To be considered for admission to our Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) program, applicants must have completed a minimum of 75 percent of the required credits for a bachelor’s degree in a college or university accredited by an agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Applicants must have completed their undergraduate or graduate degree prior to starting medical school.
The most competitive applicants would have a science and cumulative grade point average of 3.2 or higher. ICOM also places emphasis on the applicant’s interview and their experiences. Health-related experiences include: patient care, interaction, or observation.
Applicants may apply while coursework is in progress. Coursework completion is required prior to matriculation and pending courses during the application cycle are acceptable.
Note: Courses with equivalent content will be reviewed. Osteopathic medical school students must obtain a grade of “C” or better in each of the required courses above to fulfill the prerequisite course requirement. Depending on the sequence of chemistry courses taught at your University, ICOM will consider a combination of 16 hours of Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, and Biochemistry.
Applicants must submit scores from their Medical College Admission Test (MCAT). ICOM will accept the MCAT administration from up to three years prior to the date of matriculation. ICOM recommends a minimum score within the 50th percentile, and with no subsections lower than the 35th percentile.
ICOM will accept January 2026 MCAT scores for the 2025-2026 Application Cycle.
ICOM will accept January 2027 MCAT scores for the 2026-2027 Application Cycle.
For the 2025-2026 Application Cycle, ICOM requires one letter of recommendation. The letter is required to be from a science faculty member (PhD) or a pre-medical/pre-health advisor who has experience with the applicant’s academic abilities. We do not require a physician (DO or MD) letter of recommendation; however, it’s strongly encouraged to include one with your application.
If you have been out of school for more than three years, please reach out to admissions@icom.edu for approved substitutions. Letters of recommendation from relatives are not accepted.
Applicants will be required to meet the Technical Standards for admission and continued enrollment and affirm that he/she meet the standards. Any falsification or misinformation regarding the ability to meet technical standards is a reason for rescinding the offer of admission or, after matriculation, for dismissal from the program.
ICOM is operating in compliance with the timeline established by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), and the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 (ADAAA), both as amended, to ensure that its facilities, programs, and student policies are accessible to individuals with disabilities. Students and applicants with specific needs should contact the ICOM Office of Student Services for assistance. Details of ICOM’s Accommodations policy can be viewed in the College Catalog.
Applicants who are legal permanent residents of the U.S. will be required to provide a copy of their permanent resident card (“green card”) before admission. Permanent residency status “pending” is not eligible for admission.
ICOM does not accept applications from students requiring an F-1 student visa status at this time.
ICOM will require applicants who have completed coursework at foreign institutions to be evaluated for U.S. equivalence by one of the evaluation services approved by AACOM. The evaluation service must verify that coursework completed at an institution outside the U.S. is comparable to that of an accredited U.S. college.
ICOM will require verification of applicant’s credentials from a college or university outside of the U.S. who have met the equivalency for the minimum requirements for admission.
For the highly qualified medical school applicant who has made a definite decision that ICOM is their first choice among medical schools, we are proud to offer the Early Decision Program.
Qualifying applicants must:
We get asked about this one constantly. What score do I need? Is my GPA going to hurt me? Am I even in the right range to apply?
Students who enrolled in DO programs in 2024 averaged between 500 and 503 on the MCAT. GPA for that group was around 3.59 to 3.63. ICOM’s incoming class sits at 505.4 and 3.54 — above the national DO average on the test. Right in the middle on grades.
| Metric | National DO Average (AACOM 2024) | ICOM Matriculants |
|---|---|---|
| Average Cumulative GPA | ~3.59–3.63 | 3.54 |
| Average MCAT Score | ~500–503 | 505.4 |
| Minimum Competitive GPA | — | 3.2 cumulative and science |
| MCAT Recommendation | — | 50th percentile, no section below 35th |
| Early Decision Minimum | — | 500 composite |
We do holistic review and we mean that. Not as something we say to soften the conversation. The interview matters here. Healthcare experience matters. We have seen a 502 with two years of rural patient care move through this process with real strength because the full file made sense. We have also seen a 508 with nothing behind it struggle. The score is one part of a bigger picture and we read the whole thing.
Two things we wish more applicants knew before they hit submit. Cumulative and science GPA are two separate numbers in AACOMAS. A gap between them shows up and leaving it unaddressed reads like avoidance rather than oversight. And grades that went up over time carry real weight here. A 3.3 that became a 3.6 in the last two years of undergrad is a different story from a 3.3 that never moved. We see both. We do not read them the same way.
