by Cydney Foote
Best Early Decision Medical Schools: Where EDP Applicants Get Accepted
Do you have a dream school – the one place you’ve always wanted to study medicine – and no other school will do? Do you have a compelling reason for attending one particular program? Maybe your spouse’s job requires them to be in that location, or your only living family member is in the area. Or does the program have a particular track, professor, or other feature that specifically appeals to you?
If this is the case, you might want to consider applying through the Early Decision Program (EDP) from the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS).
The requirements of the EDP are simple: apply by August 1 to a single AMCAS-participating school and promise to attend that school if accepted. You must also agree to not apply to any other medical schools while awaiting your chosen school’s decision.
Early Decision Program Advantages
The advantages of the EDP are pretty clear. If you apply through the EDP and get accepted, you’ll know early on that you’ll be attending your dream school. This means no lengthy applications to 20 or more schools, no juggling interviews with your job or class schedule, and no endless months of nail-biting and suspense. By October 1 (usually), you’ll be in and done!
Sound good? Unfortunately, it’s not that easy.
Early Decision Program Disadvantages
Early decision is not an easy back door into medical school. You need to be a highly competitive candidate and meet (or, hopefully, exceed) the school’s requirements. While participating in the EDP shows your enthusiasm for the school, you must still complete its secondary essays and effectively show your fit.
If you aren’t accepted to your chosen school, you can then submit applications to other programs. However, by the time you find out whether you have been accepted to your early decision school – which could be as late as October – those additional applications will be submitted extremely late in the cycle. As you probably know, many programs extend interview invitations and acceptances on a rolling basis, so the earlier you apply, the better. This is why the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) cautions candidates to apply through the EDP only if they think they have an excellent chance of admission.
Another disadvantage is that by focusing entirely on one program, you’re cutting yourself off from possible funding offers at other schools. And if your standardized test scores are high, you have a much better chance of finding a program willing to finance your education (not to mention one that might be a better fit for you) if you spread your net more widely.
What Should You Do?
Researching your chosen medical school is critical if you’re considering early decision. Some schools – overwhelmingly public and state universities – encourage students to apply via early decision. For instance, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School (NJMS) welcomes early decision applicants. They begin reviewing applications within 48 hours of receipt and extending acceptance offers by mid-July – unlike many schools that instead wait until October to announce decisions. According to the AAMC’s Medical School Admission Requirements (MSAR) database, in NJMS’s most recent class of 172 students, 75 (43.60%) were admitted through the EDP. Other schools with significant numbers of EDP matriculants include the following:
| Medical School | Class Size (2024 Matriculants) | EDP Matriculants | Percentage of EDP Matriculants |
| Mercer University SOM | 180 | 81 | 45.00% |
| Rutgers New Jersey Medical School | 172 | 75 | 43.60% |
| University of Mississippi SOM | 165 | 43 | 26.06% |
| East Tennessee State University James H. Quillen COM | 78 | 16 | 20.51% |
| University of Nebraska COM | 150 | 30 | 20.00% |
| University of Kansas SOM | 211 | 37 | 17.54% |
| Medical University of South Carolina | 172 | 30 | 17.44% |
| University of Kentucky COM | 208 | 36 | 17.31% |
| Tulane University SOM | 190 | 32 | 16.84% |
| West Virginia University SOM | 115 | 19 | 16.52% |
| Indiana University SOM | 365 | 59 | 16.16% |
| Wake Forest University SOM | 193 | 25 | 12.95% |
| University of New Mexico SOM | 103 | 13 | 12.62% |
| University of South Florida Health Morsani COM | 130 | 16 | 12.31% |
| Louisiana State University Health Shreveport SOM | 150 | 18 | 12.00% |
| University of South Alabama Frederick P. Whiddon COM | 79 | 9 | 11.39% |
| Florida State University COM | 120 | 12 | 10.00% |
Source: AAMC 2025-2026 MSAR database
On the other hand, 96 allopathic programs had zero EDP matriculants in the last cycle. If one of these is your dream school, then applying early decision could hurt you more than it could help you. If you still want to apply, you must be an exceptional candidate who would be competitive in the general pool of applicants. For example, the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine says their early decision program is “extremely selective and very limited in scope.”
Clearly, early decision is not for everyone. But at schools with a demonstrated record of being friendly to EDP candidates, it might be a chance worth taking.
To succeed as an early decision candidate, you’ll need an application that’s strong, compelling, and as close to perfect as humanly possible. And we at Accepted can help you create such an application! Schedule a free 30-minute consultation with an expert who will help you get Accepted.
Since 2001, Cydney Foote has advised hundreds of successful applicants for medical and dental education, residency and fellowship training, and other health-related degrees. Admissions consulting combines her many years of creating marketing content with five years on fellowship and research selection committees at the University of Washington School of Medicine. She’s also shared her strategy for impressing interviewers in a popular webinar and written three books and numerous articles on the admissions process.
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