The Personal Finance Crash Course

Part of The Training Years. Nobody taught me any of this. Not my parents, a taxi driver and a homemaker who had never taken out a student loan, and not my school. I walked into six figures of borrowing power understanding almost none of it. If you're the first in your family to do this, here's what a loan actually is, what it becomes, and how to keep it from quietly owning you.

⚠️ Please note: Federal student loans were overhauled by a 2025 law, and big pieces took effect July 1, 2026. The rules for someone who borrowed in 2023 are different from the rules for someone starting med school in 2026. I flag those splits as we go. But because this area is changing fast and some of it is still being litigated, treat this page as a map of how the system works, verify anything specific on studentaid.gov and the AAMC's financial aid resources before you act, and check the "last reviewed" date at the bottom. This is education, not financial advice.

A loan is rent on money, and the meter starts immediately

A loan has two parts. The principal is the money you borrow. The interest is the rent you pay for borrowing it, charged as a percentage per year. That's it. The trouble is entirely in the details, and the details are where people like us get hurt.

Start with the part that costs the most: medical school loans start charging interest the day the money lands, while you're still in school. They're unsubsidized, which means the government doesn't cover that in-school interest the way it does for some undergrad loans. From the first disbursement of your first year, the meter is running.¹

The concept that does the most damage is capitalization. When you're not paying enough to cover the interest, which is basically all of med school and residency, that unpaid interest piles up. Periodically it gets added to your principal. Now you're paying interest on your interest, and the debt grows on top of itself. This is compounding, the same force that builds wealth in a retirement account, except it's pointed at you. Understand this one word before anything else.

One more leak: origination fees. The government skims a fee off the top of each loan before you ever see it. On Direct Unsubsidized, which is the only federal loan you can take now, that fee is 1.057%. Borrow $50,000 and about $529 vanishes, so you receive ~$49,471 but you owe (and pay interest on) the full $50,000.²

The rate you get is the rate you keep, for life

Federal loan interest rates are set every July and then fixed for the life of that year's loan. For loans first disbursed between July 1, 2026 and June 30, 2027, which is the rate that applies to anyone borrowing now:³

Direct Unsubsidized (the main graduate loan): 8.07%
Direct PLUS: 9.07%

Loans disbursed in the year before that carry 7.94% and 8.94%, and they keep those rates for life.² Origination fees are currently about 1.06% on Unsubsidized and 4.23% on PLUS.²

Med students usually borrow a blend of both, so for the rest of this page I'll use 8% as a round, realistic number for what a real balance does over time.

Your first disbursement date decides which system you are in

This is the part that's brand new, and it matters enormously depending on when you start. A 2025 law (the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act") rewrote graduate borrowing. The dividing line is your first federal loan disbursement, before vs. on/after July 1, 2026.⁴

If you're a "new" borrower (first loan on or after July 1, 2026):

Grad PLUS loans are gone. The loan that used to let students borrow all the way up to a school's full cost of attendance no longer exists for you.⁴
There are now hard federal borrowing caps: for professional students (which includes MD and DO), $50,000 per year and $200,000 total for the degree, with an overall $257,500 federal lifetime limit across everything.⁴
Your only federal loan is the Direct Unsubsidized loan, up to those caps.

If you're an "existing" borrower (any federal loan before July 1, 2026): you're largely grandfathered under the old rules for a window (generally up to three more years to finish your program), including continued Grad PLUS access.⁴ If you're near that boundary, the timing of a single disbursement can change your whole financial life. Confirm exact dates with your school's financial aid office.

Why this is a big deal for you specifically. The average four-year cost of attending med school already exceeds the new $200,000 federal cap: the AAMC's median four-year cost of attendance for the class of 2026 is $297,745 in-state public and $408,150 private.¹ So new borrowers face a shortfall of roughly $98,000 to $208,000 that federal loans no longer fill, and the only thing left to fill it is private student loans. Those are credit-based (you may need a cosigner you don't have), often carry higher or variable rates, and come with none of the federal protections we're about to discuss: no income-driven payments, no forgiveness, no residency safety net.⁵ Analysts have warned this change falls hardest on exactly the low-income, first-generation students this site is for.⁵ Know it's coming, and plan around it (scholarships, need-based aid, service programs, and the FAP, all later on this page).

