If you’re aiming to join a prestigious medical school on the East Coast, you're spoilt for choice. One standout option is the University of Connecticut School of Medicine in Farmington, Connecticut. UConn Medical School stands out for its commitment to innovation, discovery, education, and service—values that are deeply ingrained in UConn students, equipping them for impactful medical careers.
The UConn School of Medicine, which enrolled its first class in 1968, is ranked #71 in Primary Care and #53 in Research by U.S. News and World Report. The program utilizes a non-traditional approach to medical education with its team-based learning curriculum. Students form teams and work together to apply their knowledge in the classroom actively. In keeping with UConn Medical School’s passion for hands-on learning, students begin caring for patients on the first day of school in a primary care, community setting.
If you’re eager to incorporate research, education, and engagement into your future medical practice, the UConn School of Medicine offers the perfect program for you. But, as with all top medical schools, getting accepted presents a challenge. To increase your admissions odds, you’ll need to become a competitive applicant and craft a powerful, highly tailored application that sets you apart from the crowd.
Continue reading to explore the UConn Medical School acceptance rate and admissions requirements. We’ll also give you the best strategies to approach UConn’s secondary essays and to prepare for their interview.
There are many programs through which you can receive a medical degree at UConn Medical School:
In 2016, the UConn School of Medicine released its redesigned MDelta curriculum, which utilizes team-based learning instruction rather than the traditional, lecture-style coursework. Students engage in active learning scenarios to refine their problem-solving, diagnostic, and treatment skills. This new curriculum aims to produce physicians who embrace scientific advances, provide exceptional clinical care, become outstanding teachers, make new discoveries about health and disease, and participate in scholarly activities throughout their careers.
For the 2023–2024 academic year, the UConn School of Medicine tuition for in-state applicants is $44,666, and it’s $74,367 for out-of-state applicants. The total cost of attendance for UConn SOM applicants, including all fees, the laptop, room, board, supplies, transportation, and personal expenses known as “indirect expenses”) is $84,386 for in-state applicants and $114,087 for out-of-state applicants.
While we don’t have official data surrounding tuition rates for the 2024-2025 academic year, last fall (September 2023), Hartford Business Journal published an article on the upcoming tuition increases for UConn School of Medicine. According to HBJ, in-state applicants can expect a 2.5 percent increase in tuition, while out-of-state applicants can expect an increase of 0.5 percent for the 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 academic years.
This increase will boost tuition costs at the UConn School of Medicine to $45,783 for 2024-2025 and $46,928 for 2025-2026 for in-state applicants. For out-of-state applicants, the increase will result in tuition costs of $74,739 for 2024-2025 and $75,113 for 2025-2026.
UConn Medical School offers need-based institutional aid to its students in the form of tuition remission grants and university loans. An additional low-interest Primary Care Loan is available specifically for Connecticut residents who demonstrate financial need and plan to specialize in one of the primary care areas—namely family medicine, general internal medicine, geriatrics, and pediatrics.
In total, 81 percent of UConn students receive financial aid from either institutional or federal sources. The average debt for UConn School of Medicine graduates in 2021 was $136,207—well below the average debt for all med school graduates in the nation.
The UConn Medical School acceptance rate is 4.8 percent, and in recent years approximately 320 applicants have been invited to interview each cycle. Let’s take a look at the admissions statistics for the class of 2027:
Of those, 76 percent were Connecticut residents, and 35 percent were UConn undergraduates.
While UConn hasn’t published academic stats for its most recent group of matriculants, we can look to GPA and MCAT scores among recent UConn classes to demonstrate the competitiveness of the applicant pool:
Applicants must have taken the MCAT within three years of their application and no later than September before their expected date of matriculation. Therefore, if you are applying for September 2024 matriculation, you must take the MCAT between June 2020 and September 2023.
UConn Medical School accepts international students with foreign undergraduate degrees, but all their transcripts must be evaluated to determine U.S. equivalent credits and grades.
Here are the specific course requirements set by UConn Medical School for its applicants:
The above should be considered the minimum requirements. However, UConn recommends that applicants take additional courses in biochemistry, genetics, and physiology to be competitive.
