On the absolute low end, you should apply to 15 schools. On the high end, we recommend you don’t exceed 40 schools.
However, it’s not merely the size of your medical school list that matters, but also the specific programs. If your medical school list is too aggressive based on your stats, you'll want to apply to more schools to achieve the right balance. On the other hand, if your list is more conservative, you may apply to fewer schools.
For example, if a student with a 3.6 GPA and 513 MCAT score applies to 15 of the 25 top-ranked medical schools, their full list should be much larger because most, if not all, of those 15 schools will be reaches for them. On the other hand, those schools would be target programs for a student with a 3.9 GPA and 519 MCAT score, assuming that they also have the extracurriculars to back it up.
As a general rule, the higher your grades and MCAT scores, the lower the number of schools you need to apply to. Conversely, the lower your grades and MCAT scores, the higher the number of schools you should apply to.
(Suggested reading: What MCAT Score Do You Need to Get Into Medical School?)
Can medical schools see how many schools you apply to?
No, medical schools cannot see how many other schools you applied to, let alone which ones. In AMCAS, you indicate which schools you’d like your primary application to be sent to. Those schools will see all of your information except where else you applied.
Is it bad to apply to only one medical school?
You’ve probably heard the saying, “Don’t put all your eggs into one basket.” That saying means it’s best not to put all hope (or possibly your entire livelihood) in one source. When it comes to applying to medical schools, this couldn’t be more accurate.
Even if you have maintained an outstanding GPA, scored impressively high on the MCAT, had stellar letters of recommendation, and accrued 500 shadowing hours (you get the idea…), you still shouldn’t put all of your dreams of med school in the hands of only one school.
If you don’t get accepted into that one school, you must apply to med school again. Since you will have applied to med school previously at that point, you will forever be labeled a reapplicant. There tend to be disagreements surrounding how much being a reapplicant impacts your chances of acceptance, but why worry about whether there’s any validity if you don’t need to?
What if I can’t afford to apply to multiple medical schools?
Applying to medical school isn’t cheap! Between MCAT fees, fees for the primary applications, fees to complete your secondary applications, and fees to appear for interviews (which often include travel and accommodations), the fees can add up—fast!
While we’re telling you it is unwise to only apply to one school, we also understand that not everyone has the financial ability to apply to 40 schools. Imagine being invited to interview at just half of those on top of it!
The good news is that AAMC and AACOM have fee assistance programs to assist students who must complete the AMCAS or AACOMAS, respectively. (TMDSAS does not have a fee assistance program.) The AAMC’s fee assistance program has additional benefits, such as covering the cost of the MCAT, providing complimentary access to MSAR, enabling students to receive AAMC official prep products, and more.
Part 4: Which medical schools should I apply to?
You can probably recite your cumulative and science GPA and MCAT score without even thinking.
This will make it easier for you to compare your stats with the admissions statistics of various medical schools’ entering classes, which can be found on most schools’ websites (see Tufts University School of Medicine's Class Profile as an example) or in the AAMC’s Medical School Admissions Requirement (MSAR) database.
However, to make this process easier, we encourage you to review our in-house list, Average GPA and MCAT Score for Every Medical School, and view our video, What is a Good MCAT Score?, to see how you stack up against accepted students at each school.
While it’s simple to learn whether you fall above or below a school’s average stats, it’s much more difficult to figure out how to classify medical schools as reach, target, and undershoot. Therefore, we’ll offer two approaches that you can independently or collectively use to develop your perfect school list: the WedgeDawg system and a general rule of thumb.
We recommend that you use the WedgeDawg system if you want to take a deep dive, and that you use our rule of thumb either as a supplement to WedgeDawg or if you just want to keep things more simple.
Before we explain how each approach works, we want to reemphasize that applying mostly to reach schools—that is, schools whose average GPA and MCAT scores are higher than yours—is one of the primary reasons students end up not matriculating. For that reason, it’s important to develop your school list heavily based on stats.
Option 1: WedgeDawg’s Applicant Rating System (WARS)
WedgeDawg’s Applicant Rating System (WARS) is a popular system on Student Doctor Network that can help you determine your competitiveness at various medical school based on factors including your undergraduate institution, extracurricular activities, GPA, MCAT score, and personal factors. While not perfect—no system is perfect because admissions isn’t guaranteed—WARS tends to yield better results than other systems like LizzyM. Believe us when we say we’ve tested them all.
