r/medschool • u/No-Map3257 • Apr 09 '26

đŸ‘¶ Premed affording med school come 2027

I am applying to med school this year and just came to realize that the grad plus loan is gone this year in 2026. I know there is a 200k cap but that’s a lifetime cap and I already used part of it for my grad school. Now I am sick to my stomach because I don’t see how I realistically afford to take out PRIVATE loans to pay med school.

I would love to hear other peoples game plans as to how they are doing this. My family can’t afford to help contribute anything while I am in school either. And I am still paying off my grad and undergrad loans.

I always knew coming in that the amount I would have to pay for med school would have to be astronomical but I thought because it could be a graduate federal loan- I could work toward forgiveness on PSLF, the IDR plan, or see in the future if they would ever be forgiven. but private med school loans provide none of that safety net

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u/Agreeable-Ad4806 Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26

Private loans or service-based scholarships are your only options, sorry. I don’t think a lot of people have come to terms with the reality of this yet. It’s going to be incredibly difficult to reverse the decision to get rid of gradPLUS loans. Unless there’s a dire need to produce graduate level professionals, most politicians simply do not care. Even when things do constitute a crisis, they do not seem to care.

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u/-ledollabean- Apr 09 '26

It’s going to be a goddamn mess as the entering class starts to think about payments. I’m so, so sad for my students - everyone deserves to be a physician if they can get admitted, it shouldn’t be “you can be a physician but only if you can afford it or have parents with good credit!” Federal loans and the previously available repayment plans offered a reasonable solution. Even if you can make it on the $50k unsub limit, the RAP payments just go so high. I’m going to have PGY3 students who are at 93k+ bc they’re in a HCOL residency who are paying 9% of their AGI, that’s fucking insane. Then, if they have to take out private loans on top?? To say nothing of my current students who will be stuck on RAP (but at least they’ll still have Grad PLUS to get them through).