By Glyn Caddell, BSME · Author of Digital SAT Math Secrets · Tutoring since 2008 — Updated October 9, 2026
Twelve Missouri colleges with pre-med programs, what they cost, and the test scores of the students they admit.
One Missouri medical school admits students straight out of high school and gets them to an MD in six years rather than eight. That comes after the table.
The table shows ACT alongside SAT because more Missouri colleges report ACT, and because Missouri’s state scholarship treats the two tests very differently.
Table of Contents
- Missouri Pre-Med Colleges by Test Score
- One Missouri Program Takes You From High School to an MD in Six Years
- Missouri Has Six Medical Schools and One of Them Invented Osteopathic Medicine
- Missouri’s Scholarship Is Much Harder to Reach With the SAT
- What If Your Scores Are Below the Range You Want?
Missouri Pre-Med Colleges by Test Score
| College | SAT Reading & Writing | SAT Math | ACT composite | Cost of attendance | Undergraduates | Admit rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Washington University in St Louis | 730 to 770 | 770 to 800 | 33 to 35 | $88,488 | 7,857 | 12% |
| Saint Louis University | 600 to 700 | 600 to 710 | 25 to 31 | $71,932 | 7,267 | 75% |
| Missouri University of Science and Technology | 580 to 690 | 610 to 730 | 25 to 31 | $29,231 | 5,521 | 73% |
| Truman State University | 600 to 700 | 570 to 670 | 25 to 31 | $25,115 | 2,513 | 84% |
| University of Missouri, Columbia | 580 to 670 | 570 to 660 | 23 to 30 | $31,713 | 23,929 | 78% |
| Lindenwood University | Not reported | Not reported | 22 to 28 | $35,436 | 4,624 | 57% |
| University of Missouri, Kansas City | 640 to 760 | 650 to 790 | 20 to 28 | $25,320 | 6,817 | 72% |
| University of Missouri, St Louis | 510 to 630 | 550 to 660 | 19 to 27 | $31,199 | 5,024 | 63% |
| Missouri State University, Springfield | 510 to 640 | 510 to 630 | 19 to 26 | $25,048 | 13,313 | 91% |
| Rockhurst University | Not reported | Not reported | 19 to 26 | $59,898 | 1,580 | 70% |
| Northwest Missouri State University | 478 to 593 | 498 to 600 | 19 to 24 | $24,945 | 4,378 | 86% |
| Missouri Southern State University | 540 to 690 | 610 to 730 | 17 to 24 | $19,568 | 3,019 | 97% |
Each range covers the middle 50% of admitted students who submitted that test. 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.
Sorted by ACT composite, because more Missouri colleges report it. The College Board and ACT publish an official concordance for comparing a score across the two tests.
Three things in that table need explaining.
Washington University at 12% is the only genuinely competitive college in the state. The next most selective is Lindenwood at 57%, and most of the rest admit more than 70%.
Two schools report SAT ranges far higher than their ACT composites would suggest. The University of Missouri at Kansas City reports 640 to 760 and 650 to 790, the second highest SAT figures in the state, against an ACT composite of 20 to 28 and a 72% admit rate. Missouri Southern State shows the same shape, with SAT ranges of 540 to 690 and 610 to 730 against an ACT of 17 to 24 while admitting 97%.
Those are not errors. They are what happens when very few students submit one of the two tests, and the score-ranges section below explains why it matters.
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Washington University in St Louis
Washington University in St Louis has 7,857 undergraduates and runs a medical school consistently ranked among the best in the country.
SAT Reading & Writing 730 to 770, SAT Math 770 to 800, ACT composite 33 to 35. The top quarter of admitted students scored at or above 770, 800 and 35. Cost of attendance $88,488, with tuition and fees at $65,790 and need-based aid that meets full demonstrated need. 7,857 undergraduates, 12% admitted.
This is the most expensive school on this page and the only one admitting under half its applicants.
Saint Louis University
Saint Louis University is a Jesuit university with 7,267 undergraduates and its own School of Medicine.
