Major Increase in Black First-Year Enrollments in U.S. Medical Schools

The Association of American Medical Colleges has released new data tables on medical school applications, acceptances, and enrollments. The total number of students applying to medical school in 2021 increased substantially, up nearly 18 percent from 2020, to a record 62,443 applicants.

In 2021, 7,331 Black or African American students applied to U.S. medical schools. This was an increase of 41 percent. The pandemic undoubtedly had a negative impact on 2020 applicants. But 2021 applications from Black students were up by 41 percent from 2019, the year before the pandemic. Since 2014, Black applicants to U.S. medical schools are up by nearly 84 percent.

About 38 percent of students who apply to medical school are accepted. But the AAMC declines to publish data on acceptance rates by racial or ethnic group.

The number of Black or African American first-year students at U.S. medical schools in 2021 increased by 21.0 percent, to 2,562. Black or African American students made up 11.3 percent of first-year students in 2021, up from 9.5 percent in 2020. Of particular note are the increases among Black or African American men; first-year students from this group increased by 20.8 percent.

In 2021, there were 9,229 Black students enrolled at U.S. medical schools. They made up 9.7 percent of all medical school students. In 2014, Blacks made up 7 percent of all medical school enrollments.

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4 COMMENTS

  1. Here’s a classic example of “How to Use Statistics to Lie”. If the academic buffoons at AAMC publicly disaggregated that data it would reveal something completely different. Case in point, the racist AAMC included the number of ‘African & Caribbean” immigrants along with “native born Black Americans” to make it appear statistically and optically as an significant increase. Nothing could be further from the truth.

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