What’s the Average GPA for Medical School Matriculants?
Medical schools view applications holistically. This means that they’ll look at all the elements of your application, from your MCAT score to your extracurriculars, as a package so they can understand each of your achievements in context. At the same time, medical school admissions can be an area where there is a great emphasis on numbers, especially the two biggest quantitative admissions factors: your MCAT score and GPA. Because these are two objective measurements that can be compared apples-to-apples across applicants, your MCAT score and GPA will play a large role in admissions officers’ decision to move forward with your application.
Interestingly, by the time you’re ready to apply to medical school, toward the end of your Junior year at the earliest, most of your opportunities to affect your GPA will be behind you. After all, you’ll only have about a year or so of classes left, and those won’t be reflected in your initial application. If you’re reading this in your Junior year, it’s important to remember that if your GPA isn’t where you’d like it to be, you can overcome a low GPA and gain admission to medical school. If you’re reading this early on in your college career, know that the hours you put into these early classes will be the building blocks to a great application.
Luckily for applicants, information about average GPAs for applicants and successful matriculants is made public by the AAMC through their FACTS tables. In addition to the information you’ll find here, there’s a lot more information you can find through the AAMC resources. One caveat: Medians, means, and averages are just that. Don’t let these snapshots discourage you from pursuing your dream of becoming a doctor if your numbers aren’t there yet.
When viewing your application, medical school admissions officers are actually given three GPAs. Your science and math courses are considered according to what is called the BPCM (Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Math) GPA, and your non-science courses (humanities, social sciences, language, etc.) are considered as a separate GPA. The third GPA that schools see is the overall aggregate.
Each medical school has its own average GPA for the incoming class (information for MD programs can be easily found in the Medical School Admission Requirements guidebook and often on the school’s own website), so it’s important to do your research so you know where your own GPA fits in within the school’s range. Are you right on track? Slightly below? Way ahead? Regardless of where you fall, you’ll be able to make a plan for a competitive application with this information.
The national averages for the 52,777 applicants in 2018-2019 were as follows:
- BPCM GPA: 3.47
- Non-science GPA: 3.71
- Overall GPA: 3.57
The national averages for the 21,622 who matriculated in 2018-2019 were:
- BPCM GPA: 3.65
- Non-science GPA: 3.8
- Overall GPA: 3.72
What does this mean for you? As you can see, the average GPAs for those who accepted a seat in medical school is significantly higher than the average of all applicants. This means that your GPA needs to fall much closer to the average for matriculants but more specifically, the average for matriculants to the schools you are applying to.
What can I do if I have a below-average GPA?
Unlike the MCAT, for which everyone starts with a clean slate, your GPA is set during your college career, usually as you’re still figuring out how to succeed in this challenging environment. So what can you do if you’re applying now and your GPA isn’t quite in the ranges above?
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