The Gender Gap in Medical School Enrollments Is Disappearing

New data from the Association of American Medical Colleges shows that during the 2017-18 academic year, there were 43,571 women enrolled in U.S. medical schools and 46,571 men. Thus, women made up 48.5 percent of all medical school enrollments. Four years earlier in the 2013-14 academic year women were 46.7 percent of total enrollments. In 2017, for the first time in history, women outnumbered men as first-year medical school matriculants.

The data includes enrollment data by gender for 147 U.S. medical schools, including four in Puerto Rico. Of these 147 medical schools, women outnumbered men at 55 schools. At 91 medial schools men still outnumbered women and one medical school had an equal number of men and women enrolled.

While nationwide gender equality in medical school enrollments appears to be just around the corner, there are still significant gender gaps at some medical schools. At the University of Tennessee, there were 270 women medical students and 426 men. At the medical school at Marshall University in West Virginia, there were 124 women enrolled and 188 men. Women made up less than 40 percent of the total enrollments at each school.

But women made up large percentages of the total enrollments at other medical schools. For example, at the University of Maryland, there were 394 women students enrolled and only 281 men. At the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, women were nearly 59 percent of the total enrollments.