SAT Reading & Writing 600 to 700, SAT Math 600 to 710, ACT composite 25 to 31. The top quarter scored at or above 700, 710 and 31. Cost of attendance $71,932, with tuition and fees at $55,760. 7,267 undergraduates, 75% admitted.
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Missouri University of Science and Technology is in Rolla with 5,521 undergraduates and an engineering and science focus.
SAT Reading & Writing 580 to 690, SAT Math 610 to 730, ACT composite 25 to 31. The top quarter scored at or above 690, 730 and 31. Cost of attendance $29,231, with tuition and fees at $14,984 in-state and $33,248 out-of-state. 5,521 undergraduates, 73% admitted.
Truman State University
Truman State University is in Kirksville with 2,513 undergraduates, the smallest public university on this page, and it is the state’s designated liberal arts and sciences university.
SAT Reading & Writing 600 to 700, SAT Math 570 to 670, ACT composite 25 to 31. The top quarter scored at or above 700, 670 and 31. Cost of attendance $25,115, with tuition and fees at $9,838 in-state and $18,566 out-of-state. 2,513 undergraduates, 84% admitted.
Kirksville is also where the first osteopathic medical school was founded, which is covered below.
University of Missouri, Columbia
The University of Missouri at Columbia is the state flagship with 23,929 undergraduates, the largest school on this page, and it runs its own School of Medicine.
SAT Reading & Writing 580 to 670, SAT Math 570 to 660, ACT composite 23 to 30. The top quarter scored at or above 670, 660 and 30. Cost of attendance $31,713, with tuition and fees at $14,837 in-state and $36,056 out-of-state. 23,929 undergraduates, 78% admitted.
Lindenwood University
Lindenwood University is a private university in St Charles with 4,624 undergraduates.
The university does not report SAT data. ACT composite 22 to 28, with the top quarter at or above 28. Cost of attendance $35,436, with tuition and fees at $21,600. 4,624 undergraduates, 57% admitted.
University of Missouri, Kansas City
The University of Missouri at Kansas City has 6,817 undergraduates, and its School of Medicine runs the six-year programme covered in the next section.
SAT Reading & Writing 640 to 760, SAT Math 650 to 790, ACT composite 20 to 28. The top quarter scored at or above 760, 790 and 28. Cost of attendance $25,320, with tuition and fees at $12,587 in-state and $30,227 out-of-state. 6,817 undergraduates, 72% admitted.
Those SAT figures sit second only to Washington University in this state. The six-year medical programme is the likely reason, and the explanation is in the score-ranges section below.
University of Missouri, St Louis
The University of Missouri at St Louis has 5,024 undergraduates.
SAT Reading & Writing 510 to 630, SAT Math 550 to 660, ACT composite 19 to 27. The top quarter scored at or above 630, 660 and 27. Cost of attendance $31,199, with tuition and fees at $14,112 in-state and $35,112 out-of-state. 5,024 undergraduates, 63% admitted.
Missouri State University, Springfield
Missouri State University at Springfield has 13,313 undergraduates, the second largest on this page.
SAT Reading & Writing 510 to 640, SAT Math 510 to 630, ACT composite 19 to 26. The top quarter scored at or above 640, 630 and 26. Cost of attendance $25,048, with tuition and fees at $9,502 in-state and $18,770 out-of-state. 13,313 undergraduates, 91% admitted.
Its in-state tuition of $9,502 is the lowest figure on this page.
Rockhurst University
Rockhurst University is a Jesuit university in Kansas City with 1,580 undergraduates, the smallest school on this page.
The university does not report SAT data. ACT composite 19 to 26, with the top quarter at or above 26. Cost of attendance $59,898, with tuition and fees at $44,966. 1,580 undergraduates, 70% admitted.
Northwest Missouri State University
Northwest Missouri State University is in Maryville with 4,378 undergraduates.
SAT Reading & Writing 478 to 593, SAT Math 498 to 600, ACT composite 19 to 24. The top quarter scored at or above 593, 600 and 24. Cost of attendance $24,945, with tuition and fees at $10,611 in-state and $17,324 out-of-state. 4,378 undergraduates, 86% admitted.
