Medical school enrollment broke 100,000 students for the first time in 2025, new AAMC data shows.
Each year, the AAMC publishes data on the most recent cohort of applicants and matriculants (first-year students), including information on gender, race, ethnicity, home state, undergraduate institution, MCAT scores, and undergraduate GPAs, among other characteristics.
After a dip in applications the past few years, 54,699 people applied to medical schools in the United States in 2025, a 5.3% increase from 2024. This was driven by first-time applicants, who accounted for 76.5% of all applicants. First-time applicants increased by 8.4% from 2024 to 2025, while re-applicants declined by 3.6%.
Medical schools also continued a trend of growing the class of matriculants, with an incoming class of 23,440, the largest to date. The total number of enrolled students reached an all-time high of 100,723.
“The growing number of applicants to medical school reflects the continued strong interest in medicine as a career,” AAMC President and CEO David J. Skorton, MD, said in a press release. “Training the next generation of physicians has always been, and will remain, a core mission of academic medicine.”
Below are several additional findings from the report.
Women hold majority
More women than men were enrolled in medical school for the first time in 2019, and their numbers have continued to grow since then.
- The number of both men and women applicants increased in 2025, but women accounted for 57.2% of all applicants. That is a slight increase compared to the previous year when women accounted for 56.8% of applicants. They accounted for 55.0% of matriculants in 2025.
- There was in increase in men applicants for the first time since 2021, and they accounted for 42.2% of applicants and 44.4% of matriculants.
Geographic characteristics
- California, Texas, and Florida contributed the most applicants in 2025.
- In 2025, 22 people from U.S. territories applied, 10 of whom matriculated. Also in 2025, 1,390 people whose legal residence was outside of the United States applied, up 10.8% from 2024, and 105 matriculated, down 19.2%.
- The states or U.S. territories with the highest percentage of applicants who matriculated at in-state institutions were West Virginia (55.4%) and Puerto Rico (50.9%). Those with the highest out-of-state matriculation were Wyoming (68.2%) and Alaska (58.4%), neither of which has an in-state medical school.
Race and ethnicity
The representation of students from different racial and ethnic groups has fluctuated in recent years. Black or African American men, however, have seen little change in representation since 1978, when there were 542 Black men matriculating to medical schools. In 2025, there were 552 men who identified as Black or African American alone who matriculated to medical school.
The AAMC added a new demographic category of Middle Eastern or North African in 2025 in alignment with a U.S. Census Bureau change, so the most current data on race and ethnicity are not comparable to those from previous years.
- Below is the breakdown of applicants and matriculants in 2025 by race or ethnicity. Each category includes people who also identified as another race or ethnicity:
- American Indian or Alaska Native: 667 applicants, 215 matriculants
- Asian: 16,837 applicants, 7,505 matriculants
- Black or African American: 6,167 applicants, 1,970 matriculants
- Hispanic or Latino: 6,921 applicants, 2,695 matriculants
- Middle Eastern or North African: 3,707 applicants, 1,485 matriculants
- Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander: 263 applicants, 102 matriculants
- White: 24,009 applicants, 11,081 matriculants
- Some other race or ethnicity: 661 applicants, 226 matriculants
Other characteristics
- 163 military veterans matriculated.
- Matriculants ranged in age from 18 to 60, including 2.6% over age 30.
- The mean GPA was 3.67 for applicants and 3.81 for matriculants (up from 3.79 in 2024).
- The mean MCAT score for all applicants in 2025 was 506.3, while the mean score for matriculants was 512.1 (up from 511.8 in 2024).
- Cumulatively, matriculants performed more than 16.8 million community service hours before medical school, an average of 717 hours per student.
- Of all applicants in 2025, 15.1% applied fee assistance benefits to their applications.
- The percentage of applicants who were first in their families to attend college declined from 15.4% in 2021 to 13.8% in 2025.
- First-generation matriculants also declined from 12.4% in 2021 to 10.7% in 2025.
- In 2025, 702 new MD-PhD students matriculated at U.S. medical schools out of 2,040 applicants.
- U.S. medical schools have a total enrollment of 6,163 MD-PhD students in 2025, up from 5,952 in 2021.
