By Glyn Caddell, BSME · Author of Digital SAT Math Secrets · Tutoring since 2008 — Updated October 1, 2026
Delaware has three four-year colleges a pre-med student would realistically consider, and this page covers what each one costs and the SAT scores of the students they admit.
Delaware residents also qualify for something unusual. The state has no medical school of its own, so it reserves thirty seats a year at two medical schools in Philadelphia, and eligibility is decided before undergraduate study begins.
Scores are given by section rather than as a single total, because a student at 680 Reading & Writing and 590 Math is in a different position from a student at 590 and 680.
Table of Contents
- Delaware Pre-Med Colleges by SAT Score
- Delaware Reserves 30 Medical School Seats for Its Residents
- The Eligibility Rule Is Decided Before You Start College
- Do You Have to Stay in Delaware for Your Degree?
- What If Your Scores Are Below the Range You Want?
Delaware Pre-Med Colleges by SAT Score
Delaware has three four-year institutions a pre-med student would realistically consider, and two of them report SAT data.
| College | Reading & Writing | Math | Cost of attendance | Undergraduates | Admit rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| University of Delaware | 600 to 690 | 590 to 680 | $30,952 | 19,071 | 71% |
| Delaware State University | 420 to 520 | 380 to 500 | $27,939 | 4,398 | 47% |
| Wilmington University | Does not report SAT data | Does not report SAT data | $19,644 | 7,906 | Not reported |
Each range covers the middle 50% of admitted students who submitted scores. A quarter scored below the lower number, and the top quarter scored at or above the upper one. Being under the lower number does not rule a student out, and being just above it is not as safe as it looks.
That’s a short table and it should be read as one. Delaware is the second smallest state and its higher education system reflects that, which is why the nearby states section below matters more here than on most of our state pages.
It also means the in-state advantage covered next is worth more than it would be elsewhere, because it does not depend on choosing from this list.
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University of Delaware
The University of Delaware is the state flagship, in Newark, with 19,071 undergraduates. It is the largest institution in the state by a wide margin and the strongest science infrastructure available in Delaware.
Reading & Writing 600 to 690, Math 590 to 680. The top quarter of admitted students scored at or above 690 and 680. Cost of attendance $30,952, with tuition and fees at $16,810 in-state and $41,400 out-of-state. 19,071 undergraduates, 71% admitted.
The in-state and out-of-state tuition difference here is approximately $24,600 a year, which is one of the wider gaps in this series.
Delaware State University
Delaware State University is a historically Black university in Dover with 4,398 undergraduates and the lowest in-state tuition of the three.
Reading & Writing 420 to 520, Math 380 to 500. The top quarter scored at or above 520 and 500. Cost of attendance $27,939, with tuition and fees at $10,670 in-state and $20,634 out-of-state. 4,398 undergraduates, 47% admitted.
It admits a smaller share of applicants than the University of Delaware while reporting lower score ranges, which is a reminder that admit rate and score range measure different things.
Wilmington University
Wilmington University is a private non-profit university in New Castle with 7,906 undergraduates, serving a largely commuter and working-adult population.
The university does not report SAT score data or an admit rate. Cost of attendance $19,644, with tuition and fees at $12,630 for all students. 7,906 undergraduates.
This is the least expensive option in the state.
Delaware Reserves 30 Medical School Seats for Its Residents
A Delaware student gets into medical school through DIMER, the Delaware Institute of Medical Education and Research, which the state created in 1969 as an alternative to building a medical school of its own.
DIMER reserves admission places at two Philadelphia schools:
- Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University, where twenty places a year are reserved for Delaware residents. This is an MD program.
- Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, where ten places a year are reserved. This is a DO program.
Those are minimums rather than caps. Delaware’s own reporting states that the schools often accept more than the reserved number, and describes the two as functioning as Delaware’s medical schools.
What the arrangement is worth is structural. A Delaware applicant with a reserved seat available is competing against other Delaware applicants rather than against the full national field. Delaware’s own annual report describes DIMER as one of the best medical education admission advantages in the country. That’s the state assessing its own program, so read it accordingly, but the mechanism behind the claim is real.
