This thread is for the current year MD, DO and other applicants and their parents to discuss various schools, application timelines, processes, and seek support as needed. Past threads are listed so people can review some of the questions already asked and answered.
Key takeaways about application submission (multiple sources; summarized with AI):
Avoid the May 28th rush. For most, there is no benefit to rushing, but the risks are significant.
The submission process is FINAL; clicking “Submit” locks your application for the entire cycle without the possibility of edits. Be extremely careful, as an accidental withdrawal is irreversible and will prevent you from re-applying until next year.
Submitting by approximately June 1st last year resulted in verification by June 26th, aligning with the initial transmission to schools.
Applicants who filed their primary materials around June 10th were verified by July 15th, maintaining plenty of time to finish secondaries and remain in the early consideration pool.
Pre-writing secondaries is key! Completion status depends on both primary and secondary applications, so use the verification period to pre-write secondaries so they can be submitted as soon as possible.
Characteristics of matriculants from those 50 feeder schools differ from matriculants from the approximately 900 other undergraduate schools supplying matriculants to U.S. MD-granting medical schools.
Matriculants from feeder schools reported higher parental income than those from nonfeeder schools. In 2023-2024, 40.6% of matriculants from nonfeeder schools reported parental income below $100,000, compared with 35.9% of matriculants from feeder schools. Similarly, 15.4% of matriculants from feeder schools reported parental income of $250,000 or more, compared with 12.0% of matriculants from nonfeeder schools.
Looking at four-year, five- year, and six-year medical school graduation rates for nondual-degree students, matriculants from nonfeeder schools had slightly higher four-year graduation rates for academic years 2014-2015 through 2017-2018. Additionally, between approximately 95% and 97% of matriculants from both
feeder and nonfeeder schools graduated from medical school within six years.
List of top feeder schools:
University of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, MI
University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
University of California-San Diego, La Jolla, CA
Texas A & M University, College Station, TX
The Ohio State University Main Campus, Columbus, OH
University of Georgia, Athens, GA
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
University of California-Davis, Davis, CA
University of Washington, Seattle, WA
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
University of Maryland-College Park, College Park, MD
Rutgers University - New Brunswick, New Brunswick, NJ
The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX
University of California-Irvine, Irvine, CA
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
University of South Florida, Tampa, FL
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA
Brigham Young University, Provo, UT
University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL
Emory University, Atlanta, GA
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
Baylor University, Waco, TX
Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Louisiana St University and Agricultural and Mechanical Col, Baton Rouge, LA
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO
Florida International University, Miami, FL
Duke University, Durham, NC
Boston University, Boston, MA
Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL
Brown University, Providence, RI
Penn State University Park, University Park, PA
University of California-Riverside, Riverside, CA
University of Houston, Houston, TX
Indiana University-Bloomington, Bloomington, IN
New York University, New York, NY
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL
University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN
University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL
University of California-Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA
More than half of all those that matriculating at MD-granting medical school come from one of the above institutions.
This is a good read on how to evaluate not only DO medical schools but all medical schools. The terminology for some of the specific points will be different for MD schools but similar conditions apply.