What you will actually owe

Here's the real picture, from the AAMC's own data on recent graduates:¹

Median medical school debt: about $200,000 (public and private students alike cluster near there; private a bit higher).
About 70% of graduates carry education debt. More than half owe over $200,000, and 28% owe over $300,000.
The typical premed/undergrad debt, for the 27% who carry any, adds about $28,000 on top.

So when you hear "$200,000," that's the median at graduation, and it already includes the interest that piled up while you were in school. Which brings us to the number that actually matters: not what you borrow, but what it becomes.

Watch $200,000 grow, and then watch what stops it

Let's follow a $200,000 balance at 8%. (Assumptions: $200k at graduation, 8% fixed, resident income ~$67,000. Rounded for teaching.)

Interest on $200,000 at 8% is $16,000 a year, about $1,333 a month. A resident's income-driven payment is a few hundred. That gap is the whole story, and what happens to the gap depends entirely on which repayment system you are in, so the table has two columns rather than one.

Point in time	Borrowed before July 2026	RAP, from July 2026
Graduation	$200,000	$200,000
After a 3-year residency	~$238,000	~$198,000
After a 5-year residency	~$269,000	~$196,000
After a 7-year residency	~$305,000	~$194,000

The "borrowed before July 2026" figures are negative amortization: the payment didn't cover the interest, the unpaid interest was added to the balance, and you went backwards while doing everything right. A $200k balance quietly became $240k–$305k before the first attending-level payment. That is the arithmetic of the system the class ahead of you borrowed into, not irresponsibility.

The RAP figures are what a new borrower gets instead. RAP waives the interest your payment doesn't cover and takes at least $50 a month off the principal, so the balance falls slowly rather than climbing.⁶ If your first federal loan is from July 2026 onward, the right column is yours and the left one is history you should understand rather than a forecast.

The catch is on the other end and it is real. RAP has no payment cap, which is covered properly a few sections down, so read the relief with the trade attached.

What if you just paid it off normally? On a standard 10-year plan, $200,000 at 8% is about $2,427 a month, for a total of roughly $291,000. That's about $91,000 of pure interest on top of what you borrowed.¹ That $2,427/month is impossible on a resident's ~$67,000 salary, which is the entire reason the next part exists.

You do not pay the standard amount during training

During training you use an income-driven plan, where your payment is based on what you earn, not what you owe. Which plans you can use depends, again, on when you borrowed.⁶⁷

The Standard Plan — a fixed amount over 10 years (the $2,427 above). Fine for someone with a small balance and a big income. Not for a resident.

IBR (Income-Based Repayment) — available to existing borrowers (those with loans before July 1, 2026). Payment is 10% of your "discretionary" income (roughly what you earn above about 1.5× the poverty line), and, critically for physicians, it's capped: your payment can never exceed the standard 10-year amount, even when you're a high-earning attending. Forgiveness of any remaining balance comes after 20–25 years.⁷

RAP (Repayment Assistance Plan) — the new plan, and the only income-driven option for new borrowers starting July 2026.⁶⁷ Your payment is a flat percentage of your total income, on a sliding scale from 1% to 10%:⁶

Annual income	Roughly what you pay/month
under ~$10,000	a floor of $10
~$30,000	~$50
~$50,000	~$167
~$67,000 (resident)	~$335
~$90,000	~$600
over $100,000	10% of income: $833 at $100,000, and $2,500 on a $300,000 attending salary

RAP has two borrower-friendly features: if your payment doesn't cover the interest, the unpaid interest is waived (your balance won't explode the way it does on other plans), and your balance drops by at least $50 a month.⁶ But it has a big catch for physicians, and the bottom row of that table is it. RAP has no payment cap. IBR plateaus when you're an attending; RAP keeps taking its tenth of a $300k salary, which is $30,000 a year. And RAP forgiveness takes 30 years.⁶⁸ That difference, capped IBR versus uncapped RAP, is a five-figure-a-year deal once you're earning, and it's the main reason your "borrower status" matters so much.

