Applications to medical schools have been declining for more than a decade, with the steepest drops coming in the last four years. From 1974 to 1987, applications contracted by 31 percent, from 46,624 to 28,123, an average decline of about 2.4 percent a year. But in the last year of that decline, from 1986 to 1987, the number fell by more than 10 percent, from 31,323 to 28,123.