Medical school is expensive. That sentence doesn't do it justice, but let's start there and get more specific.

The average cost of attendance at a private medical school now runs between $60,000 to $80,000 per year - tuition, fees, living expenses included. Over four years, you're looking at $300,000 to $400,000 in total costs before you've seen your first paycheck as a physician. And that's before interest starts compounding during residency, when you're working 80-hour weeks earning a resident's salary and can't meaningfully pay down principal.

Here's a real-world scenario: A student borrows $380,000 to get through medical school. They match into family medicine or pediatrics, among the most needed specialties in the country, with a three-year residency. During that time, they defer or make minimum payments on a resident's salary while interest accrues. By the time they're an attending and can actually start paying back their loans, that $380,000 has quietly grown to somewhere between $450,000 and $550,000. They didn't spend more. They didn't do anything wrong. They followed their passion and chose a specialty the healthcare system desperately needs. And the math did the rest.

This is the reality for tens of thousands of physicians. And things are about to get harder.

What the One Big Beautiful Bill Changed

In July 2025, the current administration signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law, and for medical students, its effects on federal borrowing are significant.

Starting July 1, 2026, the Grad PLUS loan program - which previously allowed graduate and professional students to borrow up to their full cost of attendance - is eliminated for new borrowers. Professional degree students (MD, DO) will be capped at $50,000 per year in federal unsubsidized loans, with a lifetime limit of $200,000. For students at schools where the annual cost of attendance is $70,000 or more, that cap doesn't come close to covering the bill. The gap has to come from somewhere. For most students, that somewhere is private lenders.

Income-driven repayment plans that many borrowers relied on - SAVE, PAYE, ICR - are being replaced for new borrowers with a single Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP), with fewer protections if you hit financial hardship. Economic hardship and unemployment deferments, safety nets that many borrowers depended on, are being eliminated for new loans after July 2026.

More medical students will need private loans, and they'll need them sooner. Private lenders know this. They're not in a rush to offer you a better deal.

That’s why Admit is partnering with Juno, a platform that uses group buying power to negotiate better student-loan rates. The idea is simple: when thousands of borrowers come together, lenders are forced to compete for that business, and you can often get a meaningfully better deal than applying alone.

If you’ve ever thought, “Why don’t students negotiate like everyone else?” -  this is that.

A “student union” for loans (without the bureaucracy)

Medical school debt is already crushing. The median graduating student carries between $205,000 and $215,000 in loans, against a median four-year cost of attendance of roughly $298,000 at public schools and $408,000 at private ones. And as federal borrowing options shrink, more of that gap gets filled by private lenders who have no particular reason to offer you a fair rate.

That's where this partnership comes in.

Here's the mental model: most borrowers shop alone. You go to a lender, they give you a rate, you either take it or try somewhere else. You have no leverage. Juno changes that by aggregating a large group of borrowers and running a negotiation where lenders compete for the group's business. Borrowers get access to the best offer available to them based on their profile, instead of accepting whatever rate they happen to find first.

That's the union analogy: collective bargaining power applied to a market that usually treats borrowers as individuals. Admit brings the group. Juno runs the negotiation. You get a better deal than you'd find on your own.

Why Now: The physician shortage is real, and financing is making it worse

The U.S. is already facing a significant physician shortage. A shortfall of up to 86,000 physicians is projected by 2036, and primary care specialties like family medicine and pediatrics are bearing the worst of it. These are exactly the fields where debt burden hits hardest, because compensation doesn't match what's owed.

The financing landscape is making this worse. Starting July 1, 2026, the One Big Beautiful Bill eliminates Grad PLUS loans for new borrowers and caps federal professional-degree borrowing at $50,000 per year with a $200,000 lifetime limit. At schools where the cost of attendance exceeds $70,000 annually, that gap has to be filled somewhere, and private lenders are waiting.

Medical associations have said plainly what tighter financing means in practice: higher barriers to medical school entry, and fewer people able to pursue medicine at all. That doesn't just hurt students. It hurts the patients and communities who need physicians most.

We can't fix tuition overnight. But we can fight for better terms and fewer predatory outcomes, and with enough borrowers together, we can actually move the needle.

What this partnership actually does

Admit users can:

• Join the Admit negotiation group (no cost, no commitment to accept an offer),
• Access the negotiated offers after the group bid runs,
• Compare options with more leverage than they’d have solo.

A few important details:

• Rates aren’t “one-size-fits-all.” Your exact offer still depends on credit profile, term length, etc.
• Juno negotiates at scale. They build the group year-round and negotiate during a defined window (often in the spring).
• This is about optionality. Even if you ultimately use federal loans, having competitive alternatives matters - especially as policy shifts.

What we believe

We believe medicine should be accessible to talented people regardless of wealth. A financing system that forces future physicians into worse interest rates, or cuts off borrowing options entirely, doesn't just hurt students. It hurts patients, communities, and the future healthcare workforce.

So we're doing something concrete: more bargaining power, more transparency, better options. 

This is the first in a series on medical education and finance. We're building out resources to help students understand the full picture of what training actually costs, and what you can do about it. More coming soon.

Check it out at https://med.admit.org/financial-aid