(A note on churn: an older plan called SAVE was struck down in court and is going away, and two others, PAYE and ICR, are being phased out by 2028. If anyone mentions those, they're on the way out. Don't build a plan around them. Verify what's current.)⁷⁹

PSLF, and how much smaller it got

If you understand one piece of this page well, make it this one.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) forgives your entire remaining federal loan balance, completely tax-free, after you make 120 qualifying monthly payments (that's 10 years) while working full-time for a nonprofit (501c3) or government employer.¹⁰ It still exists, it's written into law, and both RAP and IBR count as qualifying plans.¹⁰

Here's why it works out especially well for doctors, and why it tends to help exactly the people who felt behind:

Your residency counts. Most residencies are at nonprofit or academic hospitals, which are qualifying employers, so your 3–7 years of small income-based resident payments tick off the 120 while you earn almost nothing.¹⁰¹¹ You are a third to two-thirds of the way there before you ever draw a real salary. Then you finish the rest as an attending, and whatever is left is canceled tax-free.

How much is left is the part that changed, and most of what you'll read online is still describing the old answer.

Here is what it looked like for someone who borrowed before July 2026, on a $200,000 balance, a 4-year residency and 6 years as an attending, all at nonprofit hospitals:¹²

Phase	What you pay	Balance
Residency (yrs 1–4)	~$400/mo → ~$19,000 total	grows to ~$255,000
Attending (yrs 5–10)	~$1,900/mo (capped, IBR) → ~$137,000 total	stays ~$250,000
Payment #120	—	~$250,000 forgiven, tax-free

Two features of that table are gone for you. The balance grew to $255,000, because unpaid interest capitalized, and the attending payment was capped under IBR, so it never got large enough to eat into the principal. That is how a quarter of a million dollars was still sitting there at payment 120.

RAP inverts both. Your balance is capped at $200,000 to begin with, it stops growing the moment you enter repayment because unpaid interest is waived, and your attending payment is uncapped, so roughly a tenth of a $300,000-plus salary goes at it every year. That is around $30,000 a year against about $16,000 of interest, so the principal actually falls, for years, before forgiveness arrives.

You still reach payment 120 with a real balance, and it is a materially smaller one. Modeling a hospitalist year by year puts the discharge at about $166,000 rather than $250,000.¹³ Still an enormous amount of money. Not the number the older guidance quotes, and not something to build a career shape around as though it were.

There is a second-order effect here, and it reverses a piece of advice you will see everywhere. On the old math a higher balance at forgiveness was better, and pre-paying a loan you were going to have canceled was throwing away money you would never have owed. That is still directionally true, but RAP is now doing the pre-paying for you and you cannot switch it off, so the strategy has much less room to work in than the posts describing it assume.

This is still a real leveler. A first-generation student with a nonprofit hospital job comes out the other side genuinely fine. You just have to know it exists, which most of us didn't, and know which version of it applies to you.

What PSLF is a bet on

I'd be doing you a disservice if I put a number this large on the page without saying what it depends on.

PSLF is a statutory program rather than a term of your loan, and it asks you to make a ten-year employment commitment against it.

It has been changed and litigated before, more than once. Eligibility rules, employer definitions, and the paperwork have all moved since the program started, and there have been repeated proposals to cap or restructure forgiveness for graduate borrowers specifically. None of that means it'll go away. It does mean a promise ten years out is a different kind of thing from a rate that's fixed for the life of the loan.

The protection that exists is for loans you already have. Historically, changes have applied to new borrowers rather than clawing back from people already enrolled and certifying. That's a pattern, not a guarantee, and it's the main reason the practical advice is to certify employment every single year rather than at the end. A paper trail of certified qualifying months is the closest thing to a receipt you can hold.

It only pays off if the job is one you'd take anyway. Ten years at a nonprofit or academic hospital is where a very large share of physicians work regardless, which is why this fits medicine well. But if PSLF is the only reason you'd stay somewhere, you're making a decade-long career decision on a policy forecast, and that's the version that goes wrong.

So: plan for it, certify for it, and build a life that works if it holds. Don't build one that only works if it does.

Three traps that cost people fortunes

The "tax bomb" (and why PSLF dodges it). A recent, nasty change: the tax break that made income-driven forgiveness tax-free expired at the end of 2025. So if you go the 20–30-year IBR/RAP route and get a balance forgiven, that forgiven amount is now taxed as income, a potentially huge bill in one year.¹⁴ PSLF forgiveness is different, and remains completely tax-free.¹⁴ That's a second enormous reason PSLF beats waiting two or three decades for ordinary forgiveness.

