How to Get Into UT Southwestern Medical Center

This article will help you understand what it takes to get accepted to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSW).

If you’re just here for the requirements, click here.

UT Southwestern Medical Center Acceptance Rate: 3.80%

The acceptance rate at UTSW is 3.80%. In the 2025-2026 admissions cycle, UTSW received 6,025 applications and 229 students matriculated. This means it’s one of the most selective medical schools in the U.S.

Here is an interactive graphic and table outlining how UTSW’s acceptance rate has changed over time, according to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

It’s harder to get into UTSW now than it has been in the last four admissions cycles. Applications rose to 6,025 in the 2025-2026 admissions cycle, marking a four-year peak and nearly 500 more than the 2023-2024 low of 5,527. At the same time, class size has trended downward from 242 matriculants in 2022-2023 to 229 in the recent cycle. More applicants are competing for fewer seats.

How Hard Is It to Get Into UTSW?

It’s extremely difficult to get into UT Southwestern Medical Center. In the 2025-2026 admissions cycle, only 3.80% of the total applicant pool matriculated.

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the national average acceptance rate for all accredited allopathic medical schools in the U.S. is 42.80%. UTSW’s acceptance rate is nearly 11 times lower than the national acceptance rate.

What Is UTSW's Acceptance Rate for In-State Applicants?

The acceptance rate for in-state applicants at UTSW is 4.45%. The Medical School Admissions Requirements (MSAR) database reports that 4,513 in-state applicants applied during the 2025-2026 admissions cycle. And 201 in-state applicants matriculated.

Texas residents dominate UTSW's applicant pool and its entering class. They make up roughly 75% of applicants but take 88% of the seats. Being a Texas resident opens the door. But a competitive application still has to carry you through it.

What Is UTSW's Acceptance Rate for Out-of-State Applicants?

The acceptance rate for out-of-state applicants at UTSW is 1.94%. The MSAR reports that 1,444 out-of-state applicants applied during the 2025-2026 admissions cycle. Only 28 matriculated.

Out-of-state applicants represent about 24% of the applicant pool. But they fill only 12% of the matriculant class. Non-Texas applicants who earn a seat typically present standout MCAT and GPA numbers paired with a specific reason UT Southwestern fits their goals, whether that's the medical center's research focus or existing ties to Dallas.

What Is UTSW's Acceptance Rate for International Students?

The acceptance rate for international applicants at UTSW is 0%. The MSAR reports that 68 international applicants applied during the 2025-2026 admissions cycle. None matriculated.

With zero matriculants from 68 applications in the 2025-2026 cycle, the school effectively closed its doors to international candidates that year.

How Many People Apply to UTSW Every Year?

Over the past four admissions cycles, UTSW has received an average of 5,758 applications per year, with an acceptance rate of 4.02%. Application volume hit a four-year high of 6,025 in the 2025-2026 cycle. That’s up nearly 9% from the 2023-2024 low of 5,527. Plan your application strategy around the current admissions difficulty, not what the numbers looked like three years ago.

Secondary Application

Here are the five prompts UTSW uses for the 2025-2026 application cycle.

Describe a group project or activity that you are most proud of. Consider the following in your response: What aspect makes you most proud? How was it accomplished? How did you deal with disagreement or conflict in the group? How did you get fellow group members to embrace a position or view your perspective?

How to Approach This Prompt

UTSW's medical curriculum is heavily team-based, and the admissions committee seeks applicants who can function in high-stakes collaborative environments. The prompt isn't really about the project itself. The admissions committee is evaluating how applicants handle disagreement, influence others without authority, and define their own contributions within a group.

The prompt contains four embedded sub-questions, and strong responses address all four without treating them as a checklist.

Start by naming the project and why it mattered to you in one or two sentences. Then move quickly into the interpersonal challenge. Maybe two team members disagreed on methodology during a research project. Maybe a community health initiative stalled because half the group wanted to pivot directions. The conflict is where the essay gains traction.

The "most proud" component trips up many applicants. Most default to pride in the outcome: "We raised $10,000" or "We published our findings."

Outcomes matter, but the admissions committee already has your resume. Express pride in something the resume can't capture. Pride in how you helped a struggling team member find their role. Pride in how the group recovered after a major setback. Pride in the process shows more about your character than pride in the result.

Avoid choosing a group project where you were clearly the leader, running everything. The prompt asks about group dynamics, not individual heroics. Applicants who describe a project where they essentially carried the team undermine the collaborative qualities UTSW is looking for.

