Hoping to heal the human body, Harvard pre-meds are learning that applying to medical school can cost an arm and a leg.

A typical Harvard undergraduate applying to medical school can rack up more than $6,000 in costs for applications, the MCAT, test prep, and travel costs for interviews, according to students and advisers.

While some resources are available for undergraduates from low-income backgrounds, including loans from the Harvard Financial Aid Office, many applicants do not qualify for application fee waivers and medical schools do not offer financial aid for students not yet enrolled.

These expenses can be constraining—both on students’ checkbooks and on the number of medical schools to which they apply.

“From my own background as a student with not a lot of resources myself, if students do not have a lot of money to apply to medical school, they must limit the number of schools and that could hurt them in the end,” says Christopher J. Russell ’00, a fourth-year student at HMS and a pre-med resident tutor in Adams House.

DIAGNOSIS: COSTLY

A typical Harvard applicant applies to 18 schools through the centralized American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS), according to Lee Anne Michelson ’77, assistant director and pre-med adviser at the Office of Career Services.

AMCAS, which includes the vast majority of the country’s medical schools, charges a $160 processing fee for the first application and $30 for each additional application.

After receiving the AMCAS application from students, medical schools will send out a supplementary form that requires an additional processing fee of $50 to $100, according to Michelson.

Some medical schools screen students before sending out secondary applications, but “more and more schools now are sending secondaries,” she says.

For Benigno R. Varela ’06, the application fees comprised the bulk of his costs. He says he decided to go to medical school early on, and sent out the AMCAS application to as many universities as he could to increase his chances of an acceptance.

“My mother went though 11 miscarriages, and I accompanied my mother to her gynecologist [for] six of them,” he says. “That sparked an interest in me to go to medical school.”

Twenty-three AMCAS applications and 17 supplementary applications later, Varela says that he was lucky he could ask his dad to help cover the cost.

While Varela applied to a typical number of schools, Michelson said she has seen students applying to up to 40 schools to increase their chances.

“At some point, you are not increasing your chances,” she says. “You are just throwing money away.”

Not every secondary application guarantees an interview, which students must pay for on their own.

Michelson estimates that the cost of going to one interview, which can include paying for a hotel stay, a taxi, a new suit, and airfare, is about $400 per school.

Unlike most business and law schools, medical schools require an on-campus interview for admission.

Matthew B. Wallenstein ’06 says he spent more than $5,000 applying to medical schools and the major cost was the interviews.

“Luckily, my parents were able to pay for it, but I have no idea how I would have applied to medical school if they had not been willing to pay for it,” he says.

Wallenstein says that he had tried to schedule interviews in the same state over the same weekend to reduce airfare costs, but it only worked out once.

Joanne M. McEvoy, director of admissions at HMS, says that these interviews, although expensive, are necessary for selecting the incoming class.

“We are training people for a profession in which interpersonal skills are extremely important,” she says. “The professions wouldn’t be well-served if we are making decisions entirely based on paper.”

A PRESCRIPTION FOR CHANGE

Application services and medical schools say they recognize the high cost of applying, and offer assistance programs for students from low-income backgrounds.

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), which runs the AMCAS, has a Fee Assistance Program (FAP) that will reduce the MCAT registration fee from $210 to $85 and waves all application fees for up to 11 medical schools.

Yet not all students qualify for such programs.

“We have students who have no money and who have not been able to get [FAP],” says Michelson.

Russell, the Adams tutor, says he also knows many undergraduates who did not did receive fee waivers.

“If your parents are working, you are probably not going to get it,” Russell says.

But according to Robert F. Jones, senior vice president of AAMC, “We really want students to know we have a Fee Assistance Program, and regardless of what they may hear, it is not impossible to be approved for it.”

Beginning this January, AAMC changed eligibility guidelines of the program so more students can qualify for the fee waivers. Now, students eligible for FAP can have annual family incomes up to twice the federal poverty level. For 2006, the poverty level for a family of four is $20,000.

Jones says AAMC changed the program after tracking data showed that high costs deterred some students from applying to medical school. He says that applicants who applied for and did not receive fee waivers were slightly less likely to register for the MCAT and to apply to medical school using AMCAS.

“We certainly want students from all socioeconomic backgrounds and we do not want the costs of the application to be any type of deterrent,” Jones says.

In the past, fee waivers were awarded to 40 percent of applicants, and Jones predicts a 60 percent approval rate with the revised program.

At Harvard, pre-meds who are financial aid recipients can take out additional loans from the College as they incur “senior expenses,” according to Sally C. Donahue, director of financial aid for Harvard College.

“If students can budget carefully, plan ahead about what the full cost will be…and come talk to us, then with a little bit of time in advance, we can help them sort through how they are thinking of covering that cost,” she says.

Donahue says the Office of Financial Aid does not track the number of students who take out additional loans for medical school applications or the amount that they borrow.

Despite the financial burden, many Harvard students say that the costs are a necessary step toward becoming a doctor.

“In the future, you will get it many times back since it is such a rewarding field,” says Jennifer X. Cai ’07, the president of the Harvard PreMedical Society.

—Staff writer Madeline W. Lissner can be reached at mlissner@fas.harvard.edu.