Getting in to medical school is a difficult task. To understand the challenge you face getting into medical school, you must understand the importance of MCAT scores, GPA and overall competitiveness. The medical schools themselves consider these three main factors when evaluating an individual applicant. Luckily for you, we can help with a few questions you must consider to help prepare yourself for this daunting process.

You don’t need to look any farther if you’re curious about whether medical school class rank matters. The following article covers everything you need to know about it and more.

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Does Medical School Class Rank Matter

Grades are very important in medical school, because it’s a determining factor on whether you get to stay in medical school or if you would be asked to retake a subject or if you would be asked to transfer. However, grades and class ranking is not the be-all end-all of your medical career.

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Medical school has earned a reputation for being competitive and expensive. Applicants must demonstrate strong academic performance and earn competitive MCAT test scores. Additionally, many prospective medical students strive to attend prestigious universities, which further drives competition.

However, launching a career in healthcare doesn’t require an expensive degree from a top university. Qualifying for medical school may be less difficult than you think.

Using college acceptance rates, we created a ranked list of the easiest medical schools to get into. We also provide an overview of what to expect from medical school, including the cost and average program length.

Easiest Medical Schools to Get Into
1
University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences
Grand Forks, North Dakota
2
University of Massachusetts Medical School
Worcester, Massachusetts
3
University of Missouri Kansas City School of Medicine
Kansas City, Missouri
4
University of Nevada Reno School of Medicine
Reno, Nevada
5
LSU Health Sciences Center Shreveport
Shreveport, Louisiana
6
University of South Dakota Sanford School of Medicine
Vermillion, South Dakota
7
East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine
Greenville, North Carolina
8
Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University
Augusta, Georgia
9
University of Oklahoma College of Medicine
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
10
University of Nebraska Medical Center
Omaha, Nebraska
Why Is Medical School So Competitive to Get Into?
Earning an MD opens up an array of lucrative and rewarding career opportunities. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, physicians earned a median annual salary of more than $200,000 in 2019.

In addition to providing a substantial salary, working in medicine allows you to make a positive impact on society and the lives of individual patients through research and clinical practice.

These perks make pursuing a healthcare career popular, which increases competition for medical school. According to U.S. News & World Report, the average acceptance rate for medical school in 2019 was only 6.7%.

Additionally, high demand leads schools to create more stringent application requirements for medical programs. These requirements leave many students feeling that a medical degree is simply out of reach.

What Are the Requirements to Get Into Medical School?
Exact requirements for getting into medical school vary by program. Most schools require prerequisite coursework in core areas like biology, chemistry, genetics, psychology, and physics.

Many prospective medical students complete these courses while earning their bachelor’s degree.

Applicants must typically submit college transcripts, letters of recommendation, MCAT scores from within the last three years, and a resume. Some schools set GPA and MCAT score cutoffs, but others evaluate more than just academic performance to select candidates.

How Much Does Medical School Cost?
Pursuing a medical degree requires a significant financial investment. However, tuition rates vary widely by program. Factors impacting costs include a student’s residency status, a student’s enrollment status (full time vs. part time), and whether an institution is public or private.

In general, students attending private and/or prestigious schools and out-of-state learners pay the highest tuition rates. While graduating from a prestigious college offers some benefits, many schools offer great medical programs that do not break the bank.

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the average tuition at a public medical school in 2020 was $32,380 per year for in-state students and $54,500 for out-of-state students.

Tuition at a private medical school cost an average of $56,150 per year for in-state students and $57,390 for out-of-state students.

How Long Does It Take to Complete Medical School?
Students typically enter medical school after completing a bachelor’s degree in a related field. The average MD program takes an additional four years. Graduates must then complete 3-7 years of residency training.

Students pursuing a speciality may need additional time to earn an MD. However, some schools offer dual-degree opportunities like BS/MD and MD/Ph.D. programs.

These programs allow students to complete degree requirements simultaneously and qualify for early entry into the residency phase of their education.

Medical Degree UK

The U.S. News Short List, separate from our overall rankings, is a regular series that magnifies individual data points in hopes of providing students and parents a way to find which undergraduate or graduate programs excel or have room to grow in specific areas.

Be sure to explore The Short List: College, The Short List: Grad School and The Short List: Online Programs to find data that matter to you in your college or grad school search.

Prospective students applying to medical schools can expect to face stiff competition. There were more than 50,000 applicants who attempted to get into a U.S. medical school during the 2017-2018 school year, and only 43.1 percent of them were accepted, according to admissions statistics from the Association of American Medical Colleges.

But top-ranked medical schools where incoming students typically have near-perfect test scores and grades aren’t necessarily the institutions that have the most applicants.

[Read: How to Get Into Top Medical Schools.]