Forbearance during residency. When money's tight, a "forbearance" (pausing payments to $0) sounds like mercy. For a future physician chasing PSLF, it's usually a mistake. Interest keeps accruing, and those $0 months don't count toward your 120. You'd stall forgiveness and let the balance balloon at the same time. A ~$350 income-driven payment is almost always better than $0, because it keeps your head above water and earns PSLF credit.¹¹

Refinancing to a private loan. As an attending, you'll get slick offers to "refinance" your federal loans to a private one at a lower rate. Sometimes it's the right move: if you're sure you won't use PSLF (say you take a for-profit private-practice job) and your income dwarfs your debt. But it's a one-way door. The moment you refinance to private, you permanently give up PSLF, income-driven payments, the residency safety net, and even the discharge of your loans if you die or become disabled.¹² Never refinance during residency if there's any chance you'll work for a nonprofit. You could be throwing away six figures of forgiveness to shave a couple points of interest.

The game plan, if you are starting with nothing

Here's how you actually play this well, start to finish:

Before you apply: use the Fee Assistance Program (FAP). If your family income is at or below 400% of the poverty line (about $128,600 for a family of four), you qualify, and it's worth about $2,000.¹⁵ Apply before you register for the MCAT, because the benefits aren't retroactive; What It Costs Just to Apply walks through everything it covers.

Choose schools by net cost, not sticker price. Use the (free, via FAP) MSAR to compare. Well-endowed schools often give large need-based grants, so the "expensive" private school can end up cheaper than your state school once aid is counted. Chase the aid package, not the brand.

In med school, live lean. Every borrowed dollar compounds at ~8%. That $10,000 of "lifestyle" borrowing in first year is ~$13,600 by the end of a four-year residency. Borrow to your need, not to the maximum they offer.

In residency, enroll in an income-driven plan immediately (RAP or IBR, whichever you're eligible for) and certify your PSLF employment every year. Don't drift into forbearance. Make the small payments and let them count.

Plan for the first two Aprils. The first partial year as an attending usually over-withholds and produces a refund; the first full year is where the bill lands, and The Refund, Then the Bill is the page about it.

As an attending, hold your spending near your resident spending for a few more years. This is the highest-leverage habit in a physician's financial life. For 2–5 years after training, put most of the raise toward an emergency fund, then high-interest debt, then either loan payoff or, if you're on PSLF, a "side fund" equal to your balance (insurance in case the program ever changes).¹²

Two honest qualifications, because the slogan is usually delivered without them. First, it assumes the raise is slack. Plenty of people finish training in their mid-thirties with children, a partner whose career was paused for the match, a parent to help support, and years of deferred dental and medical care of their own. Those are not lifestyle purchases and postponing them further has its own cost. Second, the gap between the doctor who is free at 38 and the one still paying at 55 is partly this habit and partly which specialty they matched, which state they practice in, how much they borrowed, and what their family needed from them. Do the version of this you can actually sustain. A partial one you keep beats a strict one you abandon in eight months.

The part I won't sugarcoat

Everything above is how you manage the debt. But I'd be failing you if I let you close this page believing it always works out, because it doesn't. For someone with no family safety net, the downside is real enough that you have to look straight at it.

Most of us will carry debt, and it weighs on you. About 70% of medical graduates finish owing money, a median of $200,000 for medical school alone and $215,000 once premedical debt is counted.¹ That's not a number that sits quietly on a statement. Debt like this follows you for years, a low hum under everything. You finally become a doctor, and you don't fully get to feel it. And it isn't just a feeling: student debt is consistently linked to higher financial stress and worse mental well-being in medical students.¹⁶ I say it not to scare you, but because you deserve to know the weight you'd be carrying, not just the dollar figure.

And the hardest truth: becoming a doctor isn't guaranteed, even after you take on the debt. You can borrow every dollar, finish medical school, and still not match into a residency. In 2026, even among U.S. M.D. seniors, roughly 1 in 15 didn't match; across all applicants, only about 80% matched, and thousands were left with nothing.¹⁷ The debt doesn't care whether you matched. It's still due.

Which brings me to the riskiest path of all. If you don't get into a U.S. medical school and a Caribbean or offshore for-profit school starts to look tempting, understand what you may be signing up for: often even larger debt, high dropout rates, and far lower odds of ever practicing. U.S.-citizen international graduates, most of them Caribbean students, matched at only about 70% in 2026, versus about 93.5% for U.S. M.D. seniors.¹⁷ People have taken on three, four, five hundred thousand dollars at these schools and never matched at all, left with a crushing loan and no physician's income to ever repay it. And if standardized tests are a genuine struggle for you, and this whole path is a lifetime of them, that risk isn't hypothetical. Go this way only with your eyes fully open, if at all.