Describe a time that you have witnessed someone acting unethically or dishonestly, or experienced a behavior of harassment or discrimination. What did you do? Describe your reaction. Is there anything you might do differently now in retrospect.

How to Approach This Prompt

UTSW uses this prompt to assess moral reasoning and the willingness to act on it.

The prompt offers two different avenues:

1. Witnessing unethical/dishonest behavior

2. Experiencing harassment/discrimination

Choose whichever produced a more genuine and layered response. Don't default to the most dramatic story if another situation taught you more.

Strong responses follow a clear narrative arc. Describe the situation with enough detail that the admissions committee understands the stakes. Then describe your reaction honestly. If you froze, say so. If you spoke up imperfectly, say so.

The retrospective component at the end of the prompt is where many applicants earn the admissions committee's trust. Acknowledging that you would handle something differently now demonstrates growth, not weakness.

Avoid two common traps. The first is choosing an example so minor that it doesn't demonstrate real ethical reasoning. Seeing someone cut in line at the grocery store doesn't carry enough weight.

The second trap is crafting a narrative where you acted flawlessly from the start. The prompt explicitly asks what you'd do differently, which signals that the admissions committee expects imperfection. Applicants who claim they handled everything perfectly either lack self-awareness or chose an example that was too easy.

If you experienced harassment or discrimination directly, you can write about that experience. Center your own response and growth rather than spending the entire essay describing the other person's behavior. The admissions committee wants to understand how you processed the experience and what it taught you about responding to injustice.

As a healthcare provider, it is expected that you are able to deliver excellent care to all patients. Describe an experience that has led you to understand the needs of people who differ from you.

How to Approach This Prompt

UTSW supports one of the most socioeconomically and culturally diverse patient populations in Texas. The admissions committee uses this prompt to evaluate whether applicants can recognize and respond to needs beyond their own lived experience.

Anchor your response in one experience. Maybe you volunteered at a clinic serving refugees and learned that a patient's reluctance to make eye contact wasn't disengagement but a cultural norm around respect. Maybe you worked with a patient experiencing homelessness and discovered that discharge instructions meant nothing without stable housing. The strongest responses identify a gap between what the applicant assumed and what the person actually needed.

After describing the experience, explain what shifted in your thinking or behavior. The admissions c

ommittee reads hundreds of essays that end with "I learned to be more open-minded." Instead, name the specific adjustment you made.

Did you start asking different questions during patient intake? Did you change how you communicated follow-up instructions? Did you advocate for a resource the person needed?

Concrete behavioral change signals a deeper understanding than a generalized attitude shift.

Avoid writing about the other person as a learning opportunity for your personal growth. The best essays balance genuine respect for the individual with honest reflection about what the experience revealed.

If the essay reads like a case study where the other person exists only to teach the applicant a lesson, the admissions committee will notice. Show awareness of the person's full humanity rather than reducing them to a catalyst for your development.

Have you engaged in any public service activities for a duration of one year or greater in length (examples: Military, Peace Corps, Teach for America)? If so, please describe the experience and impact on your personal and professional development. (Optional)

How to Approach This Prompt

The admissions committee created this prompt for applicants with substantial service commitments that fundamentally influenced their professional trajectory. Military veterans, Peace Corps volunteers, AmeriCorps members, and Teach for America alumni represent the target audience. If your service experience lasted a year or more and transformed how you think about healthcare, communities, or leadership, use this space to talk about it.

Don't summarize the program or organization. The admissions committee knows what Teach for America is. Focus instead on a specific dimension of the experience that altered your perspective or capabilities.

The prompt asks about both personal and professional development. Address both, but don't split them into separate paragraphs that feel disconnected.

The strongest essays show how the personal and professional dimensions of the experience reinforced each other. Maybe your Peace Corps service in a rural community reshaped your understanding of health literacy on a personal level while simultaneously strengthening your clinical communication skills.

Skip this prompt if your public service was shorter than a year or if the experience doesn't add meaningful new information to your application. Stretching a six-month volunteer stint to fit a prompt designed for extended service commitments will read as forced. The admissions committee will not penalize applicants for leaving this blank.

Please explain any academic discrepancies or extenuating circumstances that you feel the Admissions Committee should know. (Optional)

How to Approach This Prompt

The admissions committee provides this prompt so applicants can contextualize a poor semester, a withdrawal pattern, a gap in enrollment, or any other academic irregularity. The keyword in the prompt is "discrepancies." If nothing in your record looks discrepant, writing an essay here suggests you're more anxious about your application than the situation warrants.

