The CMU College of Medicine MD program

In years 1 and 2 you are always enrolled in three courses: one course block plus Essentials of Clinical Skills and Medicine and Society, which run through both years. The ten blocks last 4 to 10 weeks. The first two, on human structure and on cells and molecules, give everyone a common base, since students arrive with different science backgrounds. Most of the rest take one or two organ systems from healthy function to disease, with physiology, pathology, pharmacology and genetics taught together through patient presentations.

Each organ-system block runs as a cycle of PBL cases, each followed by a TBL session, with large-group peer instruction alongside. Essentials of Clinical Skills teaches history taking, examination and diagnostic skills for the organ system you are studying, using simulation and standardized patients, people trained to act as patients. Medicine and Society covers public health, ethics, law, culture, professionalism, the humanities, self-care and research methods. Interprofessional sessions with students from other health professions come up across all four years.

Teaching changes shape in years 3 and 4. In the CCC you meet a faculty facilitator and classmates weekly by video to present patients and teach each other core primary care topics. A weekly one-hour session covers high-yield primary care knowledge. Hospital clerkships center on inpatient work, with bedside teaching rounds and clerkship teaching sessions in person and online.

During a pre-clerkship block your timetable combines PBL case sessions, TBL sessions, peer instruction, anatomy lab and clinical skills, with Medicine and Society alongside. An optional formative quiz, a practice test that does not count, closes each week. The week before each summative exam, one that counts toward your grade, brings a required practice exam from the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME). The NBME co-sponsors the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE), which MD graduates must pass for a US license.

The 2025-26 handbook capped scheduled contact hours at 25 a week, averaged over each course, and 8 a day. It put total workload, including directed study, at no more than 60 hours a week. The 2026-27 handbook keeps an Academic Workload Policy and lists protected self-study time in the weekly schedule among its teaching principles.

Each syllabus gives you a Personal Time Allowance, a set number of absences from mandatory sessions that do not affect your grade, for illness, religious holidays, bereavement or research travel.

Anatomy opens the curriculum: Introduction to Human Structure (MED 625), a six-week, eight-credit block, covers gross anatomy, microanatomy and histology, embryology, and the imaging used to see anatomy in living patients. The topics are taught together, with their clinical relevance stressed throughout.

In the 2026-27 handbook, participation and performance in anatomy lab sessions count toward pre-clerkship course grades. The 2024-25 handbook described lab sessions that reinforce clinical anatomy across the first two years. Its lab rules referred to both cadavers and prosections, specimens dissected in advance, and gave every student round-the-clock lab access.

The labs are in the College of Medicine building in Mount Pleasant, where the Orthopedic Surgery and Sports Medicine interest group runs an annual review in which second-year students tutor first-years. The new Saginaw building's plans include anatomy teaching spaces.

Your first patients are standardized patients, who let you learn and make mistakes without harming anyone. They feature in Essentials of Clinical Skills from year 1. Year 1 also brings a team service-learning project under Community and Clinical Engaged Learning (CCEL), identifying community assets that can improve health.

In year 2 a scheduled early clinical experience in a primary care practice becomes your clinical laboratory. You start by observing the practice and its team from the patients' side as well as the team's, then begin interacting with patients as your skills improve. Transition to Clerkships then prepares you for the wards.

Full-time clinical work starts in early July of year 3, after an orientation of five to seven days at your campus. Depending on the clerkship, schedules can include nights, weekends and overnight call, within the duty hours policy. The handbook expects hundreds of clinical encounters during the CCC.

Pre-clerkship courses, electives and the sub-internship are graded Pass or No Pass. Required clerkships are graded Honors, Pass or No Pass, with Honors criteria set in each clerkship syllabus. The admissions FAQ describes the same scale as credit, no credit, or credit with honors.

In each pre-clerkship block, peer instruction, TBL and anatomy lab count toward your grade. The number of summative exams depends on block length: one for a 4-week block, two for 5- or 6-week blocks and three for 9- or 10-week blocks. Grades come out within 14 business days.

