How Medical Assistant Programs Are Verified and Ranked

Which Schools Were Checked

The starting list combined every institution that reported medical assisting awards (CIP code 51.0801) to the U.S. Department of Education's IPEDS survey for 2022-23 with every campus on the CAAHEP and ABHES lists of accredited medical assisting programs. Each school's own website was then checked in October 2026. 113 schools no longer offer medical assisting and 36 have closed; they are left off the site, along with high-school-only programs and training open only to a school's own employees.

What Counts as a Program

A program is a medical assisting path a student enrolls in: a certificate, diploma, associate degree or non-credit course. When a school runs two credentials or a separate evening or hybrid version, each counts separately. On this site that's 614 certificates, 390 diplomas, 309 associate degrees and 27 non-credit programs. Medical assisting needs hands-on skills and an in-person externship, so only 13 programs run their coursework fully online, and chains that teach online from one campus are listed once, as online options, not as local campuses.

Credential, format, schedule, length, clock hours or credits, the externship, skills taught, the exams named, start terms, admission requirements and tuition come from the school's own program, catalog, admissions and tuition pages, in the school's words. 1 program says it isn't admitting new students and 5 are bridge or partial programs; they keep their pages with a prominent banner and are left out of every ranking and the matcher's default results.

Accreditation and CMA (AAMA) Eligibility

Accreditation comes only from the accreditors' own lists, captured October 12, 2026: CAAHEP's accredited medical assisting programs and ABHES's directory. Each listing was matched to a school by website domain, exact name, or city and name, with manual checks for chains whose campuses share a name. Only programmatic accreditation of the medical assisting program counts; an institution accredited by ABHES without its medical assisting program on the list isn't shown as accredited. On this site, 293 schools have a CAAHEP-accredited program and 16 have ABHES programmatic accreditation.

A program carries the accreditation seal and "CMA (AAMA) eligible" only when a list covers that program and credential (339 programs). When a school says its graduates can take the CMA but no list covers the program, the site doesn't repeat the claim.

Certification Exams Named by Programs

Exam badges show the exams a program's own page names: CMA (AAMA) 450, RMA (AMT) 331, CCMA (NHA) 299 and NCMA (NCCT) 133. Eligibility routes in the certification guides and the pathway finder are quoted from each body's eligibility page, fetched October 12, 2026.

Cost, Estimates and Tuition Years

Tuition is shown as the school publishes it, with its basis (program total, per credit or per clock hour) and academic year. Where a school publishes a per-credit or per-clock-hour rate and the credits or hours the program takes, the site multiplies the two and labels the result "estimated" (214 programs by credits, 5 by clock hours); 660 programs publish a total. Estimates are used to order the cost rankings and in the calculator, never shown as the school's own figure. Fees, books, uniforms and exam fees are extra unless the school includes them.

How the Ranked Lists Work

Every ranked list states its measure above the list, and the order follows that measure alone: published or estimated cost, lowest first; stated length converted to weeks, shortest first; or medical assisting awards reported to IPEDS for 2022-23, most first. Lists include one program per school, leave out paused and bridge programs, and advertising never affects them.

Federal Data: IPEDS and BLS

School size is the number of medical assisting awards each school reported to IPEDS for 2022-23 (951 schools on this site), split into certificates of under a year, one to two years, and associate degrees. These are awards, not graduates, and they describe how many people a school trains, not its quality. Pay is from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, for medical assistants (31-9092): a national median of $45,690 a year, with state medians on state pages. BLS doesn't report pay by school or credential.

Tools

The program matcher filters the program records by distance (Census ZIP code centers against IPEDS campus coordinates), credential, format, schedule, length, cost, accreditation and skills. The certification pathway finder checks your answers against each body's quoted routes. The cost and payoff calculator applies the 2026–27 federal aid figures from studentaid.gov (Pell Grants up to $7,395, first-year Direct Loans up to $5,500 or $9,500, a 6.52% fixed rate) and the BLS median. The accredited program checker shows the CAAHEP and ABHES matches. All four run in your browser; nothing you enter is sent to the site.

City Pages

375 city pages carry over from the previous version of this site because they had visitors from Bing. Each lists verified programs near the city plus online options. They are marked so Google doesn't index them and appear only in the sitemap submitted to Bing.

Who Checks the Site and How Often

The site is researched and edited by Taylor Rupe. Program facts are reviewed at least every six months, and the CAAHEP and ABHES lists are recaptured before each review. Sponsored listings are supplied by advertisers and never affect which programs appear or how they rank. To report an error, use the contact form.