When you do need to address something, be direct from the first sentence. Name the discrepancy, explain the circumstances, and describe what changed.

One applicant opened with: "During fall 2021, I withdrew from three courses after my mother was diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer." The admissions committee immediately understood the context, and the rest of the essay focused on how she returned to a full course load the following semester and maintained a 3.80 GPA through graduation. The trajectory mattered as much as the explanation.

Avoid two extremes. The first is over-explaining to the point where the essay reads as excuse-making. The second is being so vague that the admissions committee still has questions after reading your response.

Strive for a balance between honest context and forward momentum. Spend roughly one-third of the essay on what happened, and two-thirds on what you did about it and where you stand now.

Never use this space to recontest a grade you feel was unfair or criticize a professor or institution. Even if your grievance is legitimate, the admissions committee reads those responses as a lack of accountability. Take ownership of the record as it stands and focus your energy on demonstrating the upward trajectory that followed.

How to Improve Your Chances of Getting Into UT Southwestern Medical Center

Structure Your Clinical Experience Around Safety-Net Care Before You Apply

Clinical experience isn't a nice-to-have at UTSW. It's a near-universal trait of the entering class: 92% of applicants applied with clinical experience, according to the MSAR.

UTSW's clinical identity is inseparable from Parkland Memorial Hospital, one of the nation's busiest public safety-net hospitals and the primary training site for UTSW students. Parkland serves a largely uninsured, Spanish-speaking, and medically complex patient population in Dallas County.

Applicants who can speak fluently about working with similar populations start the application with an edge over applicants whose clinical hours came from well-resourced private hospitals or suburban clinics.

Before you apply, spend at least one year in safety-net care, such as

• Volunteering at a free clinic
• Working as a medical scribe in a federally qualified health center
• Taking on a patient navigator role at a community health organization

Write about those experiences in your TMDSAS personal statement and Secondary Prompt 3 with specific patient stories. Evaluators can distinguish between applicants who have actually sat across from patients who couldn't afford insulin and applicants who say what they think the admissions committee wants to hear.

Watch the webinar below to learn how to get impactful clinical experience for medical school:

Name a Specific UT Southwestern Faculty Lab in Your Secondary Essays and Interview

UT Southwestern's research pedigree is unusual even among top medical schools. Six UT Southwestern faculty members have received the Nobel Prize since 1985. And its faculty includes more members of the National Academy of Sciences than all other Texas academic medical centers combined.

Considering this, it should be no surprise that roughly 98% of matriculants apply with research experience. Interviewers frequently ask candidates about their scientific thinking.

Find specific UT Southwestern faculty whose research aligns with yours before you submit your secondary. Use the Labs website to find investigators; then reference them by name in your "Why UTSW" reasoning at the interview.

If you say, "I'd want to continue my work on cardiac fibrosis in Dr. Joseph Hill's lab," that signals dedicated research and preparation. If you say, "UTSW has great research," you likely haven’t looked deeper into what the school offers. Admissions officers pick up on this. Especially since one of your two interviewers could be a researcher familiar with the work you mention.

Pick a Distinction Track Early and Prepare Your ‘Why UTSW’ Answer Around It

UT Southwestern offers five named Distinction tracks that most applicants never mention, as evidenced in the screenshot below: 

1. Community Health
2. Global Health
3. Medical Education
4. Quality Improvement and Patient Safety
5. Research

Each Distinction is a longitudinal, scholarly commitment layered on top of the standard MD curriculum. They represent concrete pathways UTSW offers that peer institutions don’t frame the same way.

Choose the Distinction that connects to your experiences and reference it by name in your secondary and interview answers.

For example, if your resume shows three years of QI work at a local hospital, the Quality Improvement and Patient Safety Distinction is your anchor. If you've built sustained work with underserved communities, the Community Health Distinction fits right in.

This specificity accomplishes two things simultaneously:

1. It answers the "Why UTSW" question with evidence.
2. It proves that you've read past the admissions homepage.

Submit Your TMDSAS Primary Application in May of Your Application Year

UT Southwestern uses a rolling admissions model. Interview invitations start in mid-July, and acceptance offers begin on October 15. Every week you delay submitting your TMDSAS primary is a week closer to the point where UTSW has already filled its interview calendar. Applicants who submit in September regularly report being screened after most invitations are spoken for.

