The Alice L. Walton School of Medicine MD program

The six ARCHES threads run through courses, clerkships and electives in all four years. Science of Medicine covers genetics, biochemistry, immunology, microbiology, anatomy, cell biology, physiology, pharmacology and pathology, taught together by organ system, and topics return at greater depth as you progress. Pre-clerkship teaching is active and small-group, with simulation from the start.

A separate course, Integrated Principles of Medicine (IPM), runs in every phase, from IPM I in your first semester to IPM VII in Year 4. Through it, Art of Healing uses the arts and humanities to explore professionalism, ethics, empathy and tolerance of uncertainty. Embracing Whole Health looks at the physical, behavioral, spiritual and socioeconomic sides of patients' lives.

Health Systems Science, the third IPM thread, covers how care is organized and financed, social determinants of health, policy, medical error and teamwork. In Years 3 and 4, IPM continues alongside your clerkships with case discussions drawn from your rotations and grand-rounds-style presentations.

In Years 1 and 2, the Student Work Hours Policy, approved in September 2026, caps scheduled contact time (classes, labs, clinical sessions and exams) at 24 hours a week, averaged over the semester. Estimated total work, including preparation and study, should stay within 40 hours. The 2026-27 handbook sets a different ceiling for the same phases: 60 hours a week.

The school says students sit weekly proctored exams in the style of the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE), both formative (for feedback) and summative (counting toward grades), with a feedback report after each. Summative exams fall on Fridays when possible, with no new examinable material taught the day before.

The rest of the week is pre-class modules, small-group sessions, labs, IPM and clinical experiences, plus independent learning time when Learning Specialists hold drop-in hours. You must attend at least 85% of required activities in each course longer than two weeks.

From Year 3, rules modeled on those the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) sets for residents cap clinical and educational work at 80 hours a week, averaged over four weeks. You get at least one day off a week on average, with call no more than every fourth night and no scheduled stretch over 24 hours. You must attend 90% of required days on each rotation, so a four-week clerkship allows up to two days of absence.

There is no cadaver dissection: the school says students train without the use of cadavers. Anatomy is taught instead in the 3,010-square-foot Anatomy Resource Center on the first floor, where integrated labs run in small groups around clinically focused, active learning.

The core material is plastinated specimens: real donated bodies, organs and tissues, treated so they stay dry, odorless and usable for decades, with none of the hazardous preservatives used on cadavers. The center's page counts more than 100 specimens, the handbook gives 100, and the library's anatomy guide lists more than 140 plastinated specimens and models.

Only trained faculty and staff handle or move the specimens, and photography is not allowed. The collection is organized by body system and includes whole-body specimens. You can place a specimen on hold through the library catalog so it is set out for you in the center.

Virtual reality lets you explore surface, regional and cross-sectional anatomy, embryology and histology. You also use 3D models and prints from the Maker Space, anatomical sketching, ultrasound and medical imaging.

Anatomy begins in Phase 1 with Keystones in Function and Structure and continues in each organ-system course, which teaches the anatomy, histology and embryology of its system. Outside scheduled labs, the center is open for study.

Your first patient contact comes in Phase 1 through Early Clinical Skills and Experiences I (ECSE I). Alongside Clinical Skills Center sessions on communication, history-taking and professionalism, you start rotating at primary care clinical sites, helping care for patients as far as your skills allow, under supervision.

ECSE runs in four parts through the pre-clerkship years. ECSE II, in the spring of Year 1, covers heart and lung history-taking and examination, differential diagnosis, interpreting tests, documentation and management plans. ECSE III and IV in Year 2 add the digestive, reproductive, skin and musculoskeletal systems, and your patient contact moves into inpatient (hospital) settings.

Clinical education staff assign Year 1 and 2 students to sites by a randomized process based on educational needs and site capacity. The school names Mercy and UAMS among its partners for clinical experience from Year 1.

Procedural skills are introduced through simulation before Year 3. Phase 3 opens with Transition to Clerkships, where small groups rehearse inpatient, emergency, subspecialty and consultation work with simulation and standardized patients. You are always supervised with patients, and sensitive examinations, such as breast and pelvic exams, happen only under direct observation.

