M.D. Admissions FAQ

All interviews for the 2023-2024 application cycle will be conducted virtually via Zoom. Applicants who are invited to interview will receive more information with their invitation.

Applications are made through the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS) and are online only. Please visit AMCAS for more information about the AMCAS application. After your primary application (AMCAS) has been verified, you will receive our secondary application. 

We invite you to review our Guide to Application. This Guide will provide details about the application process, as well as information about our technical standards and procedural information.

GUSOM does have a rolling admissions policy. We encourage you to submit all of your materials as soon as possible. You will receive an email from medicaladmissions@georgetown.edu stating that your application has been marked as complete and ready for screening when we receive all of your materials.

Please view our deadlines for the current cycle on our Guide to Application.

The Office of Admissions provides virtual information sessions throughout the year. Please see our Admissions Information Session page for more information about registering for an information session. These information sessions will provide information about the application process and what GUSOM is looking for in highly competitive applicants. If you are an adviser and are interested in hosting an information session with GUSOM for pre-medical students at your university, please reach out to medicaladmissions@georgetown.edu to set up a time.

The Office of Admissions does not provide tours of the School of Medicine. All applicants who are invited to interview will be offered a comprehensive campus tour. All other visitors during normal business hours are provided with a printed Self-Guided Tour Map of the School of Medicine.

Georgetown University School of Medicine does not offer advanced standing or transfer seats.

Each year, GUSOM receives approximately 16,000+ AMCAS applications each year.

The uniqueness of Georgetown’s School of Medicine resides in the tangible sense of the philosophy played out in the basic science and the clinical experience creating a community of scholars and healers who are challenged to achieve their personal potential; dedicated to healing the individual patient; committed to serving the health care needs of the community; and to advocating for those who have no voice in our society. Challenge, choice, and community are Georgetown’s defining differences.

When evaluating a file for an interview, the Committee on Admissions emphasizes five major areas holistically without assigning weight to a particular section. The five sections we look at are: essays (AMCAS & Secondary Application Essay), Experiences (Clinical, Research, Service to Underserved), MCAT scores, Science GPA, and letters of recommendation.

Yes, all applicants are evaluated in the same applicant pool. This includes all graduate students, recently graduated undergraduate students, as well as non-traditional applicants.

Georgetown University School of Medicine is a private Jesuit institution located in Washington D.C. We do not have in-state versus out-of-state tuition. If you are an applicant from outside the United States, you are considered an international student.

• Grading system changes: Due to the decision of many institutions to move to an online Pass/Fail format for the COVID-19 crisis, GUSOM will consider P/F and C/NC courses, as well as prerequisites completed online, holistically in the context of the full application.
• Hours (research, service, clinical): We are aware that many previously planned opportunities to gain experiences in research, service, or clinical settings during this time are being affected by closings and cancellations due to the crisis. The Committee on Admissions will take this into account when reviewing applications. Our team holistically reviews all applications without assigning weight to a particular category.
• If you experienced a particular hardship during this time and would like to share that with the committee, please do so under the “Further Information” question on your secondary application.

GUSOM currently considers international applicants for admission based on the following criteria:

At the time of application, an applicant to GUSOM must be:

• Non-citizen of the United States eligible for federal financial aid

Eligible non-citizens may include:

• Lawful permanent resident (i.e., lawful resident alien) of the United States, with a Permanent Resident Card (formerly known as an Alien Registration Receipt Card or “Green Card”)
• Conditional permanent resident (I-551C)
•  Refugee, asylee, or certain other recipients of Form I-94 from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
• Non-citizen national of the United States or citizen of the Republic of Palau (PW), the Republic of the Marshall Islands (MH), or the Federated States of Micronesia (FM).

Consistent with our mission of Cura Personalis (care of the whole person), the SOM is committed to the success and wellbeing of its students. External and internal factors, including that some international students are ineligible for federal financial aid, require us to regularly assess our ability to provide the needed support to our students and adjust as needed. This decision was made as a result of that assessment. 

No. Students admitted to the School of Medicine before Fall 2023 are not impacted by the new policy. They follow the previous policy for International Students through graduation.

Yes. For Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) applicants requiring financial aid, we encourage you to research funding options well in advance, as eligibility for traditional funding programs may be limited.

A highly competitive applicant will present substantive, longitudinal clinical experiences (shadowing a physician, medical mission trips, scribing – International experiences are acceptable, but a majority should be in the United States), research in any academic discipline, and direct service of the underserved. Please note that volunteering on the floors of a hospital such as playing/reading to children, stocking shelves and transporting patients is considered good community volunteer experience, but not hands-on clinical experience.

A letter packet from a pre-medical committee is preferred. If your college/university does not offer a committee letter, please submit a minimum of two (2) letters. You may use your discretion when selecting letter-writers, however, it is recommended that you submit a balance of academic, clinical, and service recommendation letters. Please note that all recommendation letters must be submitted electronically via the AMCAS Letters System. Paper recommendation letters are not accepted and will be discarded. Graduate students working toward a degree in the sciences are encouraged to submit a letter from their current graduate faculty. Only applicants who have been away from degree-granting institutions for greater than three (3) years may elect to submit entirely non-academic recommendation letters.