This is the one that catches people off guard more than anything else in the application.
A few weeks thinking about clinical hours. By the time someone calls us asking if what they have is enough they have usually already submitted and the answer is not always easy to give. So if you are still building your file, here is what we actually look for.
Patient care, interaction and observation. Those are the categories that carry weight in a file. We do not post a minimum hour count and that is intentional because 80 hours scribing in a busy emergency department can tell us more about an applicant than 300 hours in a role that kept them away from patients.
Scribing in a real clinical environment. CNA or patient care tech work. EMT shifts. Medical assistant roles in working clinics. You are in the room. Something real is happening and you are part of it. We can tell the difference between an applicant who documented twenty patient encounters per shift for two years and one who watched from a hallway. Both count technically. They do not read the same way and we would not be doing anyone a favor pretending they do.
Not a hard requirement at ICOM. What it does though is give you something real to draw on when we ask in the interview why osteopathic medicine and not MD school. That question comes up every time. Applicants who have actually watched a DO practice give a different answer from applicants who read about it the week before. We can feel the difference in the room.
Free clinic work. Health fairs where you are actually talking to people about their health. Urgent care volunteering. Administrative hospital roles are weaker and we read them as such. Not to penalize anyone but because they do not show us what we are looking for.
Not assisted medical professionals. Not helped with patient care. Tell us exactly what you did, where, how often and what you were actually doing in the room. Vague descriptions cannot be evaluated and entries that cannot be evaluated do not strengthen a file.
Above 200 with variety across more than one type of experience is a noticeably stronger position. Clinical work in rural or underserved settings carries specific weight at ICOM. Not as a checkbox. As real evidence that you understand what we were built to do and who you are going to serve when you get there.
Prerequisites first and this one trips people up more than it should. Biological sciences with lab, physics, inorganic and organic chemistry both with lab, English. Year of each, C or better across the board. Now if your transcript looks a little unusual because of how your university ran its sequences, please just reach out to us before you assume something won’t work. We get that call after submission sometimes and it is always a harder conversation than it needs to be. ICOM looks at 16 combined hours across chemistry, organic and biochemistry depending on what your specific situation looks like and we would genuinely rather talk through it early.
MCAT next and we want to say something about this one carefully. Finish by May or June if first wave consideration matters to you. But we had an applicant a couple cycles back who sat three weeks before she felt truly ready because she was afraid of missing the early window. Score came back lower than every practice test she had taken and the conversation we had after was one of the harder ones we have had to sit through. That score does not go away. ICOM goes back three years and January sittings count, so if your preparation needs more time to actually land where it should, give it that time. We would rather see you submit later with a score that reflects what you are actually capable of.
Letters of recommendation and this is one people tend to underestimate. One required for the 2025-2026 cycle, science faculty PhD or pre-med advisor. Physician letter on top of that strongly encouraged, DO or MD. Ask your writers early, at least six weeks out, and give them something real to write toward. An activity list, a note about why medicine, why osteopathic medicine, why you are drawn to serving the communities ICOM was built for. We have read a lot of letters over the years and the ones written with genuine context behind them are immediately different from the ones written cold. That difference comes through in the room more than most applicants realize when they are deciding who to ask.
AACOMAS opens late April and this is where preparation from the months before pays off. Get the application built before your score comes back if you possibly can. Transcripts, experiences, personal statement, all of it. The applicants who submit within a few days of their score posting are in a consistently stronger position than the ones who are still pulling things together two weeks after. Have it ready so you are not scrambling at the moment that actually matters.
Personal statement, and there are really two questions living inside that one page, most applicants only get to one of them honestly. Why medicine is the one people handle well most of the time. Why osteopathic medicine specifically is the one we are actually sitting with when we read a file. We had someone last year, thoughtful writer, three really well constructed paragraphs about patient-centered care and whole-person philosophy, and not a single sentence that was actually theirs. No real moment, no specific reason, nothing that could not have been written by anyone applying to any DO school anywhere. It read like a brochure and it did not move forward. Write something true. Something that actually happened to you or someone you cared for. Something specific about why ICOM and why this particular mission and not just medicine as a concept.
Rolling admissions makes submission timing the most consequential single decision in this whole process and we cannot say that clearly enough. May applicants are genuinely competing for more open seats than October applicants and that gap compounds as the cycle moves. People find themselves on the wrong side of it regularly and it is always avoidable in hindsight. For Early Decision specifically August 1 is the hard deadline, AACOMAS application and Letter of Intent both to admissions@icom.edu.
