Top 25 Best Colleges for Anesthesiology Programs

Search for the best colleges for anesthesiology and you get a list of medical schools. Here is the part those lists skip: there is no anesthesiology major, and no college in the country offers one.

Anesthesiology is a residency. You get there after medical school, not instead of it.

That changes what you should be looking at. There are 179 accredited anesthesiology residency programs in the United States, and the department that trains you matters more than the name on your undergraduate diploma.

This guide covers 25 universities with well known anesthesiology departments, the hospitals their residents work in, and the subspecialties each department teaches. It starts with the route, because that is the part most people get wrong first.

Anesthesiology Starts After Medical School

The route is the same everywhere, and it takes twelve years after high school if nothing slows you down.

1. Undergraduate degree, four years. Any major is fine. What matters is finishing the pre med prerequisites: biology, general and organic chemistry, physics, biochemistry, math and English.

2. The MCAT. You sit it before you apply, and the score carries real weight in medical school admissions.

3. Medical school, four years. You earn an MD or a DO. You do not pick anesthesiology here, you rotate through it like every other specialty.

4. Anesthesiology residency, four years. One intern year, then three clinical anesthesia years. This is where you become an anesthesiologist.

5. Fellowship, one year, optional. Cardiac, pediatric, obstetric, pain medicine, critical care and regional anesthesia are the usual ones.

So the college you choose at eighteen is not choosing your specialty. It is getting you into medical school. Worth saying plainly, because the phrase best colleges for anesthesiology sounds like a decision you make in high school, and it is not.

What Makes an Anesthesiology Program Worth Choosing

There is no official ranking of anesthesiology programs. Medical schools get ranked. Residencies do not have an equivalent.

The closest thing is Doximity's Residency Navigator, which is built from a survey of practicing physicians and sits behind a doctor login, so you cannot browse it as a student.

That is fine, because the things worth checking are public.

Accreditation. Every program worth applying to is accredited by the ACGME. That is the floor, not a selling point.

Which hospitals residents work in. A department attached to a trauma center, a children's hospital and a transplant service puts cases in front of you that a single hospital cannot. The hospital list tells you more than the university's name does.

Which fellowships the department runs. A department that trains its own cardiac, pediatric and pain fellows has the case volume and the faculty to teach those subspecialties. It also means you can stay for fellowship instead of moving.

Case volume. Ask how many anesthetics the department gives in a year. Mayo Clinic's Rochester campus reports more than 40,000, across two hospitals and more than 109 operating rooms.

List of Best Colleges for Anesthesiology

This is not a ranking. The order below says nothing about which department is better, and nobody publishes a credible ordered list of anesthesiology programs anyway.

It is a list of universities whose anesthesiology departments are well known, with what their residents train on and what each department teaches.

One thing to notice as you read: six of these are graduate only institutions with no undergraduate campus at all.

Mayo Clinic Alix, UCSF, UT Southwestern, Icahn at Mount Sinai, Cleveland Clinic Lerner and Baylor College of Medicine admit medical students, not freshmen. That is the clearest sign that this list belongs to a later stage of the journey than it first appears.

1. Harvard Medical School

Harvard's anesthesia training doesn't run through one building. Residents work across the teaching hospitals affiliated with Harvard University, chiefly Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women's, with rotations at Boston Children's, Mass Eye and Ear and Faulkner Hospital.

Massachusetts General runs fellowships in adult cardiothoracic anesthesia, pediatric anesthesia, and regional anesthesiology and acute pain medicine. The regional fellowship takes two fellows a year.

If you want to know what a large academic system buys you, this is it. Several hospitals, several fellowship tracks, one faculty teaching across all of them.

2. Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Johns Hopkins University puts anesthesiology and critical care in one department, and the critical care side is unusually deep. Its accredited fellowships cover cardiothoracic anesthesia with TEE certification, critical care medicine, obstetric anesthesia, regional anesthesia, pain medicine and pediatric anesthesia.

On top of those it runs its own fellowships in ambulatory, trauma, transplant, vascular and thoracic anesthesia, and neuroanesthesia.

