program only applies to specialties of “high need” and at sites of “high need.” IOW, not all VA positions are eligible.
Besides the VA, similar loan repayment programs are offered by the Indian Health Service and Federal Bureau of Prisons.
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