Up to half of each new incoming class to the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine will receive full tuition scholarships starting this fall.
A combination of demonstrated financial need and potential success in the school will determine recipients of the scholarships, according to an April 12 press release from UChicago Medicine. Up to now, roughly 40 percent of admitted students have received full scholarships and 90 percent receive at least partial ones. Boosting the number of full scholarship recipients to 50 percent will allow the university to attract and retain "a more diverse generation of leaders and innovators in medicine and science, including those who choose to teach future generations or work in underserved communities."
Each incoming medical school class averages around 90 students, according to the university.
The scholarships are made possible via philanthropic investments and the university's Biological Sciences Division, which has made a multiyear commitment to reducing debt among its graduates, while also recruiting more diverse candidates.
Simultaneously, the school is also working to revamp its curriculum and inject it with new elements of modernization.
"Medical students have spent the past few years navigating and responding to an unprecedented health crisis, and we wanted to apply what we learned during the pandemic to our broader educational philosophy," Vineet Arora, MD, the dean for medical education at the university, said in the release. "Our new curriculum builds on those lessons, such as the focus on learning by doing and integrating students into the ways we deliver care to patients in our health system and community."