Voluntary shadowing outside the curriculum is allowed after your first semester. It is observation only, cannot clash with required sessions and is not covered by the school's student liability coverage.

Grading is competency-based: to graduate you must show proficiency in eight competencies, from patient care and medical knowledge to technology and whole health practice. The website, the 2026-27 catalog and the 2026-27 handbook all grade pre-clerkship courses pass/fail.

Clerkship grading is described in different ways. The live Phases and Courses page lists Honors/High Pass/Pass/Fail for internal medicine, surgery, psychiatry, pediatrics, the Year 4 selective and elective rotations, and IPM V and VI. The 2026-27 catalog lists Honors/Pass/Fail for all seven clerkships and pass/fail for IPM V and VI, and the handbook adds a single Honors grade for clerkships.

Many summative exams use official practice questions from the NBME, which runs the USMLE with the Federation of State Medical Boards. School documents also refer to NBME subject exams, often called shelf exams: standardized tests of clinical knowledge in one specialty, taken during clerkships.

Clinical skills are tested in OSCEs, where you move through a series of stations, each testing a task such as taking a history or examining a standardized patient. The M3 OSCE comes at the end of Year 3, and Medical Bridges ends with a final OSCE.

The USMLE has three Steps, and you take the first two in medical school. Step 1 is reported only as pass or fail. Step 2 Clinical Knowledge (CK) tests how you apply clinical knowledge and gets a numerical score, which residency programs review.

In August 2026 the USMLE program announced a move to designated testing dates from January 2029, with Step exams offered less often each year. Its June 2026 announcement had named 2028. On the current schedule, a July 2027 entrant would sit Step 1 in about spring or early summer 2029, after the Step 1 review course and before clerkships begin. Step 2 CK would follow in about mid-to-late 2030.

• The handbook and the Graduation Policy word the Step rules differently. The 2026-27 handbook says you must pass Step 1 before clerkships, and Step 2 CK by the school's deadlines, within three attempts. The policy, approved in June 2026, says you must pass each phase's licensure exams to move on to the next phase, and both Steps before graduation.
• Faculty give written narrative comments wherever you work alone or in a group of fewer than eight with a faculty supervisor.
• Your MSPE includes narrative assessments of your whole health activities, research course and clinical rotations, plus graphs comparing your clerkship performance with your cohort, but no class rank.
• You must complete the MD within six years of starting, including approved leave other than military leave.

Clinical training takes place at partner hospitals and clinics around Northwest Arkansas. The 2026-27 handbook lists eight local affiliates in Rogers, Fayetteville and Springdale. The website's clinical partnerships page names ten, adding UAMS and Vantage Point Behavioral Health Hospital.

Mercy Hospital Northwest Arkansas in Rogers is the school's primary education partner. That role is part of a 30-year affiliation agreement announced in September 2024 by Mercy, the Alice L. Walton Foundation and Heartland Whole Health Institute.

For clerkships you submit preferences by a set deadline, and places are allocated by a lottery that also weighs educational requirements and site capacity. You cannot arrange your own clerkship sites or contact sites yourself. A swap needs a willing classmate, a request from both of you within 10 business days of the schedule's release, and the school's approval.

You need your own transport: some sites are not served by public transport, and you travel at your own expense, at various times of day and in bad weather. Clerkships do not always follow school holidays; if your clinic or hospital is open, you attend unless your clerkship director approves time off.

Choice begins in Year 3 with two 2-week rotations to explore areas of interest, called electives in the catalog and selectives on the website. An elective is usually your free choice, while a selective is picked from options within a required area. On the school's sample schedule both fall in the second half of Year 3, and an elective opportunity follows the summer break.

Year 4 is built mainly from Selective and/or Elective Rotations I to VIII, which you choose according to your career plans. The school gives intensive care and medical and surgical specialties as examples, and says the rotations also build leadership, entrepreneurship and teaching skills.

School policies refer to away (extramural) electives at other teaching hospitals. A host site may require its own criminal background check or drug screen, and the Office of Student Affairs advises on recommended laboratories. Advising also covers planning for clerkships, electives and externships.

