How to become a medical assistant

1. Graduate from high school or earn your diploma. Still in school? The Bureau of Labor Statistics recommends biology and chemistry classes for this career.
2. Look up the rules in your state. Certain states ask you to finish an accredited program, hold a license or credential, or meet other requirements before you can carry out particular tasks.
3. Pick a way to train. You might study at a career school, a community college or a university, or you might learn while working, on the job or in an apprenticeship.
4. Finish your supervised clinical practice. It's built into accredited programs.
5. Think about getting certified. Most states don't require it, but some employers prefer or require it.
6. Check job postings for Basic Life Support certification; a number of employers list it as something they want.

There are two broad routes: a school program or learning as you work. Community college, vocational, technical school and university programs take about 1 or 2 years. Skip the program, and you'd train on the job or through an apprenticeship, which can run several months.

An accredited program has been reviewed and approved by an outside organization. The 2 main organizations for medical assistants are CAAHEP and ABHES. Our site lists 1,094 medical assistant programs across all 50 states plus Washington, DC, and 484 of them carry CAAHEP accreditation or belong to a school with ABHES accreditation.

Every accredited program includes a practicum, according to the AAMA. That's supervised, hands-on work in a clinic or doctor's office where patients come in and go home the same day.

Want a degree instead? Our list includes 354 schools where you can earn an associate degree in medical assisting.

Looking at the 378 career schools that share how long their programs run in federal college data, the program in the middle runs 9 months. The quickest runs 2 months, and the slowest runs 32 months.

What you pay varies widely by school type. Across 392 career schools that give a full-program price, the middle figure covering tuition, fees and books comes to $17,257. At 437 public colleges, the middle cost for a year of full-time study is $4,346 for students living in the college's district, based on 2023-24.

The majority of schools we list, 1,049 of them, participate in federal student aid, meaning you can seek that assistance at those schools.

Most states don't make it mandatory, though some employers would rather hire, or will only hire, medical assistants who hold certification. Certification may help you meet an employer's hiring requirements.

Online programs deliver the coursework through distance education, though the supervised clinical practice always happens in person. Our list has 30 programs with coursework offered by distance education, and 14 of them are accredited.