Its neurocritical care fellowship was the first formal program of its kind anywhere in the world.

3. Stanford University School of Medicine

Stanford University spreads its residency across four hospitals: Stanford Health Care, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, the VA Palo Alto Health Care System and Santa Clara Valley Medical Center.

That spread is the whole point. A university hospital, a children's hospital, a veterans' system and a county trauma center put four different patient populations in front of you inside one program.

The department's fellowships run to adult cardiothoracic, critical care medicine, obstetric anesthesia, pain medicine, pediatric anesthesia, and regional anesthesia and acute pain medicine.

4. Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine

Mayo's Rochester residents train in two hospitals with more than 109 operating rooms between them, and the department reports giving more than 40,000 anesthetics a year.

That volume is why Mayo keeps coming up. Saint Marys is both a Level I trauma center and a Level I pediatric trauma center, so the hard cases arrive at the same door you're working behind.

Fellowships in Rochester cover critical care, adult cardiothoracic, regional and acute pain medicine, pediatric, obstetric anesthesia and neuroanesthesia.

5. University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine

UCSF residents rotate through six different medical centers, among them the Mission Bay hospitals, the San Francisco VA, the UCSF Orthopaedic Institute and a Kaiser hospital.

Its accredited fellowships cover cardiothoracic anesthesia, critical care medicine, obstetric anesthesia, pain medicine, acute pain and regional anesthesia, and pediatric anesthesia. The obstetric fellowship takes up to two fellows a year and the pediatric one takes four.

Beyond those it runs clinical instructor programs in advanced simulation, global health, neuroanesthesia and trauma anesthesia, which is a route into subspecialty work that most departments don't offer.

6. Duke University School of Medicine

Duke University typically offers 14 to 15 residency positions in the Match, and its residents train mainly at Duke University Hospital, a Level I trauma center, with time at Duke Regional and the Durham VA.

The fellowship list is the longest here, eleven in total, and it includes tracks you'll struggle to find anywhere else, such as undersea and hyperbaric medicine and pediatric cardiothoracic anesthesiology.

A department that teaches eleven subspecialties has the case mix and the faculty to back them, and it means you can stay for fellowship instead of moving cities.

7. Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

Residents at Columbia University train at NewYork-Presbyterian's Columbia campus, which means a very large and very mixed patient population in upper Manhattan.

The department's fellowships include obstetric anesthesia, a combined liver transplantation and major vascular anesthesiology fellowship, pediatric anesthesia, and regional anesthesiology and acute pain medicine.

The transplant and vascular fellowship is the one worth noticing. It runs one or two years and it exists because the hospital does enough of that surgery to teach it.

8. University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine

The department at the University of Pennsylvania pairs anesthesiology and critical care, and residents train at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the country's older academic medical centers.

Its fellowships include adult cardiothoracic anesthesiology and anesthesiology critical care medicine, alongside further subspecialty tracks.

Penn is worth a look if critical care is where you think you're heading, because the department is built around that pairing rather than treating it as an add on.

9. University of Michigan Medical School

The University of Michigan runs one of the larger anesthesiology residencies in the country, and its residents train inside Michigan Medicine.

The department offers eleven in house fellowship programs. Its critical care fellowship takes seven fellows a year and its pain medicine fellowship takes up to eight, both accredited.

Those two numbers tell you something the reputation doesn't: this is a department with enough volume to teach a full class of subspecialty fellows in a single field.

10. Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis

Residents at Washington University in St. Louis train at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, with pediatric work at St. Louis Children's Hospital next door.

Subspecialty training after residency is available in anesthesiology critical care medicine, pain management and pediatric anesthesiology. The regional anesthesia and acute pain fellowship runs three one year positions.

The two hospitals sitting on one campus is the practical advantage. Adult and pediatric cases without changing city.

11. Yale School of Medicine

Residents at Yale University do their clinical training at Yale New Haven Hospital, and the department's fellowship list runs to seven: cardiac, neuroanesthesiology, obstetric, pediatric, regional, critical care, and quality and safety.

That last one is rare. A quality and safety fellowship trains you to fix how a hospital gives anesthesia rather than only to give it, and very few departments run one.

