Contributing to nearly half of the 2009 enrollment increase was the opening of four new medical schools — FIU Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine in Miami, The Commonwealth Medical College in Scranton, Pa., Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center Paul L. Foster School of Medicine in El Paso, Texas, and the University of Central Florida College of Medicine in Orlando, Fla.
According to the data, 12 existing medical schools expanded their 2009 class size by 7 percent or more.
This kind of expansion in medical school enrollment and residency training programs is needed to offset an expected physician shortage of 124,000-159,000 by 2025, according to the AAMC.
The 2009 AAMC data also indicated that the pool of medical school applicants remained stable at 42,269, a slight increase over 2008's total of 42,231 applicants. Some of the highlights of the data include the following:
- Male applicants (22,014) to U.S. medical schools continued to outnumber female applicants (20,252) in 2009.
- The percentage of male enrollees also topped female enrollees in the 2009 entering class by 52-48 percent, although the number of women attending medical school has grown steadily since 1992.
- The number of black/African American applicants increased to 3,482 (4 percent over 2008), and this year's entering class had the largest number of black/African American enrollees (1,312 or 7 percent) since 1999.
- Hispanic/Latino applicant numbers dropped to 3,061, a 1 percent decrease from 2008's total of 3,086; the enrollees in this group also declined slightly to 1,412 from 1,416 last year.
- American Indian applicants fell 5 percent to 379 from 400 in 2008, and the number of enrollees also dropped to 153 from 172 in 2008 (11 percent).
Read the AAMC's release about the increased enrollment in medical schools.