Lowest Medical School Acceptance Rates – US News Data

The U.S. News is at it again! Unlike their other lists, this top 10 list is based on one simple factual number.

The 2011 numbers are in—10 Medical Schools With the Lowest Acceptance Rates—and according to the U.S. News, over 500,000 medical school applications were submitted for the 2011 cycle. (Each applicant usually applies to multiple schools, so the 500,000 applications are not from 500,000 applicants.)

Update: Here are the 2017-18 numbers. Many of the top programs remain the same, but a few have changed!

Medical Schools with the Lowest Acceptance Rates

The chart below shows Mayo Medical School in Minnesota is the most selective medical school in the country. What is interesting is the number of applicants. Not many people want to live in Minnesota. Many applicants want to live in D.C., though—check out the numbers of applicants to George Washington University School of Medicine and Georgetown University.

Source: U.S. News (http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/the-short-list-grad-school/articles/2012/08/14/10-medical-schools-with-the-lowest-acceptance-rates)

With a class size of only 50, Mayo Medical School has to be more selective with who they accept. If you do the math, they actually accepted about 76 students. Medical schools (and all schools for that matter) actually have to accept more students than they have room for. This is because not everybody who the school accepts will matriculate.

Only 3 of the medical schools—Stanford University School of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and UCSF School of Medicine—are west coast schools. Mayo Medical School is the only midwest medical school on the list. The rest are from the east coast.

Medical Schools with the Highest Acceptance Rates

The survey also lists the medical schools most likely to accept you. At higher than 25%, the acceptance rate at the University of North Dakota’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences and at Western University of Health Sciences College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific in California are the two easiest medical schools to get in to. Are these good “fallback schools” for you?

Links and Other Resources

• Check out my Premed Playbook series of books (available on Amazon), with installments on the personal statement, the medical school interview, and the MCAT.
• Related episode: How to Choose Which Medical Schools to Apply To.
• Related episode: Should I Look at Residency Rates When Choosing Med Schools
• Need MCAT Prep? Save on tutoring, classes, and full-length practice tests by using promo code “MSHQ” at Blueprint MCAT (formerly Next Step Test Prep)!