Hi!
I am a sophomore interested in being an army doctor. Would you recommend West Point? Or would you recommend a regular 7-year med program and then applying to be an army doctor? Thanks in advance!
Becoming an Army physician is a very long road.
You can apply for West Point, but you will need to receive permission from your commander–which NOT guaranteed-- if you want to apply for medical school. You may be told to defer your med school application until after you have completed some or all of your active duty service obligation incurred by attending a military academy.
If you do ROTC in college, you will also need permission from your commander to apply to med school. Permission is not guaranteed.
The military will not pay for med school unless you are accepted through the processes described below to USUHS/Hebert SOM or to the HPSP program.
**USUHS (Uniformed Service University for the Health Sciences) **You can attend college anywhere and apply to Hebert SOM for medical school as a college senior.
If accepted at Hebert, your medical education is free, but you are required to enlist in a branch of military service as a condition of enrollment. You will do basic the summer before med school starts, be commissioned as an officer at the end of basic. You will receive an officer’s salary & benefits during med school. At the end of med school, you will be required to enter a military residency. Time spent in residency does not count toward your required service payback. Some branches of the service require 1-2 years working as a general medical office after intern year but before beginning residency training. Your choice of specialties is not guaranteed and will be constrained by the needs of the particular service branch you belong to.
Admission preference is given to military veterans and current service members.
https://www.usuhs.edu/medschool
HPSP (Health Professions Scholarship Program) Once you have applied for medical school, you may apply for the HPSP program. To be accepted into the HPSP, you must first receive a med school admission. Everything listed above for Hebert will also apply to HPSP, but you will attend whichever med school has accepted you instead of Hebert.
https://www.goarmy.com/amedd/education/hpsp.html
You cannot enter the military immediately after completing a 7 year BS/MD program. You will need to complete your residency training first. This is non-optional and non-deferrable… You cannot work as a physician unless you complete an accredited medical residency. Residency lasts for a minimum of 3 years and up to 7 years. If you want to pursue a subspecialty (like cardiology or trauma surgery), then you’ll need to add another 1-3 years for fellowship. Only once you have finished residency and any optional fellowship(s) will you be able to join the military service.
You cannot enter a military residency as BS/MD program graduate because those are only open to HPSP and Hebert graduates.
BS/MD programs are not eligible for HPSP.
Depending on your specialty, the Army may or may not want you. The Army only allow doctors trained the specialties they need to enlist. (For example, the Army needs lots of general surgeons, but very few pediatricians or dermatologists.) The other issue is that you be older than most newly commissioned officers-- likely into your 30s by the time you finish residency–which may also affect your attractiveness as a recruit. If you are 35 or older, you are ineligible to commission into the Army.