So here is the gate, and I mean it with care. Becoming a doctor shouldn't ruin your life. If you look honestly at the debt on this page and something in your gut says that is more than I am willing to risk, that is a valid and mature answer, and it may mean this isn't your path. That isn't failure. There are meaningful, stable ways to help people that don't ask this of you, and choosing not to gamble your financial future is allowed. Money is part of the "is medicine right for me" question, not separate from it.

And the other side, honestly: a small number of people do get through with little or no debt, through full-ride aid, a service program, or the luck of circumstance. If that's you, it's a real blessing. Just don't expect it, and don't build your plan on it. Hope for the debt-free path. Plan for the debt.

The bottom line

Debt is the thing that scares low-income students away from medicine more than anything else, and I understand why. I did the math on chicken sandwiches for years. So here's the balanced truth, not a pep talk. For those who make it through and understand the system, the debt is manageable: income-based payments so you don't drown in training, forgiveness that can erase much of it tax-free at the kind of hospital you'd probably work at anyway, aid that goes unclaimed. That's real, and it's worth holding onto. But manageable isn't nothing. It's a weight you carry for years, it assumes the path works out, and for some people it doesn't. So don't let it paralyze you, and don't let anyone pretend it away. Understand it fully, look at it honestly, and decide with clear eyes whether it's a risk you're willing to take. If the answer is no, respect that. That's wisdom, not fear.

This page reflects federal student loan rules as of mid-2026, a period of unusually rapid change — the 2025 law's provisions, the phase-out of older repayment plans, and ongoing litigation mean specifics can shift. Verify current details on studentaid.gov and the AAMC before making decisions. Worked examples use rounded assumptions stated inline and are illustrations, not predictions. This is educational information, not financial or legal advice. — Last reviewed: 2026-08-06