Academic requirements for admissions to the School of Medicine include adequate preparation in physics, biology, chemistry, and mathematics. The following courses are required:

• General Biology: 1 year with lab (8 semester hours)
• General Chemistry: 1 year with lab (8 semester hours)
• *Organic Chemistry: 1 year with lab (8 semester hours
• Physics: 1 year with lab (8 semester hours)
• Mathematics (college-level): 1 semester. Calculus is not required; Statistics is acceptable.
• *Biochemistry (lab not required) is recommended, and may replace a second semester of Organic Chemistry with lab.

For more information on the pre-requisites, please see our Guide to Application.

If the prerequisite coursework was completed 5 years ago or longer, applicants must have been enrolled and completed coursework in a post-baccalaureate program or completed (enrolled) in a graduate program with upper level science coursework within the past 5 years.

A highly competitive application will have a BCPM GPA of 3.6 or higher. A non-competitive applicant will have a BCPM GPA of 3.0 or lower.

Please view our most recent Class Profile for the most up-to-date statistics.

Due to the decision of many institutions to move to an online Pass/Fail format for the COVID-19 crisis during Spring 2020 through Spring 2021, GUSOM will accept Pass/Fail, Credit/No Credit, and online courses.

If you complete a post-bacc program, the grades from those courses are calculated into your undergraduate science GPA. If you complete a graduate school program (not a post-bac) the science GPAs will be viewed separately.

Yes. Applicants who are currently enrolled in a one-year master’s degree program may contact our office to request a delayed review of your application until fall semester’s grades are released. This does not negatively impact your application.

Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) courses will fulfill the pre-requisite requirements if the individual courses and credits awarded are detailed on the applicant’s college/university transcript.

We do require that applicants take the MCAT. Only scores from the three years prior to matriculation will be considered. For the 2024 entering class, we will accept MCAT administrations offered in 2021, 2022, or 2023, with September 2023 being the latest month considered. No other scores are eligible and – regardless of reason – no exceptions will be made.

We consider the most recent MCAT score.

Yes, your application will be held pending receipt of your scores as long as you have indicated a forthcoming test date in your AMCAS application. As long as all other application materials have been received, you will receive an application completion confirmation email once your latest scores are received.

Applications are evaluated holistically without assigning weight to a particular section.

No. The committee will review each application only once. If you plan on taking the MCAT after submitting your application, you must indicate the future exam date in your AMCAS Application; this information will be automatically relayed to your Secondary Application. Important: If you decide not to take the future MCAT date, please email medicaladmissions@georgetown.edu with your name and AMCAS ID so we can unmark your future date.

Please view our most recent Class Profile for up-to-date statistics.

Yes. If your AMCAS fee waiver appears on your verified AMCAS application, we will grant a waiver of the secondary application fee.

Georgetown University School of Medicine only pre-screens for international student applications. If you indicate on AMCAS that you would like to receive a secondary from us, and you are not an international applicant, you will receive one. Please make sure your email is spelled properly on your AMCAS application. Also, make sure to include medicaladmissions@georgetown.edu on your safe senders list.

The Committee on Admissions reads the entire application prior to rendering a decision; the application is reviewed only once by committee members.

The Committee on Admissions makes its decisions in strict confidentiality, so we are unable to provide you with individual feedback. The Committee emphasizes five major areas without assigning weight to a particular section, detailed in the Guide to Application. 

The files of applicants to the Regular M.D. Program whose applications were reviewed by the Committee on Admissions in a previous application cycle are reviewed in their entirety with a focus on new information.

The Committee on Admissions considers requests for one (1) or two (2) year deferrals from accepted applicants. All deferral requests should be emailed to medicaladmissions@georgetown.edu No deferrals will be considered by the Committee on Admissions after May 15. Applicants accepted after May 15 are ineligible for deferral.

Please note, if the deferral is granted, this is a binding decision. Your seat in the current class will be given up and you will be moved to the next class year.

Once you’ve been placed on the waitlist, you are able to send letters of interest to show the committee that you are still interested in attending GUSOM. These letters of interest are submitted via the online portal. You can submit anything that you feel adds strength to your application. As a reminder, the waitlist remains open until orientation begins.

Turn-around time is generally eight to ten weeks and may vary at different stages in the application cycle. Please be assured that every application is individually reviewed prior to committee decision.

Applicants invited to interview are permitted to reschedule their interviews once, allowing for “in the area” date requests falling outside of the ranges offered in the interview calendar. We will not honor requests to expedite application review for applicants who have not yet received a decision from the Committee.

Please do not send us any transcripts unless we specifically ask you to submit them.  We will only consider transcripts included in your AMCAS application. If you would like to update the Committee with recent grades, please transcribe them into a post-submission update submitted through the Secondary Application. International applicants who studied outside of the United States or Canada should submit an official transcript evaluation – demonstrating degree equivalency – from an organization such as World Education Service (WES). This should be submitted after you receive a Secondary Application invitation.

Post-submission updates will be limited to text updates submitted via the online Secondary Application portal. Mailed or emailed correspondence – including transcripts and thank-you notes – will not be uploaded to your application. Applicants who have interviewed will have the opportunity to upload a thank-you note in PDF format (which may be typed or hand-written/scanned by the applicant) to the Secondary Application.

A gap year is the period of time between the end of your undergraduate education and the start of medical school. A gap year might be a year or more, depending on each person’s particular circumstances.

A gap year is not considered detrimental to an application. What is important is what an applicant does with that gap year. A great article to read about gap years is Making the Most of your Gap Year which was published by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). We strongly encourage you to consult with your pre-med adviser if you are considering a gap year. Some students have a job to make money to go to medical school, while others use the year to gain more clinical, research and service experiences.