CAA Applications Are Rising Fast: What the Latest CASAA Data Shows

CAA Application Volume Has Nearly Tripled

There has been a noticeable change in the CAA admissions landscape over a relatively short period of time. According to CASAA data published by the Association of Anesthesiologist Assistant Education Programs, or AAAEP, participating programs received 4,811 applications during the 2022-2023 cycle. That increased to 9,621 the following cycle and then to 14,300 in 2024-2025.

From the 2022-2023 cycle to the 2024-2025 cycle, total application volume increased by about 197 percent. The number of participating programs also increased, but at a much slower rate, from 18 to 21, or roughly 17 percent. If the growth in application volume were mostly the result of applicants simply having more programs available to them, the average number of applications received by each program would be expected to remain relatively stable. Instead, the average rose from approximately 267 applications per participating program in 2022-2023 to 506 the following year and 681 by 2024-2025.

That suggests the increase is not simply being driven by the addition of new programs. Applicant interest in CAA education appears to be increasing considerably faster than the number of programs represented in the report.

Where These Numbers Come From

AAAEP publishes a summary of CASAA activity using data pulled from WebAdMIT Analytics. The report organizes applications according to their final decision codes and provides information for participating CAA programs across multiple cycles. There are a few limitations that are important to understand before trying to interpret the numbers as national acceptance statistics.

Most importantly, CASAA is counting applications rather than individual applicants. If one person submits applications to seven CAA programs, that individual contributes seven applications to the total. A figure such as 14,300 therefore does not mean that 14,300 different people applied to CAA school during the 2024-2025 cycle.

The report also covers participating programs rather than every CAA program nationally. There were 18 programs represented in the 2022-2023 data, 19 in 2023-2024, and 21 in 2024-2025. AAAEP notes that the Nova Southeastern University Jacksonville program is excluded. The data is also aggregated, so there is no way to determine from this report how many applications an individual school received or what the acceptance rate was at a particular program.

Even with those limitations, the report still gives applicants a useful look at the broader direction of CAA admissions.

Most Submitted Applications Are Being Verified

One possible explanation for rapidly increasing application totals would be that more people are starting applications without ever completing them. The verification data suggests that is not what is happening. Of the 4,811 applications recorded during the 2022-2023 cycle, 4,707 were verified, or approximately 97.8 percent. The following year, roughly 98.0 percent were verified. By 2024-2025, CASAA had verified 14,071 of the 14,300 applications included in the report, or approximately 98.4 percent.

In other words, the overwhelming majority of the applications being counted progressed through CASAA verification. For applicants trying to understand whether the increase reflects genuine growth in people actively pursuing the profession, that is an important piece of context. The rise is not being driven primarily by incomplete applications sitting unfinished in CASAA.

The Number of Matriculants Has Grown Much More Slowly

The change becomes more noticeable when application volume is compared with the number of students who eventually matriculated.

Applications increased by approximately 197 percent across the three cycles, while the number of reported matriculants increased from 475 to 578, or about 22 percent. In the first cycle, there were roughly 10 applications recorded for every student who matriculated. By 2024-2025, there were nearly 25.

This should not be interpreted as saying that an applicant had a 1-in-25 chance of getting into CAA school. Because the application total includes multiple submissions from the same person, applications per matriculant and applicants per matriculant are very different measurements. Still, the comparison is useful because it shows that the volume of applications being processed by programs has increased much faster than the number of students ultimately taking seats.

For applicants who have had the impression that CAA admissions has become more crowded over the past few years, the CASAA numbers provide some support for that perception.

What the Decision Codes Show

AAAEP also reports how applications were classified according to their final decision codes.

One of the easiest numbers to misread is the 91.52 percent denial rate reported for the 2024-2025 cycle. That percentage is calculated using applications with coded final decisions as the denominator. There were 11,204 applications coded as denied out of 12,242 applications with coded decisions, which produces the published 91.52 percent figure.

If the same 11,204 denials were instead divided by all 14,300 applications submitted during the cycle, the result would be approximately 78.3 percent. Neither percentage should be treated as an individual applicant's probability of rejection, because both calculations are based on applications rather than people.

Why a 91.52 Percent Denial Rate Is Not an Applicant Rejection Rate

Consider an applicant who applies to seven CAA programs. Six programs deny the applicant, while one program offers admission and the student ultimately matriculates there. At the application level, that person contributed six denials and one matriculation to the dataset. At the applicant level, however, the cycle was successful because the person earned an acceptance and entered CAA school.

Multiply that pattern across thousands of applicants applying to several programs each and it becomes clear why application-level denial rates can look much higher than the percentage of individual people who fail to gain admission anywhere.

The published 91.52 percent figure is still useful. It tells us that a very large proportion of applications receiving a final coded outcome were denied. It simply does not answer the separate question most prospective students are asking, which is what percentage of individual applicants eventually receive at least one acceptance.

Not Every Application Had a Final Decision Code

Another detail worth noticing is that the number of applications with recorded final decisions is lower than the total application count in every cycle. There were 4,811 applications in 2022-2023 but only 4,362 coded decisions. In 2023-2024, there were 9,621 applications and 8,719 coded decisions. The most recent cycle included 14,300 applications, while 12,242 had one of the final decision codes represented in the report.

