Wayne State Offers Free Ride to 10 Med Students a Year

» Get Patch’s daily newsletter and real-time news alerts.

Wayne State University said Thursday that it plans to give a free ride to 10 aspiring doctors a year under a program aimed at getting more talented students from low-income backgrounds into and through medical school.

The program will pay for the complete education, from undergraduate to medical school, and steer the 10 students toward professional work that addresses health disparities.

The financial bottom line is that students will save about $251,000 in undergraduate and graduate tuition, and undergraduate room and board costs in university housing.

“Attracting top-tier students with an interest in health disparities is important to the future of our School of Medicine,” Wayne State President M. Roy Wilson said in a news release. “As we advance toward becoming a national hub for health disparities research, it is crucial for us to get future medical practitioners and clinical scientists committed to Wayne State University as soon as possible.”

In an interview with the Detroit Free Press, Wilson said he wants Wayne State “ to be known as the place for training biomedical scientists and MDs.”

“We want kids who can go anywhere, but choose to go to Wayne,” he said.

Wilson, who earned his medical degree from Harvard University, said getting into medical school can be tough, even for students with solid credentials.

He earned an early acceptance, which alleviated some anxiety and allowed him to take undergraduate classes, such as philosophy and advanced English, and that “really helped me be a better person and a better physician ultimately,” he said.

The new Wayne Med-Direct program will emphasize learning, rather than competition to get into medical school. It starts with next summer’s semester, and applications will be accepted until Jan. 15. Students applying must be U.S. citizens, and be an incoming freshman with a minimum 3.5 grade point average and either a score of 1340 on SAT or 30 on ACT tests.

Preference will be given to students who come from a disadvantaged socioeconomic background and who are interested in studying health disparities in different populations. Wilson said he expects underrepresented minorities will “help us in terms of diversity in the medical school over time.”

Wayne State graduate school Dean Ambika Mathur, one of the architects of Wayne Med-Direct, told The Detroit News the Wayne Med-Direct program will require a commitment of millions of dollars a year. It will initially be paid for with existing scholarship funds, but future plans include reaching out to medical school alums and national grants.

The program piggybacks on to BUILD (Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity), a program that started last year and received $21.8 million over five years from the National Institutes of Health. Operated in partnership with the University of Detroit-Mercy, Marygrove College and the Wayne County Community College District, the program has already accepted 17 students with an average ACT score of 27 and average GPA of 3.9.

BUILD was locally focused in its inaugural year, but will accept students from across the country as it moves forward. Wayne Med-Direct will be nationally focused from its onset.

The program is the first of its kind in Michigan. Similar programs exist elsewhere in the country, including one at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, which covers tuition and fees for all of its students.

» Photo via Wayne State University