ADEA Releases Interactive Report on U.S. Dental School Applicants and Enrollees, 2025 Entering Class

ADEA has released The 2025 Entering Class: Trends and Insights on Predoctoral Oral Health Applicants and First-time, First-year Enrollees, a new interactive report examining national trends among applicants and first-time, first-year enrollees at CODA-accredited U.S. dental schools from 2015 through 2025. The report can be found here: adea.org/ApplicantTrends. 

The report presents interactive visualizations and analyses of applicant and enrollment trends, academic indicators and geographic patterns. Among this year’s findings:

• The 2025 entering class recorded the highest applicant and first-time, first-year enrollment totals observed during the past decade;
• Applicant growth exceeded enrollment growth in recent entering classes, resulting in a higher applicant-to-enrollee ratio;
• Mean GPAs and DAT score distributions indicate continued strengthening of applicants’ and enrollees’ academic profiles; and
• Applicant volume grew in the South and West between 2015 and 2025, while declining marginally in the Midwest and Northeast. Despite these differences in applicant growth, applicant-to-enrollee ratios remained relatively stable across all U.S. census regions. 

In addition to the interactive report, the ADEA Research Data Portal is also available to ADEA members and includes the Applicant Analysis Dashboard and Your School’s Applicants Dashboard, which enable participating institutions to benchmark applicant and enrollee characteristics against national data.

All ADEA members have complimentary access to the ADEA Data Portal at dataportal.adea.org.

The U.S. Dental School Applicants and Enrollees 2025 Entering Class Excel report also remains available for download on ADEA’s website here. Click on the Predoctoral Oral Health Students sub header arrow for a dropdown list of resources.

Questions may be directed to adeadata@adea.org.

Published on September 9, 2026