Fail any part of a course and you receive an Incomplete. You then complete self-study planned with the Director of Academic Success and take a remediation exam, normally 4 to 8 weeks after the year's last course. You can remediate one Incomplete a year without committee approval; a second goes to the Student Performance and Conduct Committee first. A remediated course shows as Pass on your transcript.

Each required clerkship ends with a clinical performance evaluation, with formative feedback near the midpoint. Where available, an NBME subject exam, often called a shelf exam, tests your knowledge of the specialty against a minimum score the clerkship sets. Clerkships may also grade OSCEs, oral presentations or written history and physical notes.

USMLE Step 1 tests the basic sciences and has been reported only as pass or fail since January 26, 2022. LCME accreditation is what makes students in MD programs like this one eligible to sit it; DO students and international medical students and graduates qualify by other routes. You must take Step 1 to be promoted to year 3, and deferring it needs approval. Passing Step 1 and Step 2 CK, the clinical knowledge exam, is required to graduate.

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 student entering in 2027 would sit Step 1 in about May or June 2029, after the switch. That timing follows the four-week dedicated study block and comes before year 3 starts in early July. Years 3 and 4 would follow from July 2029, so Step 2 CK would also come under the new model. These are projections from the 2026-27 calendar, not published dates.

• Directed Independent Study of Medicine II to V give time and support for Step 1 or Step 2 study in years 3 and 4. If you have no rotation in block 1 of year 3 or 4, you are enrolled automatically.
• A shelf score below the minimum means retaking the exam. Any remediation rules out Honors, and year 3 Incompletes must be cleared before year 4.
• Your MSPE compares your performance with your classmates' in each required clerkship, but carries no overall comparison, because students do not receive a class rank.
• Alpha Omega Alpha, the national medical honor society, invites the top 30% of the fourth-year class to apply, scored on year 1-2 course averages, shelf exam averages and year 3 Honors. About 20% of the class is inducted.
• You must finish within six years of starting.

Today years 1 and 2 are taught on CMU's main campus in Mount Pleasant. For years 3 and 4 most students move to the Saginaw campus, whose Saginaw Education Building stands on the Covenant HealthCare campus. You rotate at Covenant HealthCare and MyMichigan Medical Center Saginaw, the region's referral centers for most complex care, and at HealthSource Saginaw, a psychiatric and rehabilitation hospital. Some rotations use McLaren Bay Region and Children's Hospital of Michigan.

Some Saginaw campus students are assigned instead to Henry Ford Genesys Hospital in Grand Blanc or University of Michigan Health Sparrow Hospital in Lansing for their hospital clerkships. The alternatives to Saginaw are two regional campuses: Henry Ford St. John Hospital in Detroit and MyMichigan Medical Center Midland, whose students take pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Michigan in Detroit.

Campuses and sites are allocated by a preference-based lottery in December of year 2. Names are drawn in random order, each student picks from the places left, and the choice is final, with no trading. Students with extenuating circumstances can ask for special consideration beforehand. A second lottery in March sets your year 3 track, the order and sites of your clerkships, and your CCC site; afterward you may trade within your campus.

For the CCC you live for 16 weeks in a rural or urban underserved community in Michigan or Northern Ohio. The Mid Central Area Health Education Center (AHEC), part of a program Congress created in 1971, works with the college to find short- and long-term housing for clinical rotations.

If a required inpatient clerkship is more than 30 miles from your primary campus and you pay for two homes, you can apply for a flat monthly housing stipend, prorated by days. Students based away from Saginaw are paid flat-rate mileage for required simulation and academic sessions there.

You need 28 weeks of electives, in blocks of two or four weeks, counting the year 3 block. No more than 12 weeks may be in one specialty, and no more than 12 away at other institutions. You need at least four weeks of patient-care electives in both medical and surgical disciplines, and can count up to four weeks of research and eight of non-patient-care electives.

The electives catalog, updated April 20, 2026, lists about 100 options across the network and online. They range from Emergency Point of Care Ultrasound and Foundations of Simulation to Health Policy in Lansing and a four-week multi-specialty elective caring for veterans at the Aleda E. Lutz VA Medical Center in Saginaw.

