Total enrollment in U.S. MD-granting medical schools exceeded 100,000 students for the first time in the 2025-26 academic year, according to data released Tuesday by the Association of American Medical Colleges.
AAMC
"The growing number of applicants to medical school reflects the continued strong interest in medicine as a career," said Dr. David J. Skorton, president and CEO of the AAMC. "Training the next generation of physicians has always been, and will remain, a core mission of academic medicine."
The surge in applications comes at a critical time for healthcare workforce planning, as the nation faces projected physician shortages in both primary care and specialty fields. Medical educators have worked for years to expand enrollment capacity, and the crossing of the 100,000-student threshold represents a significant benchmark in those efforts.
First-year enrollment rose 1.2% from 2024-25 to 2025-26. Among the entering class, 8.4% identified as Black or African American, 11.5% as Hispanic or Latino, 0.9% as American Indian or Alaska Native, and 0.4% as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. However, the AAMC cautioned that its updated methodology for collecting race and ethnicity data—including the addition of a Middle Eastern or North African category—makes year-over-year comparisons impossible.
The new data collection framework was implemented to provide a more comprehensive picture of medical student diversity, but the methodological shift complicates efforts to track progress on diversity initiatives that many medical schools have prioritized in recent years.
Women continued to dominate medical school pipelines for the seventh consecutive year, comprising 57.2% of applicants, 55% of matriculants, and 55% of total enrollment. Women matriculants increased 1.2%, the largest gain since 2021-22. Male matriculants, however, grew at a faster rate for the third straight year, a pattern that could signal shifting dynamics in medical school gender representation.
