While there is a financial cost to the institution in terms of tuition, faculty time, and administrative support, there are also savings. The A3YP students do not require fourth year clinical rotations and need only minimal career advising, application counseling, or other forms of student affairs and administrative support. As the LCME pays attention to student debt, A3YP markedly decrease the overall student debt.

Many schools found that their A3YP attract students at matriculation who might not have otherwise been interested. The programs build the reputation that the school is innovative and student centric and may create visibility among applicants. As a result, the school may be able to recruit higher caliber students to all programs they offer who may otherwise not attend.

There are additional benefits to these programs. To graduate students early, schools need to be flexible and innovative in the curriculum. Many programs are continuously innovating to improve the program by adjusting the onboarding and bringing in new specialties and programs. Furthermore, several of the A3YP schools received grants due to the novelty of their programs, University of California, Davis (American Medical Association grant), University of North Carolina (American Medical Association grant), New York University Grossman (Macy grant), and Penn State COM (Health Resources & Services Administration grant). From this work, consortium members have presented at number of local, regional, national, and international meetings as well as published [10,11,12,13, 15, 16, 18].

A3YP programs can increase diversity. Penn State found that A3YP in the family medicine program increased diversity with 29% of A3YP students from backgrounds underrepresented in medicine. Similarly, University of California, Davis notes the impact of their program on the diversity of the medical school, as 90% of the students in the A3YP come from backgrounds underrepresented in medicine.

Lastly, some programs have been able to leverage philanthropic opportunity based on social mission. Penn State and Ohio State have received endowments for scholarships and the New York University Grossman and New York University Grossman Long Island Schools of Medicine for the entire tuition. In the University of California, Davis, the Accelerated Competency-Based Education in Primary Care (ACE-PC) program contributed to increasing the US News & World Primary Care ranking from 16 in 2014 with 24% of students matching to primary care (PC) in 2014 to 53% (6th) in 2023. At Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, the Competency-Based Graduation program was launched with three goals—decrease the cost of medical school, keep our “best” students for training, and increase the Virginia workforce.

A historical review [6] of accelerated programs a decade ago concluded that A3YPs were initially developed to address physician shortages with significant financial support from government incentives. However, elimination of federal funding, physician shortage decline, and student and faculty dissatisfaction with the compressed nature of the programs led to closure of these initial programs. Despite this history, there is a growth of A3YP, and recent data [14] shows that student satisfaction and wellness is not impacted by accelerated training. Disadvantages to medical schools include the complexity and work of running two programs simultaneously and the loss of tuition dollars. To run an A3YP, schools must provide administrative staff to oversee all aspects of the program from pre-matriculation through graduation, which can place a burden on schools. In addition, schools provide support services to students that are specific to students in the A3YP. In a school that has both three and 4-year programs, this can be challenging. For instance, career planning is different for students in A3YP which means that faculty must be trained accordingly. These additional complexities are ones which every medical school considering the addition of an A3YP must consider.