Abigail Geisinger Scholars Program
You’ve worked hard to get here. Now be free to achieve your dreams without the burden of loan repayment schedules and interest rates.
Geisinger wants its smart, hardworking medical students to be free to practice medicine the way every future doctor imagines it — through meaningful, long-term relationships with people who become more like family.
That’s why we created the Abigail Geisinger Scholars Program. Here’s how it works:
- Specialties include family medicine, internal medicine, medicine-pediatrics and psychiatry.
- You'll graduate without tuition debt and receive a $2,000 per month stipend.
- Upon completion of residency training, you'll become a Geisinger-employed physician.
- 1 year of service equals 1 year of support, with a 2-year minimum.
Primary care and psychiatry are the key to better health for all. So Geisinger places primary care where it belongs — as the leading concern of every innovation and technological advance we make.
Even better? We free our medical students from the financial concerns that often derail their dreams.
Reinventing primary care
We immerse our students in unique, primary-care-focused programs, including:
- Primary Care Redesign, which focuses on team-based care, population identification and risk stratification while incorporating analytic support and electronic medical record solutions.
- Research centered around primary care/psychiatry. In 2019, 82% of our first-year Abigail Geisinger Scholars took part in physician-guided clinical research, studying everything from vaccine hesitancy to barriers to care resulting in “no shows” for disadvantaged urban populations.
- MyCode Community Health Initiative, which analyzes patient-participants’ DNA to diagnose medical conditions earlier — even before symptoms appear — and help find new treatments.
- Fresh Food Farmacy, which provides no-cost nutritious food to food-insecure patients with diabetes.
- Geisinger 65 Forward, our primary care clinics tailored to meet the unique needs of those age 65 and older.
- Geisinger at Home™, which delivers home-based care to patients with complex, difficult-to-manage health conditions.
- LIFE Geisinger, a program that gives older patients support so they can live at home for as long as possible.
A career in primary care focuses on patients total health and helps you develop long-term relationships with them. Learn why primary care matters.
Geisinger believes in primary care and its power to evolve medicine from disease management to empowering stronger, healthier, more vibrant communities. Abigail Geisinger Scholars join us in leading that transformation.
Primary Care 3+3 Accelerated Program
Acceptance into the Primary Care 3+3 Accelerated Program comes with a directed pathway into one of our residency programs linked to your medical school training. Upon meeting the academic and professional standards for graduation from medical school, you’ll be ranked to match into one of the following residency programs through the National Resident Matching Program. If in turn, you choose to rank us, you’d be positioned to match at the residency of your medical school training.
- Family Medicine Residency at Geisinger Lewistown Hospital
- Kistler Family Medicine Residency at Geisinger South Wilkes-Barre
- Internal Medicine Residency at Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center
This means students enter residency one year earlier than their peers, allowing them to start serving their community sooner — while still meeting all educational objectives.
Overview
- Early immersion/orientation with staff/faculty and our residency programs
- Longitudinal Clinical Experience (LCE) at participating residencies early in the curriculum
- Scholarly summer immersion program with participating residencies
- Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship (LIC) during clerkship in either Family Medicine or Internal Medicine
Advantages
- Medical school completion in 3 years
- Rigorous, efficient programming and robust experiences
- Advising and mentoring by primary care physicians and residents
- Peer collaboration and fellowship
- Directed pathway into the Family Medicine Residency at Geisinger Lewistown Hospital, the Kistler Family Medicine Residency at Geisinger South Wilkes-Barre or the Internal Medicine Residency at Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center
Application process
Students interested in applying for the Abigail Geisinger Scholars Program must:
- Submit an AMCAS primary application and Geisinger Commonwealth secondary application
- Answer “yes” to the first question on the Geisinger Commonwealth secondary application regarding interest in applying for the Abigail Geisinger Scholars Program
- Complete the question regarding primary care or psychiatry and describe experiences that align with the Abigail Geisinger Scholars Program
Once a student is accepted for admission to the School of Medicine, they will be invited to interview for the Abigail Geisinger Scholars Program. Students are selected for the Abigail Geisinger Scholars Program based on alignment with the program’s mission obtained through the interview, diversity and likelihood of staying at Geisinger beyond the service obligation, financial need and merit.