Washington D.C. Medical Schools Hub

Washington D.C. is home to three LCME-accredited MD-granting medical schools — Georgetown University School of Medicine, the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, and Howard University College of Medicine — each with a distinct mission and a different profile of the applicant most likely to thrive there. Georgetown emphasizes a Jesuit tradition of whole-person formation and strong clinical training at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. GWU draws students drawn to urban health, research, and a highly connected clinical environment in the heart of the capital. Howard, one of the nation's historically Black medical schools, has a decades-long commitment to training physicians who serve underrepresented communities and address health equity.

All three programs use AMCAS for primary applications. Secondary essays, interview formats, and mission alignment vary significantly — a school list strategy that treats all three as interchangeable will underperform. Applicants who do well in D.C. tend to have a clear sense of which program's mission resonates with their own, and they write secondaries that reflect that specificity rather than recycling generic answers.

The guides below cover each program in depth, along with the clinical hours, shadowing, and timeline resources that D.C.-area pre-med students need to build a competitive application. Admissions requirements, GPA and MCAT medians, and application deadlines change each cycle — always verify current data directly with each school and through the AAMC's official resources before finalizing your list.