The Stritch School of Medicine is located in Maywood, a suburb of Chicago. In addition to MCAT scores, the admissions committee at Stritch also looks at personal characteristics of the applicant, a variety of liberal arts and science courses on the undergraduate transcript, and letters of recommendation. Stritch has no minimum MCAT scores, but does recommend that students aim for the national average and retake if their scores are not in this range. Mean scores of admitted students are around 30 to 31.
The University of Illinois College of Medicine has four campuses, located in Chicago, Peoria, Rockford and Urbana. The admissions committee here puts emphasis on the total package of the candidate and thus has no minimum MCAT score required for admission. The school does provide mean scores for admitted students, which consistently average a 30. In addition, the average grade point average is a 3.5 out of 4.
The campus of Rush University Medical College is located in downtown Chicago. Like most other medical schools in the country, the mean MCAT scores for accepted students range around a 30. In order to be considered for admission to the medical college and receive an interview request, applicants must have a minimum MCAT score of 27. The required science GPA is at least a 3.0 out of 4.
The Southern Illinois University College of Medicine is located in Springfield, and exists to serve the population of central and southern Illinois. To gain admission to SIU College of Medicine, applicants must have a minimum MCAT score of 22 out of 45. Both cumulative and science GPAs must be a minimum of 2.70, and only applicants who reside in the state of Illinois are considered. While these requirements may seem low in comparison to other medical schools in the state, the class size is limited to 72, so more competitive scores are recommended.
The remaining three medical schools in Illinois are all located in Chicago, and while none list a minimum score, their admitted students have some of the highest scores in the state. Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine & Science, a private school, notes that admitted students usually score a nine or 10 on each of the three sections, making their composites 27 to 30. Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine both list some of the highest scores in the state for admitted students, with an average of 11 to 12 on each section and composites of 33 to 38.