The Association of American Medical Colleges has released new data on medical school applications, acceptances, and enrollments.
For the 2025-2026 academic year, 54,699 students applied to medical schools in the United States, up 5.3 percent from 2024-2025. Among these applicants were 6,167 Black or African American students, representing 11.3 percent of all medical school applications in 2025-2026. This is a small decrease from last year (11.7 percent) and on par with both the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 academic years. The total number of Black medical school applicants for 2025-2026 increased by 1.8 percent from last year and by 3.4 percent from 2023-2024.
While the total number of Black medical school applicants increased, the number of Black matriculants into U.S. medical schools for the current academic year decreased by 5.7 percentage points, dropping from 2,090 in 2024-2025 to 1,970 in 2025-2026. Black students represent 8.4 percent of this year’s total 23,440 medical school matriculants. This is the lowest share of Black medical school matriculants in several years and a steady decrease since 2021-2022, when Black students’ representation among matriculants peaked at 11.7 percent.
It can be assumed that the significant drop in Black medical school students is due, at least in part, to the scaling back of affirmative action admissions programs after the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions case.
