No. 1 and mission-focused

Class of 2023 White Coat Ceremony
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With more than 7,000 students annually applying for admission to the FSU College of Medicine, the emphasis has always been on finding students who are a good fit for our mission. Now U.S. News and World Report has put a new number on how eager aspiring physicians are to become a part of that mission:

No. 1.

The magazine’s annual survey of graduate programs describes Florida State as the “most selective” medical school in the country – with an acceptance rate of 2.2 percent for the class arriving in May 2019.

The College of Medicine, which extended 161 offers of acceptance among 7,313 applicants, was followed on the list of “most selective medical schools” by Stanford, Arizona, Virginia Tech, Mayo, UCLA, NYU, Brown and West Virginia.  Medical schools with the most selective admissions

“While it’s always nice to be able to say, ‘We’re No. 1!,’ what I’m most proud of is that we are actually one of the most inclusive medical schools in the country,” College of Medicine Dean John P. Fogarty said. “We truly are looking for students who are going to help us achieve our mission – and they come from communities all over Florida, including many from rural areas of the Panhandle, from families who don’t always have abundant financial resources, from medically underserved neighborhoods. …

“They are representative of the cities and towns we are trying to serve by producing the physicians we need most in Florida, and beyond.”

The U.S. News survey annually gets plenty of attention, but another report more carefully watched by medical school administrators is confirming that Florida State is achieving its mission.

The Association of American Medical Colleges annually releases its “Mission Management Tool” to give medical schools a way to measure themselves in multiple vital areas. The tool includes a wide range of data collected from all M.D. programs in the U.S. 

Compared with all other M.D. programs in the nation, Florida State is in the top 10th percentile for:

  • Percentage of alumni practicing in underserved areas (94th percentile).
  • Graduates who are Hispanic, Latino or of Spanish origin (91st percentile)
  • Percentage of graduates who are black or African American (95th percentile).
  • Percentage of faculty who are women (96th percentile).
  • Percentage of faculty who are from groups underrepresented in medicine, including black or Hispanic/Latino (93rd percentile).
  • Providing experience in community health (98th percentile).

FSU is in the top 15th percentile nationally for:

  • Producing doctors for its home state.
  • Percentage of alumni practicing primary care.

The College of Medicine is reaching its mission goals despite a tuition that, according to AAMC data, is among the lowest in the country (17th percentile among public medical schools), helping its graduates leave school with less debt (bottom third compared with other schools).

“I think everyone would agree that, by any measure, the FSU College of Medicine is exceeding its goals of producing the kinds of physicians that Florida needs the most,” Fogarty said.