The average GPA for medical school, in AAMC’s national data for the 2025-2026 cycle, is 3.81 for the students who enrolled and 3.67 for applicants. Both figures come from AAMC’s FACTS tables, cover U.S. MD-granting schools, and belong to the release that was still current in October 2026. Each one is a mean: a single point inside a group whose grades spread above and below it.
| 2025-2026 cycle | Applicants | Matriculants |
|---|---|---|
| Total GPA, mean (SD) | 3.67 (0.33) | 3.81 (0.21) |
| Science GPA, mean (SD) | 3.57 (0.42) | 3.75 (0.27) |
| Non-science GPA, mean (SD) | 3.80 (0.26) | 3.88 (0.18) |
| Applicants and matriculants in the cycle | 54,699 | 23,440 |
AAMC publishes these figures in Table A-16, with a standard deviation (SD) beside every mean. Its note says the GPA means are calculated from applicants with available GPA data.
Average GPA for Medical School: Who Each Number Describes
An applicant, in AAMC’s glossary, is a person who has applied to at least one U.S. MD-granting medical school. A matriculant is a person who applied to begin at one of those schools in a given academic year and enrolled in that year. Matriculants are therefore part of the applicant group: 23,440 of the 54,699 applicants in 2025-2026, or 42.9%. The 3.67 applicant mean includes them.
The same glossary leaves DO-granting schools out of its definition of a U.S. medical school, so these figures cover applications to MD-granting schools and leave out applications to DO-granting schools. AAMC’s 2025-2026 column covers people who applied to enter medical school in fall 2025.
The means also move from cycle to cycle. Table A-16 runs back to 2020-2021, when the matriculant mean was 3.73 and the applicant mean 3.60. A figure quoted without its cycle can be several years behind the current one.
The Spread the Average Leaves Out
A standard deviation measures how widely a group’s values sit around its mean. For 2025-2026, AAMC’s SD for total GPA is 0.33 among applicants and 0.21 among matriculants, so the applicants’ grades are the more widely spread of the two.
Table A-23 shows the spread in counts. It reports acceptance rates by total GPA band and MCAT band for applicants and acceptees, the people offered admission by at least one MD-granting school. AAMC pools three cycles, 2023-2024 through 2025-2026, and its description says “The frequencies are combined totals of three years.” Because each cell pairs a GPA band with an MCAT band, the grid counts only applicants who have both.
Across those three cycles, 61.5% of the 70,289 acceptees had a total GPA above 3.79, and 22.5% had one between 3.60 and 3.79. The other 16.1%, or 11,283 acceptees, were below 3.60, and 718 of them were below 3.00. Here is the same grid read by GPA band alone, with every MCAT score combined.
| Total GPA band | Applicants | Acceptees | Accepted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Above 3.79 | 67,816 | 43,215 | 63.7% |
| 3.60 to 3.79 | 37,208 | 15,791 | 42.4% |
| 3.40 to 3.59 | 22,437 | 6,660 | 29.7% |
| 3.20 to 3.39 | 12,961 | 2,696 | 20.8% |
| 3.00 to 3.19 | 7,626 | 1,209 | 15.9% |
| 2.80 to 2.99 | 4,001 | 459 | 11.5% |
| 2.60 to 2.79 | 2,024 | 170 | 8.4% |
| 2.40 to 2.59 | 1,022 | 62 | 6.1% |
| 2.20 to 2.39 | 529 | 14 | 2.6% |
| 2.00 to 2.19 | 228 | 11 | 4.8% |
| Below 2.00 | 88 | 2 | Not quoted (under 100 applicants) |
From the 2.40 band upward, applicants in each higher band were accepted at a higher rate, rising from 6.1% to 63.7%. Below 2.40 the order breaks: 2.6% in the 2.20 to 2.39 band against 4.8% in the band beneath it. Even in the top band, 24,601 of its 67,816 applicants (36.3%) received no offer from any U.S. MD-granting school in the cycle they applied.
Science and Non-Science GPA, Side by Side
Table A-16 also splits each group’s GPA into a science mean and a non-science mean. In both groups the science mean is the lower one: 3.57 against 3.80 for applicants, and 3.75 against 3.88 for matriculants. Science GPA also has the wider spread, with an SD of 0.42 against 0.26 among applicants and 0.27 against 0.18 among matriculants.
In 2025-2026, the two groups’ science means differ by 0.18 and their non-science means by 0.08.
FACTS labels the two halves science and non-science. On the application itself, AMCAS calculates its own split. The 2027 AMCAS Applicant Guide says “two separate GPAs are calculated for coursework listed as biology, chemistry, physics, and math (BCPM) and all other (AO),” and AMCAS reports these GPAs to medical schools by academic status as well as in total.