Submit your TMDSAS primary application during the first week of May, when the portal opens. Pre-write your UT Southwestern secondary essays in April based on the previous admissions cycle's prompts, since UTSW changes them minimally from year to year. (Only Prompt 3 changed for 2025-2026.)

Have your Casper scheduled, letters of recommendation uploaded, and transcripts sent before June. The goal is to complete your entire application file by early July so you're in the first batch of applications reviewed for interviews.

For expert tips on getting accepted to Texas medical schools, watch the video below:

Commit to a Long-Term Public Service Role to Answer the Optional Essay Prompt 4

Secondary Prompt 4 is technically optional: "Have you engaged in any public service activities for a duration of one year or greater in length (examples: Military, Peace Corps, Teach for America)?"

This prompt might affect how admissions officers evaluate your application. And the examples they cite point to a specific type of applicant they look for: someone who deferred medical school to serve the public.

Interestingly, 92% of matriculants included some form of community service experience on their applications. You should show examples of a long-term commitment to helping different communities, either through volunteer or public service work.

If you're already in a gap year, choose a role you can sustain for at least 12 consecutive months before submitting your application. Anything shorter won't allow you to answer Prompt 4, which specifically asks about commitments of one year or greater.

If you have only six months of community or public service work during the application cycle, lead with depth rather than duration. Pick one or two experiences that genuinely changed how you think about medicine and build your TMDSAS personal statement or Secondary Prompt 3 around them.

Get accepted to UT Southwestern Medical Center with expert support. Our counselors can help you submit the perfect application that impresses the admissions committee. 

The video below explores tips and insights on gaining volunteer experience for medical school:

MD Programs Offered

UT Southwestern offers one traditional MD program and three dual-degree pathways. Applicants interested in the MD-only program apply through TMDSAS. Applicants interested in the MD/PhD (MSTP) program apply through AMCAS. Dual MD/MBA and MD/MPH programs are only available to students already admitted to the MD program.

Here are all of the MD programs UT Southwestern Medical Center offers:

Tuition and Scholarships

UTSW costs $23,023 in tuition for first-year medical students. When factoring in additional costs such as loan fees, books and supplies, health insurance, etc., the total cost of attendance is $58,238.

How Much Does UTSW Cost for 4 Years?

At $58,238 per year in tuition and fees, UTSW’s total cost of attendance for the four-year MD program is approximately $232,952.

Scholarships

UTSW automatically evaluates every admitted MD student for scholarships. There is no separate scholarship application. The Scholarship Committee, appointed by the Dean, awards institutional funding based on merit, financial need, or both. Some awards are worth upward of $200,000 across four years.

Many out-of-state admits receive competitive scholarships that also allow them to pay the much lower in-state tuition rate. That’s a significant advantage, given that UTSW's tuition is already among the lowest at U.S. medical schools.

UT Southwestern Medical Center Application Timeline

Here are all the dates and deadlines you need to know for the UT Southwestern Medical Center application timeline:

FAQs

Does UT Southwestern Accept AP Credit for Prerequisite Courses?

UT Southwestern accepts AP credit for prerequisite courses, with one condition. The school granting the AP credit must list the specific course and number of units on your official transcript. If your transcript only lists "AP credit" without specifying the equivalent coursework, the credit will not satisfy UT Southwestern's prerequisite requirements.

Can I Defer My Acceptance to UT Southwestern?

You can request a one-year deferral at UT Southwestern, but approval is not automatic. The admissions committee reviews deferral requests on a case-by-case basis and requires them to be submitted before June 1 of the intended matriculation year. Deferrals beyond one year are granted only in unusual circumstances, so plan your gap year activities accordingly.

Does UT Southwestern Accept DACA Applicants?

UT Southwestern accepts DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival) applicants alongside domestic U.S. citizens and permanent residents. DACA applicants must complete at least 90 semester hours of coursework at a regionally accredited U.S. or Canadian college before applying. DACA applicants apply through TMDSAS and are evaluated alongside the broader applicant pool.

How Long Is UT Southwestern's MD Program?

UT Southwestern's MD program is four years long. The curriculum splits into three phases: an 18-month pre-clerkship phase focused on basic and clinical sciences through team-based learning, followed by clerkships, and a post-clerkship phase with electives and residency preparation. Students pursuing dual degrees (MD/MBA or MD/MPH) typically complete both credentials in four to five years, while MD/PhD students in the MSTP program spend six to eight years total.