Applicant analysis: 2001 entering class.

There were 7,412 applicants to the entering dental school class of 2001. This is 4.6 percent less than the number of applicants to the entering class of 2000. Since the peak of dental school applicants in 1997 (at 9,829), the number of applicants has declined 24.6 percent. (This decline is most similar to the 25.8 percent decline that has occurred in medical school applicants since their peak of applicants in 1996, at 46,968.) With the decline in applicants and a slight increase in first-time, first-year enrollees, 57.6 percent of the dental school applicants were enrolled in 2001. This is up from 54.5 percent in 2000. Dental schools reported 4,267 first-time, first-year enrollees in 2001. This is an increase of thirty-three first-time, first-year enrollees over the number reported in 2000 and only an increase of fifty-eight over the last two years. Since 1989, when dental school enrollment once again began to increase, the number of first-time, first-year enrollees has increased 14.9 percent. (Total first-year enrollment, which includes first-time enrollees and repeat students, has increased 10.8 percent since 1989.) The number of applicants per first-time, first-year positions was 1.74 in 2001. It was 2.31 in 1997. (The most recent low was 1.34 in 1989.) The average of the GPA and DAT scores of the first-time, first-year enrollees in 2001 were all slightly higher than they were in 2000. Women were approximately 42 percent of the applicants and first-time, first-year enrollees in 2001, up slightly from 2000. Underrepresented minorities comprised over 12.6 percent of the applicants and 11.9 percent of the first-time, first-year enrollees, also up slightly from 2000.