Yale also runs an NIH funded research program that supports two years of work for trainees heading into academic medicine.

12. University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine

The department at the University of Chicago publishes exactly how many fellows it takes, which is more than most do. Three critical care fellows, three cardiothoracic, four in pain medicine, one in obstetric anesthesia and one in pediatrics.

Residents train at the University of Chicago Medical Center on the South Side, and the critical care fellowship fills through the San Francisco Match rather than the main one.

The pediatric fellowship here is combined, covering pediatric anesthesia, critical care and pain management in one year.

13. Vanderbilt University School of Medicine

Vanderbilt University trains its residents at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and the department carries six accredited fellowships alongside four of its own.

The accredited ones are cardiothoracic, critical care, pain medicine, obstetric, pediatric, and regional and acute pain. The department's own tracks add global anesthesiology, neuroanesthesiology, pediatric cardiac anesthesiology and perioperative medicine.

Vanderbilt also keeps a dedicated research track in its residency, which matters if you want a career that isn't only clinical.

14. University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

UT Southwestern residents train at Parkland Memorial Hospital and Clements University Hospital. Parkland is one of the busiest public hospitals in the country, which is exactly the case volume a trainee wants.

The department of anesthesiology and pain management runs ten accredited fellowship programs. Its obstetric fellowship takes two a year and its pediatric fellowship takes four.

Ten accredited fellowships is a large number for one department, and it tells you the case mix in Dallas is wide enough to support them.

15. Emory University School of Medicine

First year clinical anesthesia residents at Emory University start at either Emory University Hospital or Grady Memorial, and Grady is the region's public safety net hospital.

The department's fellowships include pain management, cardiac anesthesiology, pediatric anesthesiology, ECMO and community anesthesiology. Its regional fellows rotate through five sites, including Emory Midtown, the orthopaedic and spine hospital, and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.

An ECMO fellowship is unusual and worth knowing about, because it points at a department doing a lot of advanced cardiac and respiratory support.

16. David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

The anesthesiology and perioperative medicine department at UCLA runs a four year residency at UCLA Medical Center, and its pain medicine fellowship takes six fellows a year.

Six pain fellows is a large intake, and it reflects a department where pain medicine is a major line of work rather than a side track.

UCLA also runs a fellowship in perioperative informatics, which is anesthesia meeting data science, and there aren't many of those anywhere.

17. Weill Cornell Medicine

Weill Cornell, the medical college of Cornell University, trains its residents at the Weill Cornell campus of NewYork-Presbyterian, and the program draws more than 1,500 applicants.

Its critical care fellowship is accredited for three positions a year. The department also runs obstetric and regional anesthesiology fellowships.

The pain fellowship is Tri-Institutional, run jointly with neighboring institutions, so the training crosses more than one hospital's caseload.

18. Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Residents in the McGaw programs at Northwestern University train at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and at Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago.

The department's accredited fellowships cover multidisciplinary pain medicine, obstetric anesthesiology, adult cardiothoracic anesthesiology, regional anesthesiology and acute pain medicine, and pediatric anesthesiology.

Its pediatric fellowship is one of the larger ones, running about ten places a year at Lurie.

19. Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Mount Sinai runs anesthesiology training across several of its Manhattan hospitals, with a categorical residency based at Mount Sinai West and Mount Sinai Morningside.

The pain management fellowship there takes four trainees and fills through the pain medicine match. The regional anesthesiology and acute pain medicine fellowship takes two a year.

Training across sister hospitals in one city is the pattern to notice here. You get different case mixes without leaving the system.

20. NYU Grossman School of Medicine

The residency at New York University is split into Manhattan, Long Island and Brooklyn tracks. Manhattan residents are based at NYU Langone's Tisch Hospital and Kimmel Pavilion, or at Bellevue.

They also rotate through the VA New York Harbor system and NYU Langone Orthopedic Hospital, so a single training route covers a private academic hospital, a public hospital and a veterans' hospital.

Bellevue is the detail worth knowing. It is the oldest public hospital in the country and it takes everything that comes through the door.

