Admissions Data for Pre-Law and Pre-Health Advisors: Sources, Uses and Pitfalls

The Questions Advisees Ask

Where am I competitive? Needs each school's test-score and GPA distribution, ideally split by residency.
How many schools should I apply to? Needs national volume and how widely successful applicants applied.
Is this year harder? Needs this cycle's applicant count against last year's.

Each profession publishes a different slice of this, so the right source depends on which advisee is in front of you.

Source by Source

Profession	Official school-level source	National or cycle source	Gap to know about
Law	ABA Standard 509 reports: applications, offers, enrolled class, LSAT and GPA percentiles	LSAC volume reports	Percentiles describe enrolled students, not everyone admitted
Medicine (MD)	School class profiles; the paid MSAR	AAMC FACTS tables	FACTS has no per-school MCAT or GPA medians
Dentistry	School class profiles	ADEA applicant and enrollee counts by school	DAT scale changed in 2025
Pharmacy	School class profiles	AACP institutional research	Per-school class GPA is scarce

Three Traps

National acceptance figures count people accepted anywhere

The AAMC's MCAT-GPA grid reports that 45.1% of MD applicants across three recent cycles were accepted to at least one school. That is a system-wide number. It is not the chance of admission at any school on a student's list, and quoting it as one sets expectations far too high.

Scales change

The ADA replaced the DAT's 1–30 reporting scale with a 200–600 scale for tests taken on or after March 1, 2025 (ADEA). A school's "average DAT of 21" and another's "average of 440" may describe similar students. GPA scales vary too: Canadian schools report on 4.0, 4.3, 4.33 and percentage scales, and Quebec civil-law faculties admit CEGEP students on the cote R, which has no GPA equivalent.

Residency hides inside the headline rate

In 2025–26, 59.3% of US MD matriculants enrolled in their home state, while only 22% of applications went to home-state schools (AAMC FACTS Table A-1). A public school's overall acceptance rate can mean very different odds for a resident and a non-resident.

See every advisee's list in one place.

AdmitBase's advisor plan shows every linked student's match scores, target schools and application status in one table, built on the same school data as the public site.

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Using the Data in an Advising Session

Start from the student's numbers, not the rankings. Place the test score and GPA against each school's 25th, 50th and 75th percentiles before talking about prestige.
Separate the residency question. For medicine and dentistry, list home-state public schools first and treat out-of-state publics separately.
Cite the year. Admissions figures move every cycle; a number without a year invites a student to plan on stale data.
Prefer the school's own figure. When a source cannot tell you where a number came from, treat it as an estimate.

Want the data itself?

Advising offices can license AdmitBase's compiled dataset across law, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, veterinary medicine, optometry and MBA programs, with the source on every row, or download a free sample first.

See AdmitBase data access →

Frequently Asked Questions

Where can pre-law advisors find law school admissions data?

The ABA's Standard 509 reports at abarequireddisclosures.org give every ABA-approved school's applications, offers, enrolled class and LSAT and GPA percentiles each year. LSAC's volume reports show national applicant and application counts while a cycle is under way.

Where can pre-health advisors find medical school admissions data?

The AAMC's free FACTS tables cover national applicants, matriculants, MCAT and GPA, and each school's application and matriculant counts. Per-school MCAT and GPA figures for accepted in-state and out-of-state applicants are in the AAMC's MSAR database, which costs $33 a year, and in some schools' own class profiles.

How should advisors compare DAT scores across years?

Carefully: the ADA moved the DAT from a 1–30 reporting scale to a 200–600 scale for tests taken on or after March 1, 2025, so school figures from before and after the change are on different scales. Convert with the ADA's concordance rather than comparing numbers directly.

Is there a tool for advisors to see all their students' school lists?

AdmitBase's advisor plan gives an advising office one dashboard with each advisee's school list and match scores. Organisations that need the underlying data instead can request access to the dataset.