Continuing a six-year trend, the number of medical students in the United States grew by about 5,000 during the 2023-2024 academic year, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges’ (AAMC’s) 2024 Report on Residents.
Each year, the AAMC compiles the report to help residency applicants, program directors, residency specialty organizations, and researchers track changes in the medical resident body over time. For example, it records demographic and geographic trends by state and specialty, among other information.
The complete report is available; AAMCNews pulled out a sampling of 10 interesting facts, below:
Residency trends
- Nearly three-quarters of 2024 Medical School Graduation Questionnaire respondents changed their choice of specialty during medical school. The specialties that have the highest rates of students reporting that they ended medical school with the same specialty preference that they started with were orthopaedic surgery (53.1% in 2024), neurological surgery (46.0%), emergency medicine (43.4%), and pediatrics (43.4%).
- The percentage of active residents who were international medical school graduates grew slightly, to 23.4%, up from 22.8% last year.
- Down from 19.2% in the previous year, the percentage of active MD residents who were non-U.S. citizens in 2023-2024 declined to 16.8%.
- Internal medicine had the largest number of active MD-PhD residents in 2023, with 440. MD-PhDs account for 3.2% of all MD-graduate active residents.
- The distribution of active MD residents by race/ethnicity varies across specialties. Overall, 47.2% of active U.S.-citizen MD residents in 2023-2024 said they were white (47.8% in 2022-2023), 23.3% said they were Asian (21.3% in 2022-2023), 8.9% said they were Hispanic, Latino, or of Spanish origin (8.3% in 2022-2023), 6.9% said they were Black or African American (6.3% in 2022-2023), 0.6% said they were American Indian or Alaska Native (unchanged), and 0.2% said they were Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (unchanged).
- Women now account for 49.1% of all medical residents (compared with 48.3% in 2022-2023) and are the majority in family medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, and psychiatry, while men make up a larger percentage of residents in anesthesiology, emergency medicine, internal medicine, radiology: diagnostic, and surgery: general.
Practicing post-residency
- Overall, 26.3% of trainees who completed residency from 2014 through 2023 were practicing in federally designated medically underserved areas as of 2024. These rates were greater than 25% for many of the largest specialties, including family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, and psychiatry.
- Puerto Rico, Montana, and Louisiana had the highest percentage of physicians who completed residency between 2014 and 2023 and were working in federally designated medically underserved areas — at 75.5%, 64.6%, and 52.7%, respectively. Washington, D.C., Wisconsin, and Maine had the lowest percentage of physicians in that category, at 3.2%, 4.7%, and 7.8%, respectively.
- Of those who completed residency training from 2014 through 2023, 58.6% are practicing in the state where they did their residency training. Retention rates range from 39.4% in Washington, D.C., to 78.5% in California.
- Of physicians who completed residency from 2014 through 2023, 20.1% currently hold a full-time faculty appointment at a U.S. MD-granting school.
