Ultimate Medical Academy Graduation and Career Outcomes

The scoreboard rows you need

Start with the federal scoreboard because it is the only set of numbers nobody at the school controls. The Department of Education's College Scorecard reports, for Ultimate Medical Academy: median earnings of $33,775 ten years after entry and $28,073 six years after, an average net price of $23,846, median federal debt of $13,875 across all borrowers and $16,714 among completers, about 84 percent of undergraduates receiving Pell Grants and 79 percent taking federal loans. About 94 percent of the student body is female, and the fall snapshot counts 8,932 students with a 12-month unduplicated headcount near 40,800.

Read the rows as a group, because they describe a coherent institution: an open-enrollment, mostly Pell-eligible, majority-female student body earning and borrowing in modest ranges. Those rows are the honest ceiling for any claim about outcomes, and every program-level number below is a slice of the same truth. The College Scorecard explainer and the median debt guide translate each row into English.

The completion picture and its limits

The graduation question at UMA is answerable in one official number and one supporting one. The College Scorecard publishes an overall completion rate of about 55 percent for UMA, and U.S. News lists a full-time retention rate around 70 percent. The older first-time, full-time completion fields, like the 150 percent of normal time rate, are suppressed because UMA's cohort structure, heavy on part-time and transfer-in adults, does not fit the classic first-time, full-time measure. The 55 percent overall figure is the one to use and to benchmark against the alternatives.

Those numbers are not a verdict on your odds, and the completion rate explainer says so plainly: whole-school completion describes the institution, not the individual. The individual's odds improve with the exact inputs this school rewards, prior credits, discipline, a support network, and the retention row, near 70 percent, is the one worth benchmarking against the alternatives, because it is the row that captures the support the reviews praise.

Program-by-program earnings

The graduation data is only half the outcome story; the wage data by program is the half that determines whether the credential pays. The federal program-level rows for UMA show: health and medical administrative services, the billing, coding, and office family that dominates enrollment, with seven-year median earnings near $31,900 at the certificate level and $34,200 at the associate level; allied health and medical assisting services with seven-year earnings near $35,800; dental support services near $35,950; practical nursing certificates near $33,200; clinical medical laboratory certificates near $40,400; and human services associates near $27,600 seven years out.

The range, from about $27,600 to about $40,400, is the most important single fact in this article. The program you choose at UMA is worth thousands of dollars a year in differential outcomes, which is why every program-specific guide tells you to price the track, not the school. The career paths article maps those earnings to the actual occupations and their certification steps.

Debt in proportion

The debt rows make the earnings readable. Median federal debt of $13,875 across all borrowers and $16,714 among completers is modest in absolute terms, and the typical projected monthly payment for completers lands near $190. Compare those rows to the earnings above and the pattern is the one this site prints behind every number: low to moderate debt against moderate wage growth is a workable, if unspectacular, financial trajectory, so long as the student does not add unsubsidized debt or repeat courses.

The spread by program matters again. Completer debt runs from near $8,700 for the dental certificate track to around $25,300 for human services associates, against human services' $27,600 earnings, the worst debt-to-earnings pairing in the catalog. The tuition article and the worth-it analysis both run the pairing math, and the loan calculator turns any row into a monthly payment.

The employment and employer side

Employment outcomes for UMA are known in two flavors: the survey flavor and the federal flavor. The federal Scorecard employment fields are suppressed for UMA, which is common for schools with small cohorts and high part-time enrollment. The survey flavor comes from UMA's own published research; a Hanover Research survey of 355 employers who hired UMA online students between July 2023 and June 2024 reports 4 in 5 said they would likely hire a UMA graduate again.

Weigh that figure correctly. A rehire survey measures employer satisfaction with graduates who were hired, not a placement rate. It is a credible, citable signal about the product UMA sends into the market, and it does not describe how quickly the median graduate found a job. The students who convert the credential into a role are the ones who combine it with certification and active searching, which is the process the career services article and the questions to ask before enrolling guide turn into a plan.

Reading retention the right way

The retention row is the most useful of the completion family because it describes the present rather than the past. A full-time retention rate near 70 percent means that for every three first-year students a year starts with, two are still enrolled when the next year begins, which for an open-enrollment adult school is a real measure of whether the support operation is working. It is the row that connects the reviews, which overwhelmingly complain about logistics rather than teaching, to the operations that produce them.

Use it comparatively, though. The retention rate means more against a competing open-enrollment online school than it does against a selective university, because the admitted populations are different. When you compare UMA to another open school, "retention rate" is your first-row test; when you compare it to a community college, "completion and transfer behavior" matters more. The compare-two-colleges guide is built around exactly this discipline, and the public versus private comparison sets the ownership context for the numbers.

The fields the data does not show

The federal data tells you a lot and then goes silent in places that deserve attention. Employment outcomes one and six years after enrollment are suppressed for UMA, which reflects small cohorts and high part-time enrollment rather than a secret. Completion rates for first-time full-time cohorts are suppressed for the same structural reason. And the federal median earnings field combines all programs, which is why the program-level rows matter so much more at a school whose tracks range from $27,600 to over $40,000.

When a field is suppressed, the responsible move is to substitute a proxy and say so. The retention row, the program-level earnings, the completer debt, and the employer survey together give you a defensible picture where the headline fields are missing. A salesperson who treats a suppressed field as blank so they can promise a number is the one person in the room you should not believe, and the research guide includes the exact question that pins the substitute data down.

What UMA itself reports

The school's own numbers round out the picture. UMA reports supporting more than 100,000 graduates across its history, a career services team of more than 125 advisors, externship and professional practice experiences in select programs, and an alumni network under the ConnectUMA banner with ongoing career support. Those are operational facts with the same source: the school's public materials. They describe capacity rather than outcomes, and they matter exactly as much as your plan to use them, which is the point of the student services article.

The same capacity appears in the structure behind it. Every UMA program sits inside a student success system, learning advisors, tutoring, and 24/7 technical support, that exists precisely because outcomes at an open-enrollment school are manufactured one student at a time. The reviews make the loop visible: students who use the machinery describe being carried to graduation, and students who do not describe being alone. The student experience article documents both halves, because the machinery only works on the students who operate it.

Putting the outcomes to work

Outcomes data only helps if it changes a decision. Run the two-row test before enrolling. For your chosen program, compare the seven-year earnings row from the federal data against the program's completer debt row, and ask whether the pairing works at the payment estimate the loan calculator produces. Then compare your local employer reality: pull the occupation wage for your metro area from your state's employment data, and confirm the certification the job postings require, and let the odds do the rest. The research guide turns these rows into a printed worksheet.

The bottom line

UMA's outcomes are public, measurable, and modest: $33,775 ten-year median earnings against $13,875 median debt, a 70 percent retention figure, and program earnings ranging from roughly $27,600 to $40,400 depending on the track. The completion numbers describe an open-enrollment school rather than your odds, the employment data is survey-based rather than placement-based, and every program choice is worth thousands a year. Run the program rows against your actual life, and the graduation and career question becomes arithmetic instead of advertising.