Admissions

Process

For a detailed admissions timeline, including details on AMCAS's Choose Your Medical School Tool, please visit the Harvard Medical School Admissions' page "When to Apply."

  • Apply via the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS)
  • Complete and submit AMCAS Application:
    • Designate "Combined MD-PhD Program"
    • Select Harvard Medical School
    • Complete the two additional AMCAS MD-PhD essay questions. AMCAS MD-PhD essay questions are standard for all MD-PhD Programs.
  • On the Harvard Medical School Secondary Application:
    • Select appropriate categories for curriculum choices at Harvard Medical School: Pathways and/or HST and "I am applying for the MD-PhD Program." There is no disincentive to applying to all three.
    • Complete several questions that are pertinent to MD-PhD applicants only. These questions concern:
      • A Harvard/MIT MD-PhD Program-specific short essay question;
      • The PhD program type you anticipate applying to: Basic and Translational Sciences or Social Sciences;
      • Your research interests/areas;
      • The research supervisors submitting letters of recommendation on your behalf;
        • MD-PhD applicants are expected to have letters of recommendation from research mentors.
        • All letters of recommendation should be sent directly to AMCAS.
      • Your Manuscripts/Publications:
        • Please list the paper reference (author list, title, journal, date), and indicate its current status using the appropriate letter below (a-f):
          1. Published
          2. Accepted
          3. Under Revision
          4. Under Initial Review
          5. Submitted
          6. Manuscript in Preparation
        • For manuscripts in preparation (f), please request that your PI reference such manuscripts in their recommendation letter. Alternatively, your PI may send a note directly to mdphd@hms.harvard.edu providing the manuscript reference.
        • For all other stages of submission (a-e), please provide the journal's official email documentation. For published papers (a), please also provide the citation and article link.
        • Please only use the "Upload File" feature to provide the journal's official email documentation; please do not provide PDFs of the actual manuscripts/publications.
        • The journal's official email documentation is an email provided by a journal verifying the status of a manuscript/paper (ex. out for review, under revision, accepted in principle, in press, etc.). We recommend consulting with your PI to obtain this documentation.
        • If you have more than one document to upload, please combine into one PDF and then upload. Should this documentation exceed the file size, we recommend compressing the PDF file prior to uploading.
    • Social Science Applicants ONLY:
      • Statement of Purpose
      • Supplemental Application Materials: PhD program dependent. Additional information can be found on our PhD Programs of Study page.