Secondaries arrive after your primary gets verified and transmitted. A week to two weeks to respond is what we encourage and mean sincerely. We have watched applicants take five or six weeks on a secondary during a rolling cycle and by the time it came back the seats that were there when they started were not there anymore. The gap gets noticed and it communicates something whether that was the intention or not.
Interview is where we get to actually meet you and it carries real weight in how we evaluate candidacy here. Not as a box to check. We had an applicant a few cycles back who was genuinely impressive on paper, knew every fact about osteopathic medicine, could cite the tenets from memory. But when we asked why ICOM specifically and not the four other DO programs on his list he did not have an answer that was actually his. Could not say why rural Idaho, why the Mountain West, why the physician shortage in these communities meant something to him personally beyond what our website says about it. The generic questions he had covered. The ones that actually mattered in that room he had not sat with long enough. Come in having genuinely thought about why here and why now. We can tell when someone has and when someone has not and we always could.
This is the one that catches people off guard more than almost anything else in the process. Rolling admissions sounds like a flexible system and in some ways it is. What it actually means in practice is that the applicant who submits in June and the applicant who submits in October are having two very different experiences even if everything else about their applications is identical.
We have had applicants call us in November genuinely confused about why they have not heard anything yet. Sometimes the answer is just timing. Seats fill as the cycle moves and they were not there yet when the filling happened.
So here is what the year actually looks like.
Late April into May is when AACOMAS opens for the new cycle. You cannot submit yet at this point but you absolutely can be building. Transcripts getting ordered, experiences section being filled out, personal statement in its third or fourth draft. The applicants who are ready to submit within days of the system opening are the ones who spent these weeks preparing rather than waiting.
June is when you want to be submitting if you possibly can. Verification through AACOMAS takes one to two weeks after you submit and programs do not see your file until that process is done. Every day between submission and verification is a day you are not in anyone’s queue. June applicants verified in late June or early July are entering a review pool where a lot of seats still exist. That matters more than people realize until they have watched a cycle play out.
For ICOM’s Early Decision Program specifically August 1 is the deadline, AACOMAS application and Letter of Intent both. We mention this separately because Early Decision applicants sometimes think August 1 gives them room to submit in late July. It does not leave much room and things go wrong with applications at the last minute more often than anyone plans for. Earlier is genuinely better.
July and August are when secondary applications tend to arrive for most programs. These are additional essays and questions specific to each school. Turn them around within a week or two. We have had applicants sit on secondaries for a month and then wonder why the cycle felt slow. The secondary sitting in your inbox is not a neutral thing. It is an open conversation that you are not responding to and programs notice the gap.
September through March is interview season. ICOM invites applicants to interview on a rolling basis throughout this window. Earlier submissions tend to generate earlier interview invitations, not always, but consistently enough that it matters. Decisions, acceptances, waitlist placements, all of it moves through this same window rather than landing all at once at the end. Someone accepted in October had a different experience than someone accepted in February even if both got in.
April is when deposit deadlines tend to hit and waitlists start moving in meaningful ways. Accepted applicants choosing other programs free up seats and that movement can be significant for people sitting on waitlists. If you are holding a seat somewhere while waiting to hear from ICOM this is typically when clarity arrives one way or another.
One thing we find ourselves saying to applicants regularly. The application being finished is not the same as the application being submitted. We have talked to people who had everything ready in June and waited until September for reasons that made sense to them at the time. By September the cycle had moved considerably. Submit when it is ready. If it is ready in June, submit it in June. The waiting does not help and it costs more than most people expect it to.
Honestly this is the question we get more than almost any other and we understand why. You have been working toward this for years and you want to know if your number is going to hold you back.
The students who enrolled in DO programs nationally in 2024 averaged somewhere between 500 and 503 depending on which AACOM report you pull. At ICOM our incoming class averages 505.4. We recommend scoring within the 50th percentile with no section dipping below the 35th. For Early Decision the minimum composite is 500.
But here is what we want applicants to actually hear. We do holistic review and we mean that in practice not just on paper. A 502 paired with two years of genuine patient care experience and a personal statement that says something real about why osteopathic medicine and why Idaho is a different file from a 508 with nothing clinical behind it. We read the whole picture not just the top line.
Depends on what low means in your specific situation and which programs you are considering. At ICOM our competitive floor is a 3.2 in both cumulative and science GPA. Below that the conversation gets harder to have honestly.
