Yale School of Medicine

Yale has taught medicine its own way for a century. Under the Yale System, the first eighteen months carry no grades and no class rank; students sit anonymous qualifying exams and are treated as adults directing their own learning. Every student also writes an original research thesis, a requirement that dates to 1839.

Hadrian Mendoza skips lecture and studies on a self-set schedule, moving between campus libraries and coffee shops and leaning on board-review videos and spaced-repetition cards. Afternoons bring the required pieces: workshops, clinical skills training, and clinic.

Research is woven into the degree, not bolted on. Yale reports $580.8 million in NIH awards and $834.4 million in total research funding for 2025, and roughly one in five MD students earns a combined MD-PhD.

Hadrian counts "world class research opportunities for all of the medical students" among the school's core strengths, alongside the curricular freedom the Yale System allows.

The flagship teaching hospital is Yale New Haven Hospital, with 1,541 licensed beds, part of a Yale New Haven Health system that includes Bridgeport, Greenwich, and Lawrence + Memorial hospitals, plus affiliates such as VA Connecticut and the Connecticut Mental Health Center.

Clinical work starts in year one. Hadrian describes a clinical skills course taught by attendings and residents, ending in a comprehensive OSCE, alongside a weekly half-day in clinic on a small interprofessional team with physician associate and nursing students.

Hadrian calls Yale "a gunner-free zone." Pass/fail grading with no ranking or AOA lets classmates collaborate and keep serious lives outside medicine: the class includes a competition pilot and a rideshare founder, and Hadrian directs a weekly jazz band. Yale reports that 73% of the Class of 2029 receives financial assistance.

New Haven is a walkable college town where students can live without a car. It's quieter than a big city, but New York and Boston are an easy train ride away for weekends.