Research is a required, credit-bearing thread, and the school says time for it is protected in the curriculum. It starts with a research strand in IPM in the summer and fall of Year 1, covering evidence-based medicine, framing a research question, database searching, study design, statistics, epidemiology and research ethics.

In Research I, in the spring of Year 1, you work in a small team with faculty mentors to write a full research protocol, covering the question, design and analysis plan, and present it. Research II to IV in Year 2 take the project through data collection, draft posters or papers and a final version reviewed with your mentor.

Mentors can be AWSOM faculty with approved projects, collaborators at Mercy, UAMS, the University of Arkansas, Highlands Oncology or Stanford, or mentors you find yourself, subject to approval. All must be faculty and sign a mentor agreement, and you can pair a research mentor with a clinical one. Individual rather than team projects are approved case by case.

Projects span clinical and translational science, social determinants of health, public health policy, health systems and medical education. The Office of Research Education encourages you to present and publish. It offers limited competitive funding for new projects, help with publication costs in select cases and travel grants when a conference accepts your work.

The 154,000-square-foot school building, designed by Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects, has four levels. It holds learning halls, small-group rooms, a library, clinical teaching and simulation spaces, a public art gallery, a café and a student lounge. The second floor has two large learning spaces for up to 96 students, two classrooms for 24 that combine into one for 48, and nine small-group rooms.

The 16,900-square-foot Clinical Skills Center has 12 examination rooms around a central observation area, plus debriefing and triage rooms and a point-of-care testing room. The exam rooms are equipped like a clinic, with ultrasound and other diagnostic devices, and recorded for review.

Figures for the simulation space differ. The handbook describes a 7,500-square-foot Simulation Center with four high-fidelity simulation rooms, able to recreate settings such as emergency departments, operating rooms and labor and delivery. The Simulation page describes a Simulation Lab of over 8,800 square feet with four suites and one-way mirrored control rooms.

In the Maker Space you can learn 3D modeling and print on fused deposition modeling (FDM) and PolyJet printers, then design and test models. The 4,000-square-foot library seats up to 58 students, with six quiet study rooms beside it, and its online collection, including 360,000 eBooks and 28 databases, is available around the clock.

The school provides all required learning resources, so you do not need to buy textbooks, and each student receives a computing device. The building also has a gym, a wellness center and a lounge with exercise space, a quiet room and a theater. Trails link the school with the museum, Heartland Whole Health Institute and downtown Bentonville.

On enrolling, you are assigned to one of four Houses. Each House of 12 is led by a pair of Career Mentors, practicing local physicians who stay with you from orientation to graduation. Houses meet monthly over lunch, and each picks a representative who organizes activities and sits on the Student Government Association.

The Houses are named after the American physicians Susan La Flesche Picotte, Jonas Salk, Helen B. Taussig and Daniel Hale Williams. You also meet the Director of Academic Advising each semester and work through Residency Rx, an online program for building an individual career plan.

Specialty advisers and workshops such as Specialty Speed Rounds with practicing physicians help you explore careers, and later come mock interviews and help with ERAS and NRMP, the residency application and Match systems.

Learning Specialists offer one-on-one academic counseling based on your exam reports, study-skills workshops and USMLE planning from Year 1 to graduation. Before each summative exam they host Power Hour, a student-led question session with faculty. Peer tutoring by trained upper-year students runs from fall 2026, and the school provides USMLE preparation platforms such as UWorld, Boards and Beyond and First Aid Forward.

For wellbeing there is 24-hour online support, confidential counseling with licensed therapists and wellness coaching, plus priority care for students at two Mercy primary care clinics, in Bella Vista and Centerton. An Organizational Ombuds offers a confidential, neutral and informal place to raise concerns, and faculty who give you health care may not assess you.

Service learning is part of IPM, and community work starts with a Day of Service in your first week. Local organizations such as the Northwest Arkansas Food Bank and Samaritan Community Center have signed community partner agreements with the school. Your service hours are recorded on GivePulse, a volunteering tracker. Student interest groups cover specialties such as internal medicine, surgery and pediatrics, and topics such as artificial intelligence in medicine and food as medicine.