Here’s the top 10 in terms of number of applicants:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/10-medical-schools-most-applicants-130000233.html
No real change from the last time US News released their list in 2016.
Wake Forest replaced NYU on the list.
Note that there are some medical schools that do not release their data to US News (notably Tulane which receives in excess of 10K applications) so these are not included on any US News lists.
It’s not a comprehensive list, but it does give a pretty good picture of the volume of applications at medical schools; it’s also interesting to note that few on the list are the “top” schools so many speak of, at least in terms of USNWR rankings. Even though these aren’t the “top” medical schools, they get a ton of applicants.
The reason why Jefferson, Temple, Drexel, GW and Georgetown are perennially on the ‘most applicants’ list is because all these schools are private (i.e. open to everyone), have relative modest admitted student stats and are in popular major cities. WesternCOM gets tons of applications because----California. LECOM has 3 campuses (2 in PA an 1 in FL, but all applicants apply thru the main PA campus) and over 4100 students.
The number of applicants applying to “top” schools isn’t as high because of self-selection. Most applicants know they don’t have the nosebleed stats or the exceptional achievements needed to be competitive for those schools–so they don’t bother applying. The median MCAT at WashU, Yale and NYU for 2017-18 was 423 (99th percentile).
Since medical schools has the state preference, being DC is not a state and being so small, every one hopes as OOS they can get in there compared to other medical schools in any 50 states and hence GW & Georgetown always in the top 10 with 13-15k applicants per year (lot of donations given).
Jefferson, more or less, is Delaware’s state medical school(I think they get 20 or so positions); it’s also a huge school, which probably explains the many, many applicants.
And for years the DC schools have been at the top of the list, to the point where at one time or another, both GU and GWU more or less bragged about being the most expensive medical school in the country, after all DC schools lost government support back in the 80s.
Delaware underwrites the tuition for up to 18 seats/years but those seats are not hard guaranteed to go to Delaware residents. Temple’s arrangement with PA is similar, with PA residents getting a tuition discount if they attend Temple (or Pitt or Penn State). PA doesn’t have any true “public” medical schools.
BTW, Tufts, another perennial “most applicants” school, is currently the most expensive med school in the country, with a COA averaging $95K/year.