Which Med Schools Are Easiest to Get Into?

The AAMC doesn't publish an acceptance rate for each school in its applicant tables. What it does publish, in FACTS Table A-1, is how many applications each school received and how many students enrolled. Dividing one by the other gives you matriculants per 100 applications, which is the cleanest school-by-school comparison available. International Medical Aid tallied that figure for every MD school for 2025-2026. Here's how the top of the list compares with the MD average and with Stanford.

Mississippi's 52.15 is more than three times the next-ranked school's figure. Across all MD schools, the figure is 2.20, so a typical school enrolls about 2 students for every 100 applications it gets. Stanford enrolled 90 students from 9,793 applications.

The rest of the top tier looks like this, with the share of each entering class that came from in-state:

Every school on that list filled most of its class with residents, and four of them filled 98.7 percent or more. One school in the full table, CUNY School of Medicine, enrolled 59 students from 59 applications, but International Medical Aid leaves it out of the rankings because its students come through a BS/MD pathway.

Matriculants per 100 applications undercounts how many people get in. Schools send out more offers than they have seats, because strong applicants hold several acceptances and turn most of them down.

The national picture shows the gap. According to the AAMC, 54,699 people applied to MD schools in 2025 and 23,440 enrolled. International Medical Aid's count from AAMC Table A-7.2 puts the number accepted by at least one school at 24,300, which is 44.4 percent of applicants. So close to half of applicants get in somewhere, even though the average school enrolls only 2.2 students per 100 applications. The difference comes from volume: the typical applicant sends a lot of applications.

That makes matriculants per 100 a fair way to rank schools against each other, but not a number you can read as your personal odds at one school.

Residency explains most of this list. Nationally, in-state residents submitted 22 percent of applications but made up 59.3 percent of matriculants, according to International Medical Aid's tally of Table A-1. At most of the schools in the table above, the tilt is much steeper.

Mississippi is the extreme case. The School of Medicine's residency page says it gives preference to Mississippi residents and that in recent years "it has not been possible to admit nonresidents." Out-of-state students seem to know it: 99.4 percent of its 326 applications came from in-state.

The other schools take more out-of-state applications, but they still enroll mostly residents. If you split each school's applications and matriculants by the in-state shares in Table A-1, you can estimate the odds for each group.

At North Dakota, about 108 in-state applications produced 48 in-state students, while roughly 1,756 out-of-state applications produced 27. That's about 44 matriculants per 100 in-state applications against 1.5 for everyone else. The Medical College of Georgia is starker: roughly 1,990 out-of-state applications and about 4 out-of-state students.

East Carolina's Brody School of Medicine took about 1,190 out-of-state applications in 2025-2026, by the same estimate, and all 91 of its first-year students were North Carolina residents. If you live in another state, Brody's place near the top of "easiest" lists doesn't apply to you.

The flip side is that your own state's public schools may be the easiest schools you can apply to. A school that looks average on a national list can be the best odds you have if you're a resident. In Texas, most public schools use their own application, and the TMDSAS guide covers how it works.

Some "easiest" lists rank schools by average MCAT^® or GPA instead of seats. That can mislead you, because a lower average doesn't mean less competition for each spot.

Howard University College of Medicine and Meharry Medical College have some of the lowest averages among MD schools. MedEdits lists their average MCATs as 504 and 502. But Howard enrolled 128 students from 8,908 applications, or 1.44 per 100, and Meharry enrolled 115 from 7,949, or 1.45 per 100. Both are below the 2.20 average for all MD schools. A lower average means applicants with lower scores do get in there, but you'd be competing with thousands of other applicants for a little over 100 seats.

The reverse can happen too. The University of Oklahoma enrolled 202 students from 2,590 applications, or 7.80 per 100. That's more than three times the all-school figure.

The list above is a starting point, not a school list. These steps turn it into one.

• Start with your state. Look up every MD and DO school in your state of legal residence first, public and private. Those are usually the best odds you'll get.
• Check each school's in-state share. The MSAR lets you filter by residency and compare MCAT^® and GPA data by applicant type. A school that enrolls 98 percent residents isn't worth an out-of-state application fee unless you have a real tie to that state.
• Compare your score with each school's median. A school's median MCAT^® tells you more about your chances there than any "easiest" ranking. The guide to good MCAT scores explains what counts as competitive, and the PurpleCAT MCAT score guide shows the percentile for your score.
• Look at DO schools. Osteopathic schools are left out of the AAMC tables above, and they're another set of schools to weigh when you build your list. The MD vs DO comparison covers how the two paths differ in admissions and the match.
• Run your numbers. If you want a sense of how your GPA and MCAT^® combination tends to do, the 3.5 GPA and 510 MCAT breakdown walks through how to read the AAMC's acceptance data for your stats.

The easiest medical school for you is usually a public school in your own state with a median MCAT^® near your score.

Last verified October 30, 2026, against AAMC FACTS Table A-1 and Table A-7.2 for 2025-2026 as tallied by International Medical Aid, the AAMC's 2025 enrollment report, and UMMC's residency policy.