NC is home to the most affordable medical school in the country, study says

Students who want to attend medical school and do as little damage as possible to their bank accounts in the process have a top option in North Carolina.

A recent report by Student Loan Hero named the East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine the most affordable of 110 U.S. medical schools. The schools were surveyed based on annual tuition costs, average debt at graduation and percentage of borrowers receiving grants or scholarships.

The Greenville school did not have the lowest average debt of the surveyed schools, but it was one of only 10 in which tuition is less than $20,000. Four out of five students receive grants or scholarships, and ECU medical students graduate with about $52,000 less debt than the average of $165,000.

Other medical schools listed in the top-10 were New Mexico, Baylor, Texas A&M, Mayo Clinic, Texas Tech, Central Florida, UCLA, Texas-Southwestern and Texas-San Antonio.

The UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine was named 14th most affordable.

The report showed an average in-state tuition for doctoral degrees of $39,116, an average medical school debt of $164,776 and the percentage of students receiving institutional aid at 52.

Those figures were much more student friendly at the top-20 schools in the report: average tuition of $24,483, debt of $122,545 and 71 percent of students receiving assistance.

This story was originally published July 28, 2017 at 5:15 PM with the headline "NC is home to the most affordable medical school in the country, study says."