In fact, admissions data that 120 ranked medical schools submitted to U.S. News in an annual survey reveal that only one of the 10 schools with the most applicants is ranked in the top 20 of either the research-focused or primary care medical school rankings: the University of California–Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine, which only accepted 3.2 percent of 2017 applicants.

Four of the med schools with the most applicants had unpublished ranks in either the research or primary care rankings, since they were ranked in the bottom one-fourth of that category.

[See: 13 Medical Schools That Trained Influential Doctors.]

All 10 of the schools on the list are located on one of the coasts, with the majority on the East Coast. Seven of the schools are in major metropolitan areas, including three in Philadelphia and two in Washington, D.C.

Among these 10 highly sought-after medical schools, the average number of applicants was 11,779. That is more than double the average number of applicants at all ranked medical schools: 5,681.

Below is a list of the 10 med schools with the most people competing for admission in fall 2017. Unranked schools, which did not meet certain criteria required by U.S. News to be numerically ranked, were not considered for this report.

Medical school (name) (state) Applicants (entering class of 2017) U.S. News research rank U.S. News primary care rank
Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine (PA) 16,314 RNP* 85
Georgetown University (DC) 14,062 46 (tie) RNP
Drexel University (PA) 13,831 85 RNP
George Washington University (DC) 11,432 62 (tie) 79 (tie)
University of California–Los Angeles (Geffen) 11,417 8 (tie) 4
Temple University (Katz) (PA) 10,883 57 (tie) 69 (tie)
Western University of Health Sciences (CA) 10,102 RNP RNP
Thomas Jefferson University (Kimmel) (PA) 10,052 56 46 (tie)
Brown University (Alpert) (RI) 9,922 32 (tie) 39 (tie)
Tufts University (MA) 9,775 57 (tie) 46 (tie)

• RNP denotes an institution that is ranked in the bottom one-fourth of all rank-eligible medical and osteopathic schools. U.S. News calculates a rank for the school but has decided not to publish it.

Don’t see your school in the top 10? Access the U.S. News Medical School Compass to find admissions information, complete rankings and much more. School officials can access historical data and rankings, including of peer institutions, via U.S. News Academic Insights.

U.S. News surveyed 177 medical schools for our 2017 survey of research and primary care programs. Schools self-reported myriad data regarding their academic programs and the makeup of their student body, among other areas, making U.S. News’ data the most accurate and detailed collection of college facts and figures of its kind. While U.S.

News uses much of this survey data to rank schools for our annual Best Medical Schools rankings, the data can also be useful when examined on a smaller scale. U.S. News will now produce lists of data, separate from the overall rankings, meant to provide students and parents a means to find which schools excel, or have room to grow, in specific areas that are important to them.

While the data come from the schools themselves, these lists are not related to, and have no influence over, U.S. News’ rankings of Best Colleges, Best Graduate Schools or Best Online Programs. The applicant data above are correct as of July 31, 2018.

what are good grades in medical school

The medical school admissions process is extraordinarily competitive, and selectivity has intensified due to a pandemic-related surge of interest in the medical field.

Premed undergraduates should strive to achieve a GPA of 3.5 or higher to get accepted into a top-tier med school, admissions officials say. And students should aim to earn A’s and B’s in science courses, in particular, since grades in those classes will be scrutinized to gauge whether med school applicants are academically prepared.

“We tend to look at the science grade point average,” says Christina Grabowski, associate dean for admissions and enrollment at the University of Alabama—Birmingham School of Medicine. “So, whether you’re a psychology major or a business major or a biology major, we are going to look at how you did in science coursework specifically.”

Competitive GPA for Medical School
When admissions officers look at an applicant’s transcript, they seek evidence that the student is capable of handling the onerous academic workload in med school, says Grabowski, an assistant professor of medical education with a Ph.D. in educational leadership.

“If we determine someone can’t do the work academically, it doesn’t matter what else they bring to the table, because they have to be able to make it through medical school to be a physician,” she says. “However…they don’t need to have a 4.0.”

While perfect grades are not required for medical school admission, premeds “would want to be in the mid-3.0 range and higher to feel relatively competitive,” Grabowski says.

Still, it is possible to get into med school with a mediocre or low GPA. When medical school hopefuls look up the average or median GPA of admitted students at a particular school, they should keep in mind that there are people admitted to that school with a GPA below that number, she says.

Dr. McGreggor Crowley, an admissions counselor at the IvyWise admissions consulting firm, says premed students with perfect grades are rare.

“A perfect GPA is challenging to get, regardless of the school the student attends,” Crowley wrote in an email. “This means that the student has had to get all A’s in her own major, along with A’s in all premedical prerequisites, which is a pretty big deal.”

Crowley says any GPA above a 3.8 is excellent.