21. University of Washington School of Medicine

The department at the University of Washington trains across UW Medical Center's Montlake and Northwest campuses, Harborview Medical Center and the VA Puget Sound system.

Harborview is the reason people apply here. It is the major trauma center for a very large region, and trauma anesthesia is one of the department's own fellowship tracks.

Alongside the four accredited subspecialties the department runs eight further fellowships of its own, including three regional anesthesia positions a year.

22. University of California, San Diego School of Medicine

The anesthesiology residency at UC San Diego is an advanced program, which means you enter it after a separate intern year rather than starting it straight out of medical school.

The department's accredited cardiothoracic anesthesia fellowship has three positions, and it also runs pain medicine and regional anesthesia and acute pain fellowships.

If you're comparing programs, check whether each one is categorical or advanced. It changes how you apply and where you spend your first year.

23. Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine

Cleveland Clinic describes its anesthesiology fellowship program as the largest in the country, running ten fellowships in total, four of them accredited.

Its adult cardiothoracic fellowship alone takes 18 fellows a year, which is far beyond what most departments train, and it reflects how much cardiac surgery the hospital does.

The department also runs a liver transplant anesthesia fellowship with two places a year, and formal tracks in neuroanesthesia, ambulatory and regional anesthesia.

24. Baylor College of Medicine

Baylor College of Medicine sits inside the Texas Medical Center in Houston, the largest medical complex in the world, and its four year anesthesiology residency is competitive enough to interview about nine and a half candidates for every first year place.

Its critical care fellowship trains at the Texas Heart Institute at Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center, covering cardiothoracic surgery, transplantation and mechanical circulatory support.

One thing to keep straight: Baylor College of Medicine is a separate institution from Baylor University, and only the college has the medical school.

25. University of North Carolina School of Medicine

The department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill trains its residents at UNC Medical Center, and it publishes its numbers more openly than most.

It runs 14 first year places and 16 in each clinical anesthesia class, for 62 residents in the program at any one time.

Its regional anesthesiology and acute pain fellowship has three places a year and reports about 3,000 blocks annually, which is a straightforward way of saying you'll get plenty of practice.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there an anesthesiology major in college?

No. No US college offers an anesthesiology bachelor's degree, because anesthesiology is a medical specialty you train in after medical school. What you pick at eighteen is an undergraduate major, not a specialty.

What should you major in to become an anesthesiologist?

Anything you can do well in, as long as you finish the pre med prerequisites. Biology and chemistry are the common choices because the requirements overlap, but medical schools accept humanities and engineering majors every year. Your grades and your MCAT score carry more weight than the subject on your diploma.

How long does it take to become an anesthesiologist?

Twelve years after high school if nothing slows you down. Four years of undergraduate study, four years of medical school, and four years of anesthesiology residency. A subspecialty fellowship adds one more year.

What is the difference between an anesthesiologist, an anesthesiologist assistant and a nurse anesthetist?

An anesthesiologist is a physician who finished medical school and a four year residency. An anesthesiologist assistant holds a master's degree and works under a physician anesthesiologist's supervision. A certified registered nurse anesthetist is an advanced practice nurse with a doctoral or master's level anesthesia degree. All three give anesthesia, but the training routes and the scope of practice are different, and the two shorter routes take far less time than medical school plus residency.

Do you have to go to a top medical school to match into anesthesiology?

No. There are 179 accredited anesthesiology residency programs in the United States, and they fill from medical schools all over the country. Where you go to medical school matters less than your performance once you are there.

Bottom Line

If you are still in high school or early in a bachelor's degree, the useful move is not picking a college for anesthesiology. It is getting the prerequisites done, keeping your grades where medical schools will look at them, and preparing for the MCAT.

Twelve years is a long time to stay interested in something, so it helps to hear from people already doing the work. A few of the medical podcasts students listen to are hosted by physicians and residents talking about exactly this road.

The departments above are worth knowing about because they show you what a strong anesthesiology program looks like: several hospitals, a wide fellowship list, and enough case volume to teach on. Keep that as a checklist for the day you choose a residency.

That decision is eight years away from the first day of college. There is time.