Missouri Southern State University
Missouri Southern State University is in Joplin with 3,019 undergraduates and the lowest cost of attendance on this page.
SAT Reading & Writing 540 to 690, SAT Math 610 to 730, ACT composite 17 to 24. The top quarter scored at or above 690, 730 and 24. Cost of attendance $19,568, with tuition and fees at $8,960 in-state and $17,080 out-of-state. 3,019 undergraduates, 97% admitted.
Its reported SAT ranges are far above what its ACT composite and 97% admit rate would suggest, for the same reason as at Kansas City.
One Missouri Program Takes You From High School to an MD in Six Years
The University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine opened in 1971 and does something almost no other medical school does. It admits students directly from high school into a combined bachelor’s and medical degree that finishes in six years instead of eight.
More than 4,000 physicians have graduated from the school, and the majority came through this route.
What the Six Years Look Like
Clinical experience starts in the first year through a docent team, a small group of students who learn together alongside a physician across several years of the programme. Classroom material is applied in that clinical setting from the beginning rather than after two years of science.
The calendar is the part most people underestimate. The first year runs 35 weeks and each of the remaining five runs 48. There is no long summer.
In year four, students return to the main UMKC campus to finish coursework for the bachelor’s degree, then complete the medical curriculum in years five and six.
What It Requires
UMKC publishes its admission requirements for the programme:
- A minimum ACT composite of 24, or an SAT score of 1160
- An unweighted GPA of 3.0 across the university’s seventeen core course requirements
- For ACT submissions, the Science section is required
- Scores must have been earned within three years of the application deadline
- The latest test date accepted for initial review is October, and December for final review if a student is invited to interview
UMKC superscores both tests, combining a student’s best section scores across dates.
Two details are worth pausing on. The ACT Science requirement matters because ACT made that section optional in 2025, so a student planning to apply here needs to sit it deliberately. And the October deadline for initial review means the test has to be finished early in senior year, not during it.
A student who has already started college elsewhere has a narrow second chance. Those with 24 or fewer college credit hours after high school can still apply and are reviewed against the same criteria as freshman applicants, provided they earn a cumulative 3.0 in their first college semester.
Whether It Suits You
The minimum ACT of 24 is not a high bar on its own, and UMKC describes admission to the programme as highly competitive, so the published minimum is a floor rather than a target.
The harder question is not academic. Six years without a real summer is a commitment made at seventeen, to a career most seventeen-year-olds have not yet tested. A student who is certain gains two years and a great deal of money. A student who is not should know that the eight-year route exists partly because people change their minds, and that changing course inside an accelerated programme is harder than changing a major.
Compared with the other early-entry routes we cover, this is the shortest and the earliest. Connecticut’s programme is four years plus four. The Wichita State route takes seven. Missouri takes six and starts before you have attended a single college class.
Confirm current requirements with UMKC’s School of Medicine before planning around any of this.
Missouri Has Six Medical Schools and One of Them Invented Osteopathic Medicine
Missouri has four MD programs and two DO programs.
- Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis
- Saint Louis University School of Medicine, St Louis
- University of Missouri School of Medicine, Columbia
- University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine
- A.T. Still University Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine
- Kansas City University College of Osteopathic Medicine
A.T. Still founded the first osteopathic medical school in Kirksville in 1892. Osteopathic medicine began in Missouri, and the institution that became A.T. Still University is still there. On pages across this series we explain that an MD and a DO are treated as equivalent and licensed in all fifty states. This is where the second of those degrees started.
Washington University gives a sense of the other end of the scale. It reports a median MCAT of 521 and a median GPA of 3.94, from more than 6,000 applications for approximately 124 places. That matches Mayo Clinic in Minnesota as the most selective figure anywhere in this series.
None of this decides where to do an undergraduate degree. Medical school applications are national, and a student at Missouri Southern State is not disadvantaged against a student at Washington University when both apply. What proximity changes is how easily shadowing and research can be arranged while the degree is still happening.
