Every year, more than 85,000 people sit for the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test). Considerably fewer go on to apply to medical school. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), 54,699 people applied to MD-granting medical schools in 2025 — a 5.3 percent increase over the year before, and the largest gain in nearly a decade. Only about 23,400 of them started medical school last fall.
Getting in has never been easy. Fewer than half of medical school applicants matriculate, a ratio that has held remarkably steady for decades. What has changed is what it takes to be competitive: the average GPA among matriculants climbed from 3.75 to 3.81 in just three years, and the once-ill-advised gap year has become the expectation. So what does preparing for medical school actually look like now?
Prehealth studies at Baylor University are not defined by a single major. The prehealth umbrella is a comprehensive advising and professional development program supporting eight healthcare tracks, including dentistry, medicine, occupational therapy, optometry, pharmacy, physician assistant, physical therapy, and veterinary medicine.
“At a medical conference recently, one of the leaders came up to me asking advice as his daughter was considering medicine,” said Dr. Richard Sanker, senior director of prehealth programs and undergraduate research. “But first he told me that he had graduated from Yale with the belief that attending an Ivy League school was all that mattered. He went on to say that, after a visit to Baylor with his daughter, he considered us to be the absolute best institution to help a child grow in a way that’ll make them truly an amazing healthcare provider.”
It’s just one father’s opinion, but nonetheless, some facts back his impressions. While undergraduate institutions often report varied internal metrics — unverifiable online forums report Baylor’s rate is 70 percent — the national acceptance rate for medical school applicants specifically hovers around 41 percent. Baylor has built a niche pre-health pipeline for itself, blending core scientific prerequisites with a focus on the humanities meant to provide students with a robust foundational portfolio fit for medical school admissions.
THE LEGACY OF MEDICINE AT BAYLOR
Perhaps Baylor’s most well-known medical legacy is its prior affiliation with Baylor College of Medicine, which the University attached its name to in 1903. Though the medical school would move to Houston in 1945 and separate entirely from Baylor University in 1969, it’s now ranked among the top medical and research institutions in the U.S.
The Nurses’ Training School of the Texas Baptist Memorial Sanitarium was established in 1909 within the sanitarium chartered by the Baptist General Convention of Texas. It was renamed and incorporated as the Baylor Hospital School of Nursing in 1921 before becoming a degree-granting school of the University in 1950. Now renamed the Louise Herrington School of Nursing, it sits in East Dallas beside Baylor University Medical Center — a separate entity within the Baylor Scott & White Health system, though it shares the Baylor name for the same reason the nursing school does.
Sanker noted the Baylor name in Baylor Scott & White Health, making a comparison to Paul Starr’s book The Social Transformation of American Medicine. In it, Starr writes about Justin Ford Kimball, who in 1929 became vice president of the University to oversee Baylor College of Medicine, School of Nursing, College of Dentistry, and hospital, all in Dallas. During his first year, Kimball designed a hospital repayment plan that would become an early forerunner to Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance.
Then in 1918 Baylor absorbed State Dental College, a private three-year school in downtown Dallas that was renamed the Baylor University College of Dentistry. The dental school would separate from Baylor in 1971, later becoming part of the Texas A&M system in 1996.
Dr. Lauren Barron, a Baylor graduate and chair of the Department of Medical Humanities, recalls why she initially came to the University.
“I was a blue-collar, redbone kid from North Houston, which was a tough neighborhood,” she said. “I knew I wanted to go to medical school. And I knew I wanted to go to Baylor University because of its history in medicine and its connections.
“That’s why thousands of students come here. In Texas, the name ‘Baylor’ means medicine.”
THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD
Most of Sanker’s days are dedicated to making sure that students who dream of medicine truly know what they’re undertaking and to making them fully aware that the road ahead may be bumpy at times.
“To put this in perspective, a medical school will probably have about 150 seats they want to fill, and on average, they’ll receive about 5,000 to 6,000 applicants,” Sanker said. “Now part of that huge number is down to students applying to multiple schools. But the process is intense, and that’s what we must prepare students for. If you were to turn the average application into a single document, it would be 40 to 50 pages long. They’ll also take standardized tests like the MCAT, go through an interview process, and complete essays.”
Another former Baylor pre-med student and now a clinical professor in the Honors College, Dr. Walter “Sparky” Matthews teaches pathophysiology, a class he admits is much harder than anything he took while an undergraduate student at Baylor. Attending medical school on the U.S. Air Force’s Health Profession Scholarship program, he spent 10 years in clinical practice as an aerospace medicine specialist before moving into leadership and command. Prior to coming to Baylor professionally, he held post as the first surgeon general of the U.S. Space Force.
“These days, to apply to medical school, there are four extracurricular pillars that you have to work on,” he said. “You need to have community involvement and volunteering, clinical experience, leadership, and research.
“I had virtually none of that,” Matthews added, “as those were not requirements for medical school admission at the time. The only thing I did was work as an EMT, which was fantastic, and it was the first time I actually got to practice something that approached medicine. I tell my students all the time that I’m glad I’m not applying for medical school and competing against them today because I just don’t know how I would stand up.”
