Medical School Applicants increased 21.2% in 2021

The AAMC is incredibly generous with its annual admissions statistics and recently released its data on the 2020-2021 application cycle. You can read their summary here and the full data tables here.

What stands out?

1) The number of applicants. The number of U.S. Medical School First -Time applicants (applicants who have never applied using AMCAS) for 2021 was 46,758. This is a whopping 21.2% increase from 2020 numbers of 38,581. Traditionally, there has been a 2-3% increase every year since 2011. The U.S. Medical School Total Applicants reached an all-time high of 62,443 applicants with an increase of 17.8% from 2020. So, of the 9,413 increase in applicants - 2,322 of those were first-time applicants making up 24% of the increase. That means about 75% of the increase came from repeat applicants.

2) The increase in applicants is represented by a larger increase in women applicants (+27.4%) vs. men (+13.6%). Interestingly, women were accepted at a lower rate than men applying. Men were accepted at a rate of 39.1%, and women at a rate of 37.1%.

3) There was a substantial increase in the number of underrepresented minorities, with a 22.8% increase in American Indian or Alaska Natives, a 41.1% increase in Black or African American applicants, a 25.1% increase in Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin applicants, and an increase of 19.6% of Native Hawaiian or Pacific Island applicants. Keep in mind that the total numbers are still small relative to the larger applicant pool and to their representation in the population as a whole, but this is a sign things are moving in the right direction. Hispanic applicants still only make up 11.6% of the applicant pool, and Black or African Americans make up 11.7% of the applicant pool, whereas the U.S. population based on the 2020 census data is 18.7% self-reported Hispanic and 12.4% self-reported Black or African American. Keep in mind that it is worth a closer look at the data since applicants are allowed to identify in more than one category.

4) Acceptances and acceptance rate: Although the volume of applicants is significantly higher, the number of acceptances is only up 2.6%, so the gap between applicants and acceptances is growing wider. The total number of acceptances was 23,711, with an applicant pool of 62,443 which means that the acceptance rate is 37.9% in 2021 compared to 43.5% in 2020.

4) Qualifications and Academics of accepted applicants. Some good news is that the metrics have stayed about the same. the average MATRICULANT GPA was 3.74 ( 3.73 in 2020), and the average MATRICULANT MCAT is 511.9 (511.5 in 2020) so the numbers have stayed relatively stable.

.0Enrollees ranged in age from 16 to 55 years old — an even wider range than last year — and 163 of them were military veterans. Additionally, this year’s entering class demonstrated a dedicated commitment to service. The class cumulatively performed nearly 15 million community service hours, an average of 650 hours per student.