Missouri's Scholarship Is Much Harder to Reach With the SAT
Missouri runs a merit scholarship called Bright Flight, and the way it treats the two tests is the most lopsided arrangement we have found in any state.
Bright Flight pays Missouri residents who attend approved Missouri institutions. Eligibility is set by percentile rather than by a fixed number, so the qualifying score changes each year based on how Missouri students performed the year before.
For students graduating in 2026, the published thresholds are:
| Tier | ACT | SAT | Award |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top 3% | 32 or above | Math 800 and Critical Reading 800 | Up to $3,000 a year |
| Top 4th and 5th percentiles | 30 or 31 | Math 800 and Critical Reading 790 to 799 | Up to $1,000 a year |
Read those two columns against each other.
An ACT composite of 32 concords to an SAT score in the region of 1430 to 1450. Missouri asks SAT takers for 1600. For the lower tier, an ACT of 30 corresponds to approximately 1360 to 1380, and Missouri asks for 1590 or better.
We sell SAT preparation, so this is worth saying as plainly as we can. If you are a Missouri student and Bright Flight is part of your plan, take the ACT. The SAT route to the same award requires a perfect or near-perfect score, and the ACT route does not.
Three other details matter.
Superscores are accepted, which is unusual. Georgia’s Zell Miller Scholarship and Louisiana’s TOPS both require a composite from a single test date. Missouri lets you combine your best sections across dates.
The qualifying score must be achieved by the June national test date immediately following high school graduation. A July score does not count.
There is no application. The state receives scores directly from ACT or the College Board along with your Missouri institution choices.
One thing to check before relying on the table above. The state’s published figures use “SAT Critical Reading,” which is terminology from the pre-2016 SAT. Confirm with the Missouri Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development which scale and which section names apply to current scores.
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 that reports a range scored below its lower number.
Missouri sorts into two different questions, and it is worth keeping them apart.
For college admission, the score barely matters outside Washington University. Missouri Southern State admits 97%, Missouri State 91% and Northwest Missouri State 86%. A Missouri student will find a Missouri college.
For the two things on this page that are genuinely competitive, it matters a great deal. The six-year medical programme at Kansas City is described by the university as highly competitive despite a published ACT minimum of 24. And Bright Flight is decided entirely by a test score, with no application and no other criteria.
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.
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 these targets, a free diagnostic SAT gives you one, broken down by section and by topic.
Should You Take the ACT Instead?
In Missouri the answer leans harder toward the ACT than in any other state we cover.
Sixteen of the twenty four-year Missouri institutions with more than 1,500 undergraduates report an ACT composite. Eleven report SAT section ranges.
More importantly, Bright Flight asks SAT takers for an effectively perfect score and ACT takers for a 32. That is not a close call for a student chasing the award.
For college admission alone, both tests are accepted everywhere here and you should take whichever you score better on. If your list reaches outside the region, the SAT is more common nationally.
How to Read These Score Ranges
Every range on this page covers the middle 50% of admitted students who submitted that test. 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.
Missouri gives the clearest example anywhere in this series of why that matters.
The University of Missouri at Kansas City reports SAT ranges of 640 to 760 and 650 to 790, higher than every Missouri college except Washington University. It also reports an ACT composite of 20 to 28 and admits 72% of applicants. Those figures describe different groups of people. Almost everyone at UMKC submits an ACT score, and the small number who submit SAT scores are not a representative sample of who gets in.
The six-year medical programme is the likely explanation, since its applicants are exceptional and more of them may take the SAT. Missouri Southern State shows the same pattern at a school admitting 97%.
The general rule holds everywhere, and it is sharpest in states where one test dominates. When few students submit a test, that test’s published range describes a narrow and unusual group rather than the admitted class.
Because most colleges are now test-optional, these ranges describe only the students who chose to submit at all. 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
Missouri borders eight states, more than almost anywhere in the country, and Bright Flight pays only at Missouri institutions, so an out-of-state application means giving it up.
See pre-med colleges in Kansas, pre-med colleges in Illinois, and pre-med colleges in Iowa.
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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