Clarification Needed Prepostional Phrases and Verb Modifier

[abhijit.mazumder]

According to the enrollment statistics published by U.S. medical schools, as many female as male students are currently enrolled in medical school

Hi I understand the underlined part is a prepositional phrase
and my current understanding is Prepositional Phrases in the beginning of sentence is "verb modifier"
Example:
as per the MGMAT errata , On the couch, cat took a nap
because it answers the question "where"? so clearly this is a verb modifier


But here
I am not able to understand what this phrase "According to the enrollment statistics published by U.S. medical schools, " is modifying and how

Really appreciate any help

[tim]

it's modifying the whole clause that follows..