The admissions committee considers each applicant's interests, achievements, abilities, motivation, and character, as demonstrated throughout their application. GPA and MCAT scores are evaluated, but so is academic program difficulty, intellectual growth and development, and the quality of extracurricular activities.
The UConn School of Medicine also seeks students who match its mission of innovation, discovery, education, and service. One of the most effective ways to demonstrate your fit with UConn’s mission is through well-written secondary essays.
The UConn School of Medicine offers an Early Decision option for admission. Whether you opt for this route or the traditional application path, here is a timeline of dates to know as you throw your hat in UConn’s ring:
Because UConn reviews applications on a rolling basis, we suggest you submit your AMCAS application in May, and your secondary application in June or July. It’s to your advantage to be among the first applicants reviewed by the admissions committee.
After submitting your AMCAS application, you’ll receive an email from UConn Medical School with information on completing your secondaries. You have four weeks to write and submit the three required secondary essays, each under 1,800 characters or ~250 to 300 words.
The primary goals for your secondaries are demonstrating your motivation for a medical career and expanding on the relevant experiences that make you a strong fit for UConn’s program. Your essays should address the values contained in UConn’s mission. This is your opportunity to explain how you’re prepared to benefit from and contribute to the UConn School of Medicine programs, so remember to do your research and be specific about what you hope to accomplish at UConn Medical School.
Below, we’ve provided insight into how to tackle each of UConn’s 2023-2024 secondary essay prompts and example essays.
Question 1: Highlight your experiences in the healthcare field. What insights have you gained about potential problems you will face as a physician? (1,800 characters)
When responding to this question, you have three primary objectives:
Some students get intimidated by this question, particularly if they can’t immediately think of a potential problem facing physicians, or don’t feel qualified to be an expert on the challenges of healthcare. If you’re not sure what to write about, reach out to the physicians you’ve shadowed or the medical professionals you encountered in your volunteer work. Ask them to share a few of the obstacles they’ve faced in their medical practices. Then reflect on their responses and think of instances where you witnessed these issues in a healthcare setting.
Here’s an example response to this prompt:
The summer after my freshman year, I shadowed Dr. Urizar, a primary care physician in an urban community. For the next two years, I continued volunteering at the clinic in various roles. At times I supported the intake team, at others I worked as a medical scribe, and I regularly helped with patient follow-up. I am thankful that Dr. Urizar took the time to mentor and prepare me for a career in medicine. One day he shared his frustration over the amount of misinformation his patients received from questionable sources, primarily the internet. I did not fully understand his complaint until the day Mr. Alonzo came into the clinic. He claimed he had a kidney stone and needed pain meds to help until he passed it. He refused to answer further questions about his symptoms, remaining adamant he knew what was wrong. After a brief exam, Dr. Urizar called for immediate medical transport to take Mr. Alonzo to the emergency room. When the hospital called with an update, they confirmed Dr. Urizar’s suspicion that Mr. Alonzo’s appendix had ruptured. He would fully recover, but his misinformation and his delay in seeing a doctor nearly cost him his life. This experience helped me recognize the seriousness of this issue. The free, often untrustworthy, information available online leads people to self-diagnose their illnesses rather than seek the necessary medical treatment. As a future physician, I hope to address this problem by properly educating the community I serve. I plan to join the Community-Based Education program at UConn so I can learn best practices for educating and promoting health in communities. The CBE program, combined with UConn’s focus on education and service, will empower me with the skills and knowledge I need to educate and improve the health of my future patients.
This essay works because the applicant achieved the three main objectives. They highlighted their healthcare experiences, as well as introduced the population they served. The applicant used a specific story to illustrate the problem facing physicians. And the conclusion of the essay focused on how UConn can help the applicant achieve their goals of providing better health education to communities.
You’ll also notice a direct reference to part of UConn’s mission—education and service. This demonstrates the applicant is a strong match for the mission and values of UConn Medical School, increasing their chances of moving on in the medical admissions process.
Question 2: How will the University of Connecticut School of Medicine best serve your needs of becoming a physician or physician-scientist? (1,800 characters)
Question 3: The University of Connecticut School Of Medicine realizes that each applicant brings a unique perspective from a broad range of experiences that have been influential in leading to a career in medicine. How will your own life experiences and unique identity enhance the UConn SoM classroom and community? (1800 characters)