College GPAs of Students Accepted Into Medical Schools
Admissions statistics from U.S. medical schools show that they tend to have high academic standards. All of the 121 ranked schools in the U.S. News 2022 Best Medical Schools rankings reported the median GPA among their entering students in fall 2020 as 3.46 or higher on a 4.0 grading scale. The average median GPA among these schools was 3.75.

Among the top 10 primary care medicine programs, the average median GPA for entering students was a 3.81, and among the top 10 research-focused medical schools, the average median GPA was 3.88. The two medical schools whose incoming students had the best college grades were the New York University Grossman School of Medicine and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, each boasting a median GPA of 3.96.

David Lenihan, president and CEO of Ponce Health Sciences University, which has campuses in Puerto Rico and Missouri, says med school admissions officers like to see a GPA at or above 3.5.

“Generally, you want to be north of a 3.5 in a competitive major,” Lenihan, who holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience, wrote in an email. “However, [a college] GPA is not a great metric for whether or not a student will succeed in medical school. You might have taken exceptionally difficult classes, or had a hard time adjusting in your freshman year. So while above a 3.5 is still the unofficial national standard, many medical schools are getting wise to the idea that you can find great candidates who don’t meet that threshold.”

Med school admissions officers tend to be impressed by high GPAs among students who majored in demanding disciplines such as physics, Lenihan adds.

Grabowski says her admissions team does not necessarily prefer science majors, but seeks students who performed well in their med school prerequisite courses.

“We don’t discount someone who doesn’t have a science degree,” she says. “We enjoy having people with…all different educational backgrounds in our class. The more diverse we can have of a class in terms of training and experiences, the more they can teach one another.”

However, Grabowski emphasizes that “all students need to complete a prerequisite study in sciences so they have the right foundation.”

While academic preparation is an important factor in medical school admissions, it is only one factor, she explains. Med schools review applicants holistically to determine other qualifications for a career in medicine, including but not limited to medically related experiences, service, teamwork, leadership, research and interpersonal skills, Grabowski says.

Medical school admissions officers also pay attention to whether applicants took academically rigorous courses, Crowley says, and the strict grading systems at certain undergraduate programs.

“In general, the admissions officers have a gestalt of which schools are a bit tougher and which schools are a bit easier,” he says. “They also know that there are many routes through the same major at the same college, some easier than others. If they see a risk-averse student coasting by, but another student in the same institution is taking a more challenging course load and [has] a slightly lower GPA, they’ll usually gravitate towards the applicant who challenges herself.”

Luz Claudio, a professor with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who has a Ph.D. in neuropathology, warns that signing up for college classes where getting an A may be easy isn’t the best strategy for improving odds of admission.

“I see that students sometimes take relatively easy courses to raise their overall GPA, but if their science grades are still low, this may not help them enter med school,” Claudio wrote in an email.

How Premeds With Unimpressive GPAs Can Get Into Medical School
Premeds who have lackluster college grades should attempt to demonstrate their academic potential in other ways, Lenihan emphasizes.

“Find an alternative way to prove that you can handle the rigors of medical school,” he says. “You could highlight the especially difficult course load you took, talk about the jobs that you had to work during your undergrad years to support yourself, or enter a competitive post-bac program where they leverage the first year of medical school curriculum.”

Claudio suggests that medical research internships could also be worthwhile, especially if they lead to publication in a peer-reviewed journal. “Published papers coupled with spectacular letters of recommendation and excellent MCAT scores can sometimes propel a student who is on the borderline to get into medical school.”

Dr. Jordan Frey, a plastic surgeon and assistant professor of surgery at the University at Buffalo—SUNY’s Jacobs School of Medicine, recommends that premeds with less-than-amazing college grades apply broadly to both M.D. and D.O. medical schools, including institutions throughout the U.S. Premeds should be realistic about the quality of their candidacy when choosing where to apply, Frey adds, warning that a subpar GPA could be a deal-breaker at med schools where high grades are the norm.

Aspiring doctors whose college grades aren’t the best should strive to demonstrate excellence in the qualitative and “humanistic” portions of their application, such as their personal statement and recommendation letters, and pursue relevant and interesting clinical or research activities, Frey says.

Leadership is the best way for premeds to compensate for a low GPA and differentiate themselves, suggests Pierre Huguet, CEO and co-founder of the H&C Education admissions consultancy.

“Students should pursue genuine interests and passions that aren’t necessarily related to medicine,” Huguet wrote in an email. “In the relatively homogeneous med school applicant pool, students should explore activities that will make an impact in the admissions process: founding and running a club or a non-profit, or publishing in a peer-reviewed journal, for instance, is far more impressive than passively following a doctor in the hallways of a hospital.”