That leaves 449 applications without a coded final outcome in the first cycle, 902 in the second, and 2,058 in 2024-2025. In the most recent cycle, those 2,058 applications account for roughly 14 percent of the total.

The report includes categories such as offer accepted, offer made, wait listed, application received, and no decision, but each of those categories is shown as zero. It would obviously be incorrect to conclude from that that no programs extended offers or maintained waitlists. A more likely explanation is that these intermediate statuses are not retained in the final summary once an application reaches a later outcome such as matriculated, offer declined, withdrawn, or denied.

This is another reason applicants should be cautious about treating every percentage in the report as if it came from the same denominator or represented the same stage of the admissions process.

We Can Get Closer to an Applicant-Level Number

Most of the report is organized around applications, but there is one notable exception. The matriculation portion includes a percentage labeled "Matriculated (%) by Applicants." For the 2024-2025 cycle, that figure is 28.73 percent.

Using the 578 reported matriculants and working backward from that percentage suggests that approximately 2,012 individual applicants were represented in the calculation. If that reconstructed estimate is reasonably accurate, those applicants generated 14,300 applications, which works out to a little over seven applications per person on average.

This provides a much different perspective from the 91.52 percent application-level denial figure. Approximately 28.7 percent of the applicants represented in the matriculation calculation ultimately matriculated. Even this number should be interpreted cautiously, since the underlying applicant count is being inferred from a published percentage rather than provided directly in the report, and the participating programs do not include every CAA program nationally.

Still, it gives prospective applicants a better sense of the difference between asking, "What percentage of applications are denied?" and "What percentage of applicants eventually matriculate?" Those questions sound similar but are measuring very different things.

Application Growth Has Outpaced Matriculation Growth

The same trend appears when denied applications are compared with matriculants.

In 2022-2023, there were approximately seven denied applications for each reported matriculant. Two cycles later, there were more than 19. Once again, this is not a measure of personal odds because one applicant may account for several denials. What it does illustrate is the amount of application volume programs are now processing relative to the number of students who ultimately enroll.

It is possible for the profession to grow while admissions simultaneously becomes more competitive. New CAA programs can open, existing programs can expand their class sizes, and the total number of training seats can increase, while applicant growth still outpaces all of those changes. The figures in this report suggest that something along those lines has occurred over the three cycles represented.

What Does This Mean for Future CAA Applicants?

Applicants should be careful not to interpret these numbers as evidence that they now need perfect grades or test scores to be admitted. The CASAA report includes no information about GPA distributions, GRE or MCAT scores, healthcare experience, shadowing, personal statements, interviews, or any of the other factors programs may consider when evaluating candidates. It also provides no school-by-school data, so the report cannot tell us how competitive one CAA program is relative to another.

What it does suggest is that simply meeting minimum requirements may leave an applicant competing within a considerably larger pool than was the case only a few application cycles ago. As programs receive more applications, there are more candidates from which to choose, making it increasingly useful for applicants to understand both the strengths and weaknesses of their own profile before deciding where and when to apply.

The reconstructed applicant count also suggests that applying to several programs has become common. If approximately 2,012 applicants generated 14,300 applications in 2024-2025, the average would be a little more than seven applications per applicant. That does not make seven some kind of recommended or ideal number. An appropriate school list depends on an applicant's academics, prerequisites, geographic flexibility, finances, program requirements, and overall competitiveness. It does, however, provide some context for applicants who are trying to decide whether applying to only one or two schools reflects how the broader applicant pool is approaching the process.

What This Report Cannot Tell You

There are several questions that cannot be answered from these data. The report cannot calculate an individual applicant's chance of admission because its denial figures count applications, not people. It cannot provide a complete national application total because only participating programs are represented and at least one program is specifically excluded. It cannot tell applicants which schools receive the most applications, which programs are the most selective, or what academic profile is associated with admission because there is no school-level or applicant-level admissions profile information.

The report also carries a February 28 end date, which is worth keeping in mind when looking at applications that did not have a final coded outcome. Depending on how and when the data was extracted, some of those applications may reflect records that had not yet reached their eventual final status.

Final Thoughts

The most useful conclusion from the latest CASAA data is not that 91.52 percent of CAA applicants are rejected. That figure describes denied applications among applications with coded decisions, and individual applicants can generate several of those denials during the same cycle.

The broader trend is that application volume has increased much faster than matriculation. Participating programs recorded 4,811 applications in 2022-2023 and 14,300 just two cycles later, while the number of reported matriculants increased from 475 to 578. CAA education is continuing to grow, but interest in entering the profession appears to be growing even faster.

For prospective applicants, the report is probably most useful as evidence that the admissions environment has changed. Understanding how competitive your own profile is, choosing programs thoughtfully, submitting a complete application, and being able to clearly demonstrate why the CAA profession is the right fit all become more important when programs have a larger pool of applicants to review.

Source

Association of Anesthesiologist Assistant Education Programs (AAAEP). CASAA Designations by Decision Code Summary Report, 2022-2025 Cycles. January 2026 edition. Application data drawn from WebAdMIT Analytics. Counts and published percentages are taken from the report. Ratios and approximate applicant counts discussed above are calculated from the published figures.