Wake Forest University School of Medicine: Admissions Insights
We’re three schools into this series, and this week we’re heading south — away from the Northeast programs we’ve covered so far (Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, University of Michigan) to Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Wake Forest is part of Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist, one of the larger academic health systems in the Southeast, and it’s the kind of program that comes up a lot for applicants building a list beyond the usual top-20 conversation. Here’s what the numbers actually say about the incoming Class of 2030 — pulled directly from the school’s own published class profile.
The Class of 2030, by the numbers
Applications received:
14,403 — up from 12,801 the year before, a jump of about 12.5% in a single cycle
Interview invitations:
724, meaning roughly 5% of applicants were invited to interview
New matriculants:
193 — of the students who made it to interview day, about 1 in 4 (27%) ended up with a seat
Class composition:
46 in-state (North Carolina) vs. 147 out-of-state — nearly three-quarters of the class came from outside NC
Average GPA:
3.82
Average MCAT:
511
Average age:
24
A few things worth flagging beyond the raw numbers
Interviews are virtual-only. Wake Forest requires every invited applicant to complete a virtual interview — there’s no in-person option, so don’t read a remote interview as a lower-stakes one.
Admissions are rolling. Interview season runs August 2026 through January 2027, with regular decision offers going out on a rolling basis between October 15, 2026 and February 2027. As with most rolling programs, applying early in the cycle is a real advantage.
There’s a published floor for the secondary application. Wake Forest lists minimum thresholds just to have your secondary reviewed at all: a 500 MCAT and a 3.2 BCPM GPA with at least 20 BCPM credit hours. Don’t mistake that floor for the class average, though — the students who actually get in are coming in well above it, at a 511 MCAT and 3.82 GPA.
Casper is required. Every applicant completes the Acuity Insights Casper situational judgment test as part of the secondary process.
No stated in-state preference — and the data backs it up. Unlike a lot of schools with a strong home-state pipeline, Wake Forest doesn’t publish any residency preference, and with about 76% of the class coming from out of state, that seems to hold up in practice.
The bigger story might be the trendline. Applications climbed by well over a thousand this cycle while interview slots and class size barely moved (718 to 724 interviewed, 194 to 193 matriculants year over year). That’s a program getting meaningfully more competitive without changing its footprint at all — worth keeping in mind if you’re using last year’s numbers to gauge this year’s odds.
If you’re trying to figure out whether your own GPA and MCAT put you in range for a school like Wake Forest — or you want help building a school list that’s realistic rather than aspirational — reach out to us at MCAT KING. We’re happy to walk through it with you.