By casting doubt on the school's ability to support its normal crop of new students, Byington said there will probably be several qualified students who are either forced to delay their education for a year or seek admittance outside of the state.

"In years past, your position on the alternate list for the Texas A&M College of Medicine would be associated with a high likelihood of joining the 2021 class," Byington wrote in the letter. "Unfortunately, because of the proposed budget cuts, we are forced to suspend offers of class placements to those on our alternate list at this time. If adequate funding levels are restored to the College of Medicine, we may be able to offer placement to those on the alternate list in the future. However, any offers are unlikely to occur before June 2017."

She said although the budget proposed by the House is better than the 100 percent cut to special-items funding proposed in the Senate, even a lack of growth "makes it really problematic for us to try to continue this mission of an expanded class size," an objective that was prescribed by the Legislature in 2007.

Beyond the impact budget reductions could have on students at the medical school, Byington said community-based programs such as Healthy South Texas could be impacted as well because of their "vital" reliance on special items funding.