Reading the GPA Grid Cell by Cell
Inside each GPA band, Table A-23 splits applicants again across ten MCAT bands, and the rates move a long way within a single band. Among applicants with a total GPA above 3.79, 2.8% of those with an MCAT below 486 were accepted (9 of 320). In the same GPA band, 83.3% of those with an MCAT above 517 were accepted (11,773 of 14,138).
Some cells are thin. AAMC replaces a cell with a dash when it holds fewer than 10 applicants. We set a higher floor for quoting a rate here: 100 applicants. At 100, one acceptance more or fewer moves the rate by one percentage point, and in a cell of 14 it moves the rate by about seven.
Of the grid’s 94 cells with published figures, 22 fall below that floor, all of them in GPA bands under 3.00. In the 2.60 to 2.79 band, the three cells above an MCAT of 509 hold 80, 50 and 14 applicants. In the highest cell of that band that clears the floor, an MCAT of 506 to 509, 22.1% were accepted (36 of 163).
Read down a single MCAT column and the GPA bands separate. This is the 510 to 513 column.
| Total GPA band | Applicants with an MCAT of 510 to 513 | Accepted | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Above 3.79 | 13,906 | 9,798 | 70.5% |
| 3.60 to 3.79 | 6,940 | 4,167 | 60.0% |
| 3.40 to 3.59 | 3,100 | 1,510 | 48.7% |
| 3.20 to 3.39 | 1,344 | 569 | 42.3% |
| 3.00 to 3.19 | 649 | 243 | 37.4% |
| 2.80 to 2.99 | 228 | 89 | 39.0% |
| 2.60 to 2.79 | 80 | Not quoted | Under 100 applicants |
The rate falls with each lower GPA band until 2.80 to 2.99, which sits slightly above the 3.00 to 3.19 band, at 39.0% against 37.4%. Every cell in the grid describes a group of past applicants who held that pair of numbers. None of them is a forecast for one applicant.
What Individual Schools Publish
AAMC’s FACTS GPA tables are national. Table A-17 splits GPA by undergraduate major, A-18 by race and ethnicity, A-19 and A-20 by state, and A-21 and A-22 by gender, while A-23 is the grid. None of them is a table per school, but some schools publish figures for their own class.
The University of Toledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences reports an average total GPA of 3.81 and an average science GPA of 3.75 for its 2026 entering class of 175 students. Those are the same two figures as AAMC’s national matriculant means for 2025-2026, which describe the class that entered a year earlier.
Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine reports a median cumulative GPA of 3.97 for its 2026 first-year class. Toledo publishes an average and Mayo a median, and those are different statistics. Set against each school’s own figure, a 3.81 equals Toledo’s average and sits below Mayo’s median.
Some schools publish a threshold instead. The University of Louisville School of Medicine states, as its page read in October 2026, that “The minimum academic threshold for consideration is a 3.0 cumulative and BCPM GPA, and a 498 MCAT total score.”
Before You Set Your GPA Beside These Numbers
If you apply through AMCAS, the GPAs it reports to schools are its own calculation. The applicant guide says “AMCAS GPAs almost always differ from those calculated by the school(s) you have attended.” AMCAS counts grades for every attempt at a repeated course, includes failed courses your school leaves out of its own GPA, and counts plus and minus grades even where your school does not.
The national means describe tens of thousands of applicants, and a school’s average, median or threshold describes one class or one rule. Your own comparison starts from the GPA AMCAS will calculate, overall and in its BCPM part. The figure to hold it against is whatever a given school publishes for itself.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is the average GPA for medical school acceptance?
AAMC’s FACTS GPA tables do not report one. They give mean GPAs for applicants and matriculants, and the nearest figure is the 2025-2026 matriculant mean of 3.81, which covers only the people who enrolled. Acceptees appear in Table A-23 as counts and acceptance rates by GPA band, not as a mean.
What GPA do you need for med school?
AAMC’s national grid shows no floor: from 2023-2024 to 2025-2026 it recorded acceptees in every total-GPA band, including 11 of the 228 applicants between 2.00 and 2.19. Individual schools can set one. The University of Louisville School of Medicine, for example, sets a 3.0 cumulative and BCPM GPA as its minimum for consideration.
Is a 3.5 GPA good for med school?
A 3.5 total GPA sits below both 2025-2026 national means, 3.67 for applicants and 3.81 for matriculants. In AAMC’s 3.40 to 3.59 band, acceptance over three cycles ran from 0.5% for applicants with an MCAT below 486 (5 of 987) to 66.4% for those above 517 (574 of 865).
What is a BCPM GPA?
It is the GPA AMCAS calculates from courses classified as biology, chemistry, physics and math; other graded courses go to the “all other” (AO) GPA. Classification follows a course’s primary content, and AMCAS’s separate “Natural and Physical Sciences” (NPSC) classification is not part of the BCPM GPA.