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Angelica Alvarado, a third-year medical student attending the accelerated medical school program at the Cooper Medical School of Rowan University, Camden, New Jersey, is happy she is fast-tracking her medical schooling — and saving money in the process.
“One of the things I was scared about in terms of going to medical school was the cost,” Alvarado told Medscape Medical News of the Camden program that began its accelerated curriculum in 2015 and focuses on primary care/internal medicine, pediatrics, and, beginning this year, family medicine. “Chipping off a year’s tuition is really helpful.”
About Medscape Data
Medscape continually surveys physicians and other medical professionals about key practice challenges and current issues, creating high-impact analyses. For example, the Medscape Medical Students Rate Clinical Instruction Report 2025 found that:
- 81% of US med students surveyed said they found the quality of their clinical instruction high or very high.
- 63% of third- and fourth-year US med students surveyed found the quality of their rotations high.
- 84% of US med students surveyed said they were very or somewhat confident they were learning the skills they needed in residency.
Given rising medical school costs and resulting debt — 71% of all medical students carry significant education debt, according to JAMA — the appeal of accelerated 3-year MD (3YMD) programs is rising — and more and more programs are being created to meet the need.
“There’s a lot of attention being paid right now to new legislation that’s going to have a generally negatively impact on medical students with regards to federal borrowing,” said Annette C. Reboli, MD, dean and professor of medicine at the Cooper Medical School of Rowan University. “There’s more attention being paid to 3-year accelerated programs as a solution to the issue with federal loans.”
The physician shortage of up to 124,000 doctors by 2034, including 48,000 primary care physicians, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges is also driving interest in a shorter medical school education.
In fact, while in 2015 eight US institutions with 3YMD programs formed the Consortium of Accelerated Medical Pathway Programs (CAMPP), there are now 32 member schools participating in the consortium.
What 3-Year Programs Offer
While most accelerated programs are focused on primary care, some medical schools such as the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, New York City, offer 3YMD students the option of pursuing any specialty they choose, and these students are offered direct pathways to all 21 of their residency programs and, in turn, a shorter period of time until they can draw a salary.
For Noriko Merida Morales, MD, assistant professor of family medicine at the School of Medicine, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock, Texas, who attended the Family Medicine Accelerated Track program from 2018 to 2021, the program’s focus on family medicine — and the way the curriculum was structured — were the biggest draws.
“Whereas in a traditional curriculum you’re doing very basic science lectures, we were doing a lot of patient care starting in our second year,” she said.
Another benefit of attending an accelerated program is that students are often guaranteed admission into a residency program that’s connected with the medical school. Plus, accelerated students are more vested in their communities much earlier in their training and are urged to remain committed to serving the local population.
“Our program is mission-aligned with the workforce needs within the state of North Carolina,” said Caroline C. Roberts, MD, associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine and director of the Community Health Training Program at School of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, adding that nearly 80 of the state’s 100 counties are considered rural.
To best serve that population, the accelerated program at UNC expanded beyond family medicine and has included internal medicine, pediatrics, general surgery, and psychiatry since 2019.
“So many areas in our state have a super high lack of primary care providers, including psychiatry, which is one of the most needed specialties in our state,” Roberts said.
3YMD Is Not for Everyone
No doubt, a 3YMD program is rigorous and isn’t the best choice for every medical student.
“Students in these programs have to have great time management skills, focus, and juggle a lot in a short period of time,” said Betsy Goebel Jones, EdD, professor and chair of the Department of Medical Education at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, which launched its accelerated program in 2011. She’s also CAMPP’s communications chair. “This isn’t for everybody.”
For example, these programs take 4 years of medical school and compress the 130 weeks (the accredited amount of time for a medical school education) into 3 years, which means fewer (if any) electives and studying that begins the summer before students start medical school and continues during each consecutive summer. There’s also less time to do research or take the time to decide on a specialty.
“It’s pretty intense,” Reboli said. “We monitor our students carefully and help with their wellness. If we think the student should decelerate because of academic issues or stress, we will counsel them.”
In addition, there’s not that much flexibility if things should go awry during those 3 years, added Roberts.
“If you might be at risk for not passing your board exams, we can’t add in an extra 2 months for you to study more,” she said. “Students that can keep up with the rigor of traditional medical school coursework in a traditional timeline are the students that would be a better fit.”
Graduate Ideal Residents Into the Community Faster
Ultimately, the goal is to graduate ideal residents and ideal doctors in the community they are studying in, Roberts said. The idea of remaining committed to her community resonated immediately with Alvarado.
“I really enjoyed the fact that the goal is for us to understand the community we’re serving,” she said, adding that she spent 5 years after college working in research at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s Immigrant Health and Cancer Disparities Service.
It’s here where she saw cancer disparities firsthand.
“I chose this path because I saw a lot of patients who were mostly low income and poor getting more stage IV cancer diagnoses,” she added. “That’s when I realized how much I wanted to be in primary care and to have a community-oriented role.”
Lambeth Hochwald is a New York City-based journalist who covers health, relationships, trends, and issues of importance to women. She’s also a longtime professor at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute in New York City.
