The national public record for U.S. medical education, organized for analysis: admissions funnel volumes and acceptance rates from AAMC FACTS, GPA/MCAT distributions of applicants and matriculants, and national Step outcome trends from USMLE Performance Data — every figure cited with year and source. Built for students, faculty, advisors, admissions and curriculum committees, and anyone who needs the big picture.
Unofficial guide. This site is independent — not affiliated with the AAMC, NBME, USMLE, LCME, or NRMP. All data in this section is public and national; no school-specific or employer data appears anywhere. These pages are general reference, not accreditation advice — for accreditation substance, see SILME.
What this section offers
Elsewhere on this site, the same public record helps students understand the landscape they're navigating. Here it's organized for analysis — reading a funnel, placing a cohort against the nation, tracking trends over time — whether you sit on an admissions committee, run a curriculum, advise students, or are simply trying to understand how the system works.
Each page answers a different committee question:
Who it's for
The landscape behind your journey: how many apply nationally, where acceptance rates actually sit across the GPA/MCAT grid, and what national Step trends mean for your class.
Funnel context for your cycle: how many applied nationally, what share were first-time applicants, and where acceptance rates actually sit across the GPA/MCAT grid — so local selectivity can be read against the national picture.
Outcome trends your CQI work lives inside: national Step pass-rate movements, the pass/fail Step 1 transition's footprint, and the first-attempt pass rates that matter most to students' futures.
Benchmarking craft: which denominators to use, why first-time and eventual rates must never be conflated, and how to report small-cohort outcomes without manufacturing noise.
How to use the benchmarks
1. Compare to the nation, not to a fixed bar. There is no magic pass rate or acceptance rate that marks a program as good. What matters is where a cohort sits relative to the national figure — and whether that distance is stable, widening, or closing over several years.
2. Watch trends, not snapshots. A single year's dip is noise until a second and third year confirm it. National data is published annually or biennially; build your comparisons on multi-year views so one unusual cohort can't drive a policy decision.
3. Mind the denominator. "Applicants" and "matriculants" are different populations; "first-time" and "eventual" pass rates are different numbers; unique people are the denominator, not counts of records. Half of all benchmark misuse is denominator error — the benchmarking page walks through the traps.
Everything here is national and public. These pages carry no school-specific data — not yours, not ours. If your committee needs its own numbers placed against these benchmarks, that work happens inside your institution, with your own data, by your own staff.
Start reading
National applicant and matriculant volumes and trends, first-time applicant shares, acceptance rates by GPA band, and a GPA/MCAT acceptance grid — year and source on every figure.
See the funnel data →National Step 1 and Step 2 CK pass-rate trends, the pass/fail Step 1 transition, what "distance from national average" means, and how cohorts use trends for continuous improvement.
Track the trends →Choosing comparison groups, denominator discipline, small-cohort caution, and separating signal from noise — plus the official sources to bookmark.
Read the guidance →Which AAMC tables to pull, how often benchmarks update, how to present funnel data to leadership, and more questions about the national data answered plainly.
Read the FAQs →Sources
The AAMC publishes FACTS tables each fall and allows reproduction with attribution for educational, noncommercial purposes. The NBME and NRMP publish on their own schedules; confirm the latest editions on the official sites before citing them in committee documents.