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PREPARING STUDENTS TO APPLY FOR MEDICAL SCHOOL
Once a Baylor student has expressed interest in applying to medical school, they undergo a rigorous process to make sure that it is a realistic conclusion to their four years of undergraduate work.
The University has several programs in place for first-year students that can help them understand how competitive they’ll need to be to apply to and get into medical school.
“And, yes, that means a high grade point average in math and the sciences, but they also have to show compassion and humanity,” Sanker said.
They must also demonstrate extrascholastic abilities, such as research and leadership, and gather real-world experiences, such as studying abroad.
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“This is a lot for a 17- or 18-year-old who has just arrived at college and aspires to be a medical professional one day,” he added.
The Baylor prehealth program is designed semester by semester to get students invested and involved, and to make the path more manageable and the process less intimidating. By the time they reach their senior year, students are — in theory — ready to begin applying to medical school.
“What’s happened over the past 10 years is that students don’t feel ready to apply even after four years,” Sanker said. “A significant portion of our students, probably more than half of them, are now taking another year or more to work on additional graduate programs, carry out research, or get some work experience. We keep working with them until they finally get accepted to medical school.”
MEDICINE IS CLOSER TO LOVE THAN SCIENCE
Building on the traditional educational path, Baylor places an emphasis on introducing the humanities into its pre-medical education. The Department of Medical Humanities was one of the first degree-granting programs of its kind in the U.S.
“Medical humanities are the bridge between the art and science of medicine,” department chair Barron said. “It’s the best of a liberal arts education with a medical focus. My favorite quote of all time is from Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, a nationally recognized medical reformer, who says that medicine is closer to love than it is to science.
“We’re trying to turn university students into humans before their medical training turns them into gods, robots, jerks, or some combination of the above,” she joked. “Day one of medical school is way too late to start considering bioethics, medical ethics, theology, and spirituality.”
The AAMC supports a liberal arts education for pre-medical students, emphasizing its crucial role in developing empathetic, observant, and well-rounded medical professionals.
“We know that science alone is not sufficient to take care of human beings,” Barron said. “I’m a family doctor, and so I have to be able to be flexible and move seamlessly between science and the humanities.
“Let’s say I have a patient with high blood pressure,” she continued. “I need to be able to zoom in to the level of cells, tissues, receptors in the heart, and the blood vessels. But then I need to zoom out and consider possible side effects, the patient’s age, and other factors, such as whether they are living alone, and should I also be worrying about dizziness or falls?”
Barron pursued a bachelor of arts degree in psychology as an undergraduate student, “so I had a lot of courses in the humanities, arts, and social sciences,” she said. “And that did mean that some of the coursework at the beginning of medical school was a little more difficult. But medical school goes so fast that by Christmas of the first semester, everybody’s on the same page.”
EXTRACURRICULAR EXPERIENCE IS ESSENTIAL FOR SUCCESS
Another necessary part of preparing for medical school is participating in research projects and gaining real-world experience by shadowing healthcare professionals.
“I have seven different research programs, including those with Baylor College of Medicine, Baylor Health Care Systems, and the Veterans Administration Center of Excellence for Research on Returning War Veterans here in Waco,” Sanker said.
At the Center of Excellence, students research post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury in veterans returning from conflicts. Another research program involves tropical and infectious diseases in collaboration with the Baylor College of Medicine.
There are currently more than 200 Baylor students in the prehealth research programs. But there are also research opportunities within the science departments, especially in the Robbins College of Health and Human Sciences.
“Shadowing is probably the most difficult one for us to coordinate here, as there just aren’t always enough opportunities in Waco,” Sanker said. “We have created a program where we established partnerships with clinics where students can get between 40 and 50 hours of shadowing. But we have more than 4,000 prehealth students, and the Waco area can’t handle that many students doing research at the same time.
“We also work with our alumni program,” he added, “so former students who are now medical professionals can offer current students shadowing opportunities in bigger cities such as Dallas, Houston, and as far away as Chicago.”
The Prehealth Mentor program includes about 100 Baylor seniors who help younger students navigate the process and the system. Baylor also sponsors several student organizations that generate medical mission trips and other outreach programs to provide valuable service experiences.
ALWAYS HAVE A PLAN B
During their first year, Matthews takes time to sit down with each of his Honors College students to offer advice, discuss the future, and especially to discuss their personal plan B.
“I say, ‘look, if you want to be a physician, you have the intellectual capability to do that, but just because you can do it doesn’t mean you necessarily should,’” Matthews said. “If you can imagine doing anything else with your life and being happy, you should do that instead because it’s a long and hard road to graduation, and then you have a life of service to others, and that’s a tough life ahead.”
While the path to applying to a medical school may be extremely challenging and competitive, Sanker fully supports Baylor’s balanced yet rigorous approach to educating our future medical professionals.
“Baylor has the reputation, particularly with the professional medical schools, for producing individuals who consistently demonstrate the competency and the compassion and that intrinsic motivation to do good,” he said. “Baylor’s investment — not just in the sciences, but in our medical humanities program, the Honors College, and the Robbins College of Health and Human Sciences — is bringing forth faculty and individuals who really want to invest and mentor students into a space where they are going to be the kind of healthcare provider that all of us would want — for us, for our children and for our parents.”