Emergency Medicine - Rural runs in Lapeer, Mount Pleasant, Standish, Owosso, Petoskey, Sault Ste. Marie and Clare or Gladwin. Rural surgery, in Mount Pleasant or Sault Ste. Marie, and rural OB/GYN, in Sault Ste. Marie, follow the matching year 3 clerkship. Fourth-years can take rural pediatrics, with an office in Mount Pleasant and newborn care in Alma.

Year 3 electives are chosen from a list sent about 10 weeks ahead, with fourth-years getting priority. Your year 4 schedule is set in four phases from February to May, starting with emergency medicine and the sub-internship.

Away rotations, electives at other schools' hospitals, come mainly in year 4, as year 3 students are generally not approved for them. You apply through the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO) service, opened to you in January of year 3, with approval needed 30 days ahead. International electives go through CMU's Office of Study Abroad, with approval 60 days ahead.

CMU's 2026-27 Graduate Bulletin sets out an MD/MBA for students in good standing, with six MD credit hours counting toward the MBA. The college recommends adding a year for the MBA courses, between years 2 and 3 or between years 3 and 4, but it will not approve that extra year once year 3 has started. MBA applications are due at least a month before the extra year begins. MBA classes can be on campus, online or both.

CMU's Master of Public Health page also mentions a dual MD and MPH degree. The 2023-24 College of Medicine handbook described a five-year path, with a full-time MPH year after year 2 and an MPH field placement in the final year. Students applied by April 1 of year 2. Check the current arrangements with the college.

Research is encouraged but not required. Everyone completes CITI research ethics training in Medicine and Society. The paid Summer Research Scholars program funds 12 to 16 students a year for up to 230 hours of mentored research between years 1 and 2. Scholars are chosen on a short proposal written with a faculty mentor and present at the spring Student Research Forum and Research Symposium.

In years 3 and 4 you can take four-week research electives, though only four weeks count toward the elective requirement and case reports do not qualify. Limited funding covers conference travel, posters and publication fees, and current projects range from neuroscience and opioid use disorder to maternal and child health.

In Mount Pleasant the college occupies a 60,000-square-foot addition to the Health Professions Building, with clinical exam rooms, group study rooms, simulation rooms and anatomy labs. Your mobile CMU ID opens the building, study rooms, student lounge and the Opperman Learning Commons around the clock.

The Learning Commons, an annex of the University Libraries, offers 32 seats of 24-hour study space and an eight-seat group room. The medical library is almost entirely electronic, with a faculty medical librarian on site, and Knowledge Services supports students in Saginaw.

The Institute for Medical Simulation's facilities in Mount Pleasant and Saginaw, where it includes the Covenant HealthCare Simulation Center, are accredited by the Society for Simulation in Healthcare. Its lab has virtual operating room, obstetrics, intensive care, emergency department and pediatric environments, and high-fidelity manikins that can sweat, bleed, cough and talk.

The new MyMichigan Health CMU Medical Education Building covers about 90,000 square feet over four floors in Saginaw's Medical Diamond development. Its mass timber nods to the city's lumber history, and the dean has said it will honor the history of the Saginaw Chippewa people through art. Plans include PBL classrooms, a standardized patient suite, simulation rooms, student commons and a fitness center.

From your first semester you have a faculty academic advisor, with required one-to-one meetings at the start of each pre-clerkship semester. In years 3 and 4 a Faculty Career Advisor, matched to your specialty interests, helps with electives, personal statements and residency applications. Career planning uses the AAMC's Careers in Medicine program from year 1.

The Director of Academic Success offers confidential consultations in Mount Pleasant, Saginaw or online, on study and test-taking strategies and board exam preparation. Free peer tutoring with trained, paid second- to fourth-year students runs up to three hours a week.

Incoming students can join the Big Sib/Little Sib program, which pairs you with a second-year student for advice on workload, study and life in Mount Pleasant. Each class elects a Medical Student Council, a Student Senate links classes and campuses, and there are more than 40 student interest groups. CMU Street Medicine has served people experiencing homelessness since 2018.

The Wellness and Well-Being Program runs events from therapy dog visits to a Thanksgiving potluck. The Office of Student Affairs refers students to the CMU Counseling Center and CMU Health services. First-generation college graduates are invited to a First-Gen Student Retreat in the fall of year 1.