This study aims to investigate the current situation of the enrollment , training model and career planning of medical students in the targeted admission program .After analyzing the implementation process of this targeted admission policy in medical education , we raised some feasible strategies to increase the attraction and reten-tion of health professionals in rural China .The study covered 4 medical universities in central and western China .A cohort of 308 medical graduates from this targeted admission program were recruited in June 2015 .A baseline survey , including questionnaire survey , in-depth interviews and the focus group discussions , were conducted right before their graduation .The first follow-up online survey was done 6 months after their graduation .he findings of this investiga-tion show that 72.9%of the investigated students in the program used to live in rural areas before 15 years old.The average annual household income was 28,200 Yuan.The top three reasons of choosing this program were guaranteed job after graduation , low performance in the college entrance examination , and wavier of tuition fee .There were sig-nificant differences of implementation of this policy between different provinces , especially the contract-signing and job deployment .Income and working environment were the main influencing factors of the medical graduates 'job-see-king intention .Based on the findings of this study , it can be concluded that the targeted admission program is rather successful in attracting medical graduates for rural health services .However , extra efforts are needed to improve the implementation of the policy and to retain the medical graduates in rural area .