10 Medical Schools That Are Most Competitive for Applicants

The U.S. News Short List, separate from our overall rankings, is a regular series that magnifies individual data points in hopes of providing students and parents a way to find which undergraduate or graduate programs excel or have room to grow in specific areas. Be sure to explore The Short List: College, The Short List: Grad School and The Short List: Online Programs to find data that matter to you in your college or grad school search.

Future doctors applying to these 10 medical schools better come armed with stellar MCAT scores and more than a little luck.

Among the 10 most competitive medical schools, the average acceptance rate in fall 2014 was 2.7 percent, according to U.S. News data. The average acceptance rate among all 117 ranked medical schools reporting data to U.S. News was a more generous -- but still competitive -- 7.1 percent.

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Georgia's Morehouse School of Medicine reported the lowest acceptance rate that year, offering admission to just 1.6 percent of its 5,173 applicants.

The medical schools at Harvard University, which admitted 3.5 percent of applicants, and the University of California--San Francisco, which admitted 3.7 percent, appeared among the top 10 most competitive medical schools last year but were ousted this year. They were replaced by Howard University, which admitted 3.1 percent of applicants to its medical school, and Duke University, which admitted 3.3 percent.

Oklahoma State University's medical school had the highest acceptance rate. Of the 729 applicants vying for admission, 19.8 percent got in.

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Below is a list of the 10 medical schools that accepted the lowest percentage of applicants for fall 2014. Unranked schools, which did not meet certain criteria required by U.S. News to be numerically ranked, were not considered for this report.

* RNP denotes an institution that is ranked in the bottom one-fourth of all medical and osteopathic schools. U.S. News calculates a rank for the school but has decided not to publish it.

Don't see your school in the top 10? Access the U.S. News Medical School Compass to find information on acceptance rates, complete rankings and much more. School officials can access historical data and rankings, including of peer institutions, via U.S. News Academic Insights.

U.S. News surveyed 156 medical schools for our 2014 survey of research and primary care programs. Schools self-reported myriad data regarding their academic programs and the makeup of their student body, among other areas, making U.S. News' data the most accurate and detailed collection of college facts and figures of its kind. While U.S. News uses much of this survey data to rank schools for our annual Best Medical Schools rankings, the data can also be useful when examined on a smaller scale. U.S. News will now produce lists of data, separate from the overall rankings, meant to provide students and parents a means to find which schools excel, or have room to grow, in specific areas that are important to them. While the data come from the schools themselves, these lists are not related to, and have no influence over, U.S. News' rankings of Best Colleges, Best Graduate Schools or Best Online Programs. The acceptance rate data above are correct as of March 31, 2015.

Susannah Snider is an education reporter at U.S. News, covering paying for college and graduate school. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at ssnider@usnews.com.