What we tell applicants though is that the number itself is only part of what we are looking at. Trajectory matters genuinely. A 3.3 that climbed to a 3.6 in the last two years of undergrad is a different story from a 3.3 that sat flat the whole time. We have seen both and we read them differently because they are different situations. If there is a meaningful gap between your cumulative and science GPA that is visible in AACOMAS too and worth addressing directly rather than leaving it unexplained.
If you are below 3.0 overall, post-baccalaureate science coursework is worth thinking about seriously before you apply anywhere.
Not as a hard requirement listed on our end. But we want to be straight with you about why we encourage it so strongly anyway.
Every interview we conduct includes some version of the question why osteopathic medicine and not MD school. It comes up every time without exception. The applicants who have actually watched a DO physician work with a real patient in a real room answer that question from somewhere genuine. The ones who have only read about osteopathic philosophy on a website give answers that tend to sound like they were prepared the night before. We can feel the difference in the room pretty quickly and we suspect most applicants could too if they thought about it honestly.
Shadowing a DO gives you something real to draw on. Not just for that question but for your personal statement and for understanding whether this path actually resonates with you before you commit to it.
We do not publish a minimum and that is intentional because the quality of what you did genuinely matters alongside how long you did it. Eighty hours scribing in a busy emergency department tells us more about an applicant than three hundred hours in a role that kept them away from patients entirely.
That said we want to give you something practical to work with. Under 100 total clinical hours is thin at any competitive DO program. Above 200 hours with variety across more than one type of experience puts you in a meaningfully stronger position. Direct patient care, scribing, CNA work, EMT shifts, those carry more weight than purely observational roles. And experience in rural or underserved settings carries specific weight at ICOM. Not as a checkbox but as genuine evidence that you already understand what this school was built to do.
Yes. ICOM is Idaho’s first and only osteopathic medical school, located in Meridian in the Treasure Valley. We are also the only DO school serving the broader Mountain West region, meaning Idaho, Montana and Wyoming combined have one option for osteopathic medical education at this point.
That is not something we say to market ourselves. It is just the reality of what the region was missing before 2016 when ICOM opened and what we were specifically built to address. The physician shortage across Idaho and surrounding states is real and the communities feeling it most are the rural and underserved ones that have always had the hardest time attracting physicians. Training doctors locally and keeping them here is the whole point of why this school exists where it does.
A few things we hear from students who chose us over other programs they were accepted to.
The size of the class, 225 students, means you are not anonymous here. Faculty know your name. Your advisor knows where you are in the process. When something is hard, and medical school is hard, there are people around you who notice and who show up. We hear that consistently from students and it tracks with what we see day to day.
The mission is specific and it attracts a specific kind of applicant. Students who want to practice in Idaho, in the Mountain West, in communities that genuinely need physicians. That shared sense of purpose changes what the culture inside the building feels like and students tell us that matters more than they expected it to when they were choosing between programs.
And the outcomes hold up. 100% residency placement, graduates at Johns Hopkins and Mayo Clinic, board performance at or above national averages. For a school that has been open less than a decade those numbers are ones we are genuinely proud of and that we think deserve to be taken seriously when you are comparing programs.
ICOM`s Spring Commencement festivities included the Class of 2026 Graduation Gala, where graduates, faculty, staff and guests gathered to celebrate.
Ten institutional awards were bestowed, along with 20 class superfluous awards.
View the award recipients at this link: https://go.icom.edu/4wGzYFN
#IdahoCOM #ICOM #ICOM2026 #ICOMGrad
Congratulations to Dr. Quinn Kensey (‘24) on being named Chief Resident of the Family Medicine Residency Program at Stony Brook Teaching Hospital in Southampton, NY 👏
#IdahoCOM #ICOMAlumni
From student doctors to military physicians — a moment of pride and purpose 🇺🇸
Congratulations to ICOM`s HPSP graduates recognized at the military promotion ceremony during graduation week. Thank you for your service and commitment to improving the health of those who serve our country.
#IdahoCOM #ICOM #ICOM2026 #ICOMGrad @icom_samops @samops77
ICOM is proud to announce that its Simulation Department has achieved Full Accreditation in Human Simulation from the Association of Standardized Patient Educators (ASPE), a significant milestone that recognizes excellence in simulation-based medical education 👏
#IdahoCOM #ICOM #MedicalEducation #Simulation