Getting into the specifics, WARS considers the following variables when determining your competitiveness for medical school admissions:
GPA (averaged across all fields: undergrad cumulative GPA, undergrad science GPA, post-bacc GPA, etc.)
MCAT score
Research experience
Clinical experience
Shadowing experience
Volunteering experience
Leadership and teaching experience
Miscellaneous (i.e., other significant experiences or achievements)
Undergraduate institution
Representation in medicine
GPA trend (If your GPA has consistently been high, give yourself the higher rating)
WARS then uses a formula that differentially weighs each of those variables to produce an overall score that ranges from 0–121 and corresponds to your “level” of competitiveness. Based on your level, WARS breaks down the percentage of medical schools you should apply to within each tier (“category”). The higher your level, the higher the percentage of Category 1 schools (e.g., Harvard, Stanford, Johns Hopkins) you should apply to.
While WARS also recommends a specific total number of schools to apply to based on your level, we’ve found that the recommended numbers are somewhat low, so pay closer to attention to the percentages.
WARS describes how to rate yourself on each factor listed above. Whereas some of the ratings are objective (e.g., GPA, MCAT), most are subjective. However, WARS provides helpful examples of what might receive a 4 vs. a 3 rating in, say, the research category. When it comes to subjective categories, we recommend choosing the lower rating when you’re on the fence so that you can approach your school list more conservatively.
We don’t recommend that you try to figure out how to use the various multipliers, because it can get quite confusing. Instead, use the WARS Online Calculator, which simply asks you to type in your rating for each category to produce your overall score.
In addition to the sometimes subjective nature of WARS—which, frankly, isn’t a major criticism because it reflects the largely subjective systems that medical school admissions committees use—it does have a few issues:
It groups DO schools as one category, although DO schools can vary significantly with regard to accepted students’ average GPA and MCAT scores.
It doesn’t work particularly well for MD-PhD programs, which weigh research experiences far more heavily.
It doesn’t effectively handle disparate GPAs, such as a low undergrad GPA vs. a high graduate GPA, or vice-versa.
It has no way of accounting for “soft factors,” such as the strengths of your application essays or recommendation letters.
Still, WARS is a very helpful way to filter medical schools for your first pass. You can then review each school individually to better understand your odds of getting in, whether your background and aspirations fit with their programs, and so on.
Option 2: Our rule of thumb
Over the years, we’ve supported students who develop their own systems for classifying schools as reaches, targets, or undershoots. While the specifics vary, they’re typically overly complicated.
To keep things simple, we developed another way to decide whether a given medical school is a reach, target, or undershoot for you by comparing your stats to their averages.
The rule goes as follows:
GPA:
If your GPA is .2 or more points higher than the average student of a medical school's entering class, consider that school an undershoot in the GPA category.
If your GPA is .2 or more points lower than their average matriculant's, classify that school as a reach in the GPA category.
If your GPA is within .1 points in either direction of the school's entering class average, consider that school a target in the GPA category.
MCAT:
If your MCAT score is 3 or more points higher than the average student of a medical school's entering class, consider that school an undershoot in the MCAT category.
If your MCAT score is 3 or more points lower than their average matriculant’s, classify that school as a reach in the MCAT category.
If your MCAT score is within 2 points in either direction of the school's entering class average, consider that school a target in the MCAT category.
Overall: Based on the GPA and MCAT categories, you should classify schools as follows:
Reach GPA + Reach MCAT = Reach overall
Undershoot GPA + Undershoot MCAT = Undershoot overall
Reach GPA + Undershoot MCAT = Target overall
Undershoot GPA + Reach MCAT = Target overall
Reach GPA + Target MCAT = Target overall
Target GPA + Reach MCAT = Target overall
Undershoot GPA + Target MCAT = Undershoot overall
Target GPA + Undershoot MCAT = Undershoot overall
Target GPA + Target MCAT = Target overall
The one exception to the formula above is when either your GPA or MCAT score is significantlylower than the school’s entering class average. Specifically, if your GPA or MCAT score is lower than a school’s 10th percentile value, you should classify that school as a “reach,” regardless of how high your score is in the other category.
Therefore, if you have a highly discrepant GPA and MCAT score—whether your GPA is high and your MCAT score is low, or vice-versa—you should err on the side of conservatism with your school list.