There’s a practical benefit on the other end too. DIMER students at both schools can complete their third and fourth year clinical rotations at the Delaware Branch Campus with ChristianaCare, which means the degree starts and finishes close to home even though the classroom years are in Philadelphia.
Whether any of this applies to you comes down to residency, and the rule is narrower than it first appears.
The Eligibility Rule Is Decided Before You Start College
To qualify for a DIMER seat you must be a legal resident of Delaware and meet the premedical academic requirements of the school you’re applying to.
The residency test is the part worth reading twice. PCOM’s published eligibility states that the applicant must either file their own taxes in Delaware, or be claimed as an exemption by someone filing in Delaware, in the most recent tax year preceding the start of undergraduate education.
That means residency has to exist before college begins.
A student who moves to Delaware for university does not become DIMER-eligible by living there for four years. The tax year that counts is the one before the degree starts, not the one before the medical school application.
So this is an advantage that belongs to Delaware high school students, and it cannot be acquired later. If you’re reading this as a Delaware junior or senior, you already have something that a classmate who moves to Delaware at eighteen will not have.
Confirm the current wording directly with DIMER and PCOM before planning around it. Residency rules are exactly the sort of thing that gets amended, and this one is specific enough that the details matter.
Do You Have to Stay in Delaware for Your Degree?
No, and this is the part most students get wrong.
DIMER eligibility turns on residency. It does not require attending a Delaware college. A Delaware resident who goes to university in another state keeps the reserved-seat advantage, provided the residency test above was met before he started.
What that frees you to do is choose an undergraduate college on ordinary grounds. Cost, fit, the strength of the science programs, how far from home you want to be. The medical school advantage is already settled and it isn’t a reason to stay.
That matters here more than it would elsewhere, because of the table above. A student who believed he had to stay in state would be choosing from three colleges for no reason.
What If Your Scores Are Below the Range You Want?
Being below a school’s published range doesn’t disqualify anyone. A quarter of the students admitted to every school on this list scored below its lower number.
It does mean the score isn’t helping the application, and at a selective school that matters more than at a less selective one. The number worth aiming for is the upper end of a school’s range, the one the top quarter cleared, rather than the middle. The reasoning behind that is on what SAT score you need for college.
Reading the sections separately is the useful part. If your Math sits inside a school’s range and your Reading & Writing doesn’t, you know which section your hours should go to, and that’s a more specific answer than a total score gives you.
The gap is measurable and so is the work to close it. A 70 to 130 point improvement takes approximately 40 hours of effective studying, based on the students we’ve worked with since 2008, and a 130 to 250 point improvement takes approximately 80.
How to improve your SAT score covers the method, including how to work out which topics are actually costing you points. If you don’t have a recent score to compare against this list, a free diagnostic SAT gives you one, broken down by section and by topic.
How to Read These Score Ranges
Every range on this page covers the middle 50% of admitted students who submitted scores. The lower number is the 25th percentile and the upper number is the 75th, which means a quarter of admitted students scored at or above it.
Wilmington University reports neither score data nor an admit rate, which fits its profile as a largely open-access institution serving working adults.
Because most colleges are now test-optional, the ranges that are published describe only the students who chose to submit. Students with strong scores submit and students with weak ones don’t, so a published range sits higher than the range for everyone who was actually admitted. More on test-optional colleges.
Pre-Med Programs in Nearby States
This section matters more for Delaware than for almost any other state.
Delaware has three four-year colleges, both DIMER medical schools are in Philadelphia, and most of the state is within an hour of Pennsylvania, Maryland or New Jersey. A Delaware student keeps his DIMER eligibility wherever he studies, so the practical search area is much larger than the state.
See pre-med colleges in Pennsylvania, pre-med colleges in Maryland, and pre-med colleges in New Jersey.
Pre-Med Colleges in Other States
We publish the same breakdown for pre-med programs in every state.
See pre-med colleges by state for the full list.
Glyn Caddell
Glyn Caddell holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from NJIT and has been tutoring New York City students since 2008. He founded Caddell Prep in 2012 and is the author of Digital SAT Math Secrets: Lessons & Tricks to Quickly Improve to a Perfect 800 on the Math Test, which contains over 900 practice problems and is used in Caddell Prep’s SAT math classes. He is founding president of the Staten Island Technical High School alumni association and teaches every lesson on this site personally.
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