While you are researching, explore the joint services medical school, located on the USUHS campus at National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, MD. You go to a regular civilian school doing pre-med studies, and apply. You are commissioned, receive active duty pay, and get your MD there, acquiring years of obligated service related to that program. Those few USNA midshipmen (usually no more than 13 from a class of 1100-1200 or so) and even rarer handful of NROTC midshipmen (NROTC unit websites usually note a max of 25 per year on a national basis) approved for the medical school route, may choose to attend med school via this path. They will incur the obligated service associated with both their commissioning source and the medical school. *** The obligated service start date does not run concurrently with medical school; it starts years later. That’s why this is such a long path - the many years of “payback” that start several years down the road.
USNA and NROTC midshipmen may also choose a civilian medical school to which they have been accepted.
medschool.usuhs.edu
Navy, Army and Air Force get the majority of its doctors through direct commissioning programs, not USNA or NROTC, which are designed to produce officers for the warfare communities.
Many use this scholarship and commissioning program. Note the detail on obligated service.
Of course, you could go to NROTC, go to a warfare community, do your obligated service and enough additional time to earn your full veteran educational benefit, separate from active duty, go to med school using your vet benefit, and have no further service obligation as a civilian doctor. Or you could apply to come back into the Navy or commission into another service in the medical Corps.
You can also apply for lateral transfer from your Navy warfare community at a specific point to go to med school and go into Med Corps. That is extremely competitive (think “handful” again), with no guarantees. Surface Warfare is best for that strategy, because it does not have a long training pipeline; you report to your ship, with shorter-duration schools here and there, unlike aviation, EOD, SEAL and nuclear communities. All the service obligation stuff applies, plus later start date.
In general, any time you are using the Navy dime and Navy time to get a degree or extended training, you will owe obligated service, which often starts after the training is complete.
If you decide to pursue this path, in whatever form, you will want to get detailed clarity on years of payback, and when it starts, preferably from a primary source and not anecdotal.