References

AAMC — Medical Student Education: Debt, Costs, and Loan Repayment Fact Card, class of 2025 (published October 2025), and cost-of-attendance data: 70% of graduates carry education debt, at a median of $215,000 including premedical borrowing and $200,000 for medical school alone; median four-year cost of attendance for the class of 2026 is $297,745 in-state public and $408,150 private. https://students-residents.aamc.org/financial-aid-resources ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
Federal Student Aid — Interest rates for Direct Loans first disbursed July 1, 2025–June 30, 2026 (Direct Unsubsidized 7.94%, Direct/Grad PLUS 8.94%). https://fsapartners.ed.gov/knowledge-center/library/electronic-announcements/2025-05-30/interest-rates-direct-loans-first-disbursed-between-july-1-2025-and-june-30-2026 · Origination fees are set separately from interest rates and on a different clock: 1.057% on Direct Subsidized and Unsubsidized, 4.228% on Direct PLUS, for any loan first disbursed on or after 1 October 2020 and before 1 October 2026. https://fsapartners.ed.gov/knowledge-center/library/electronic-announcements/2025-05-05/fy-26-sequester-required-changes-title-iv-student-aid-programs ⟳ Verify: that window closes on 1 October 2026, so the worked example above needs re-reading after that date rather than at the next annual review. The example used a Grad PLUS fee until 2026-08-14, which overstated the leak roughly fourfold for a reader who cannot take Grad PLUS at all. ↩ ↩² ↩³
Federal Student Aid — interest rates for Direct Loans first disbursed July 1, 2026 to June 30, 2027: Direct Unsubsidized for graduate and professional students 8.07%, Direct PLUS 9.07%. https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/interest-rates · secondary summary: https://money.com/federal-student-loan-interest-rates-increase-2026/ ↩
2025 "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" graduate-loan changes, effective July 1, 2026 — Grad PLUS elimination; professional-student caps of $50,000/year and $200,000 aggregate; $257,500 federal lifetime limit; grandfathering for existing borrowers. AHA Fact Sheet (Feb 2026): https://www.aha.org/fact-sheets/2026-02-11-fact-sheet-federal-student-loan-limits-graduate-and-professional-programs · AAMC: https://students-residents.aamc.org/premed-navigator/preparing-upcoming-student-loan-changes-information-aspiring-medical-students · UIC College of Medicine: https://medicine.uic.edu/news-stories/federal-student-aid-changes-from-the-one-big-beautiful-bill-act-affecting-professional-students/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Analyses of the post-2026 funding gap and private-loan risk for medical students. SavingForCollege: https://www.savingforcollege.com/article/grad-plus-loan-changes-2026 · UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute: https://latino.ucla.edu/research/federal-loan-limits-latino-medical-students/ ↩ ↩²
Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) details — 1–10% of AGI sliding scale, $10 minimum, −$50/mo per dependent, unpaid-interest waiver, 30-year term. studentaid.gov / Edfinancial RAP information center: https://edfinancial.studentaid.gov/income-driven-repaymentinformation-center/rap · NerdWallet: https://www.nerdwallet.com/student-loans/learn/what-is-the-new-repayment-assistance-plan-rap-for-student-loans ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
Plan availability by borrower status; IBR (10% of discretionary income, payment cap, 20–25-year forgiveness); RAP as the only IDR option for new (post-July-2026) borrowers; SAVE/PAYE/ICR sunset. The College Investor (RAP vs. IBR): https://thecollegeinvestor.com/60115/rap-vs-ibr/ · Tateesq: https://www.tateesq.com/learn/student-loan-changes-july-2026 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
RAP's lack of a payment cap vs. IBR's cap, and the impact on attending-year payments and PSLF. Student Loan Planner: https://www.studentloanplanner.com/medical-residency-rap-payment/ ↩
SAVE plan struck down in court and winding down. NerdWallet: https://www.nerdwallet.com/student-loans/learn/save-lawsuits ↩
Public Service Loan Forgiveness — 120 qualifying payments, full-time nonprofit/government employment, tax-free forgiveness; RAP and IBR are qualifying plans; PSLF remains in force. studentaid.gov: https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/forgiveness-cancellation/public-service · Tateesq (PSLF 2026): https://www.tateesq.com/learn/pslf-changes-2026 ↩ ↩² ↩³
Residency payments counting toward PSLF and the forbearance pitfall. AAMC repayment resources: https://students-residents.aamc.org/financial-aid-resources/repayment-plans-federal-student-loans · Artham Advisors (residents & RAP): https://www.arthamadvisors.com/post/rap-student-loans-what-physician-residents-need-to-know-before-july-1-2026 ↩ ↩²
PSLF vs. payoff math for physicians, refinancing tradeoffs, and the "live like a resident" / PSLF side-fund strategy. White Coat Investor: https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/public-service-loan-forgiveness/ and https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/refinance-and-pay-off-or-go-for-pslf/ ↩ ↩² ↩³
The $166,000 figure is this site's own year-by-year model of a hospitalist under the 2026 caps, not a published finding, and it is set out on The Friend Who Went Into Tech. An earlier version of that model charged no federal interest during medical school and reported the discharge as $0, which was wrong and has been corrected. ⟳ Verify: confirm any figure of this kind with your own loan servicer and financial aid office before making a decade-long decision on it. RAP bands and the interest waiver: 34 CFR 685.209. ↩
The federal tax exclusion for income-driven forgiveness expired Dec 31, 2025 (IDR forgiveness now taxable); PSLF forgiveness remains tax-free. Tateesq: https://www.tateesq.com/learn/ibr-loan-forgiveness-taxes-after-2025 ↩ ↩²
AAMC Fee Assistance Program — eligibility (≤400% of federal poverty level) and benefits (reduced MCAT fee, free official prep, AMCAS fee waivers, MSAR). https://students-residents.aamc.org/fee-assistance-program/who-eligible-participate-fee-assistance-program ↩
Systematic review — medical student debt is negatively associated with mental well-being and academic performance, and high financial stress is correlated with debt. Pisaniello et al., BMJ Open (2019): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31270123/ ↩
NRMP 2026 Main Residency Match — 38,354 of 48,050 active applicants matched to a PGY-1 position, about 79.8% overall; U.S. MD seniors 93.5%, U.S. DO seniors 93.2%, U.S.-citizen IMGs 70%, non-U.S.-citizen IMGs 56.4%. Roughly ten thousand certified a rank list and did not match. Read from NRMP directly rather than through a summary, which is what this footnote used to do. https://www.nrmp.org/about/news/2026/03/nrmp-releases-results-of-the-2026-main-residency-match-for-more-than-38000-future-residents/ ↩ ↩²