The AAMC announced a positive outlook for future medical school classes. When the MCAT registration opened in early May, after having been closed in March and April due to stay-at-home orders, 62,000 people registered online. This is a significant increase from the typical 10,000 to 12,000 on the opening day of registration. Similarly, registration for the American Medical College Application Service in early March showed an increase of 50 percent (in the number of applications started in the same period last year) in the first three days. While not all these prospective students will submit applications, it does provide reason for optimism about the future.
President and CEO of the AAMC, David Skorton, MD, said, "We're very encouraged by students' strong interest in registering for the MCAT exam. We're starting to see hints of strong interest in people entering the field overall, even though it's quite early in the medical school application process. It is a great sign if this preliminary trend continues, because our country needs more doctors."