[2] Before this move, Charles William Eliot became Harvard's president in 1869,[6] and found the medical school in the worst condition of any part of the university.

[2][7] Harvard Medical School postdoctoral trainees and faculty have been associated with several important medical and public health innovations:[2] In mid-1847, professor Walter Channing's proposal that women be admitted to lectures and examinations was rejected by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. had recently been made Dean of the school and initially considered accepting her application.

He was heavily criticized by the all-male student body[10] as well as the university overseers and other faculty members, and she was asked to withdraw her application.

A similar offer of $50,000, by a group of ten women including Marie Elizabeth Zakrzewska, was declined in 1882; a committee of five was appointed to study the matter.

[14] In 1850, three black men, Martin Delany, Daniel Laing Jr., and Isaac H. Snowden, were admitted to the school but were later expelled under pressure from faculty and other students.

[16] In 2019, LaShyra Nolen was the first black woman to be elected class president of Harvard Medical School.

[17] On June 14, 2023, the morgue manager for the Anatomical Gifts Program at Harvard Medical School, Cedric Lodge, and associates were criminally charged with theft of human organs by the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.

[19] On January 17, 2024, a lawyer representing Harvard urged Suffolk County Superior Court Judge Kenneth Salinger to dismiss the lawsuits.

The HST track is designed to train physician-scientists with an emphasis on basic physiology and quantitative understanding of biological processes through courses that include Ph.D. students from MIT.

[1] For the Master of Medical Sciences (MMSc) program in Global Health Delivery, the Fall 2020 admissions rate was 8.2%.

For 2024, U.S. News & World Report did not rank Harvard Medical School due to its official withdrawal from the USNWR.

[28] Clinical faculty at Harvard Medical School generally hold a concurrent appointment as a physician or a surgeon at one of the affiliated hospitals.