Changes are afoot for Stanford’s rival medical schools. In March, the Dean of Harvard Medical School announced that the school will no longer require a family contribution from students whose parents earn less than $120,00 per year. Three weeks later, the Yale School of Medicine announced that it would eliminate the required family contribution for households earning less than $100,000 annually. The changes for both schools will begin next year.

The Daily sat down with Charles Prober, Senior Associate Dean of Medical Student Education, to ask if the Stanford School of Medicine has any plans for similar changes in its financial aid programs. Prober said as yet, there are no plans to implement a policy comparable to Harvard and Yale’s.

“Stanford tends to lead, not to follow,” he said.

Prober stressed that it is critical to look at all the pieces of a school’s financial aid package, not just the required parent contribution.

“When schools talk about removing the parent contribution and therefore tuition will be free, but on the other hand they have a large student loan that obliges the student to take out debt — it’s a little bit of a shell game,” he said. “Not that I’m accusing anyone of anything.”

According to Prober, the bottom line in terms of financial aid is a student’s graduating debt; how much that student owes in loans upon graduation.

“I say this to the incoming students: there’s all this complexity, but we want you to look at one number, which is the average graduating debt,” Prober said. “The graduating debt — which we’re very proud of — is lower for Stanford students than for many of our competitors.”

The graduating debt for the class of 2007 was $78,000 at Stanford, compared to $98,953 at Harvard and $115,385 at Yale. The national average for private medical school is $150,000, according to Prober.

Despite the low graduating debt for its students, the cost of attendance for the Stanford School of Medicine is around $68,000 for the first year, according to Prober.

“Our sticker price is quite high,” he said, but stressed that very few students pay the full sticker price.

The price students actually pay is determined by several factors, including parental income and assets. As long as a potential student is under 30 years old, his or her parents are expected to contribute towards med school tuition. Modifying factors include household size, age of parents and how many of the family’s children are in college.

Prober said the key to Stanford’s low graduating debt lays in several factors, including the school’s unit loan. A unit loan is the amount each student is expected to take out in loans towards tuition.

“A unit loan is like a deduction on an insurance policy,” Prober explained. “This year’s unit loan is $13,500. Compared to the other schools that I’ve mentioned, including our friends at Harvard and Yale, it’s the lowest unit loan out there.”

If students have tuition left to pay after the calculated parental contribution and the unit loan, Stanford covers the remainder with a need-based grant.

Stanford has need-based financial programs rather than merit-based financial aid programs, since picking students for any sort of merit-based scholarships would be nearly impossible.

“We have 86 students and we get 7,000 applicants,” Prober said. “There are a lot of meritorious people in the bundle.”

The need-based grants are capped around $30,000. Any remaining need must be covered by outside loans or other sources.

Prober said Stanford also offers many ways for students to earn money towards their tuition bills.

“When we recruit medical students, we say, ‘We want you to be “doctors plus.” We want you to be leaders in something related to healthcare when you graduate from here,’” Prober explained.

To further this aim, medical students can earn up to $72,000 in Stanford’s Medical Scholars Research Program by doing health-related research projects.

In addition, students can offset their tuition bill with money earned by working as teaching assistants, a job that can be worth about $18,000 per quarter.

Med students are charged full tuition for 13 quarters, after which tuition drops by about 80 percent. On average, Stanford med students take five years to earn their degrees, Prober said.