The Weill Cornell Medicine MD program

Phase 1 teaches science and clinical medicine together. Each course is divided into units devoted to one discipline or organ system, and in Essential Principles of Medicine each unit has its own leader. A strand the curriculum graphic labels PCP runs through every course. It covers communication and clinical evaluation, ethics and LEAP, adding scientific evidence and public health in the spring of year 1, then healthcare systems and the transition to clerkships in year 2.

Formats change as you go: problem-based learning, preceptorships and patient presentations in Essential Principles of Medicine, then clinical-based learning exercises, flipped classrooms, case-based learning and clinical skills workshops in Health, Illness and Disease (HID). Problem-based learning returns in HID 2A. In the foundational and scholarship phases, required classroom, clinical, laboratory and online work may not exceed 35 hours a week on average over a course. You are expected to study well beyond that.

In the clerkship year you learn by caring for patients under supervision, through bedside teaching, rounds, case discussions, conferences and simulation. Clerkships run as separate blocks of 2 to 8 weeks rather than a longitudinal integrated clerkship, in which students follow their own patients across several specialties for months. Phase 3 brings back classroom teaching in Translational Science, Advanced Clinical Ethics and Health Policy.

Two threads run through all three phases. Nutrition starts with a 3-week Metabolism and Nutrition unit in year 1 and continues into the clerkships. Artificial intelligence follows school-wide AI competencies, from informatics lectures in Phase 1 to AI sessions in ethics and health policy in Phase 3.

Anatomy is taught in the fall of year 1, as an Anatomy and Radiology unit inside both Essential Principles of Medicine courses, so the body's structure is paired with medical imaging from the start. The Gross Anatomy Program is run by the Division of Anatomy, part of the Department of Radiology, and depends on people who donate their bodies to the school.

You dissect. The school's technical standards require every student to be able to perform anatomic dissection after training, and the course description lists dissection among its teaching methods. In a January 2026 school news article, the senior associate dean for education contrasted this hands-on work with a move by some schools toward virtual-reality anatomy.

The Division of Anatomy hosts an annual memorial service where first-years thank donors' families. The class that started in 2025 learned from 28 donors, 14 men and 14 women aged 63 to 100. At the December 2025 service, the anatomy chief said first-years and residents in surgery, ear, nose and throat (ENT), dermatology and obstetrics and gynecology had learned from them over the past 16 weeks.

Your first patient contact comes in Essential Principles of Medicine A, in the first half of your first fall semester, through medical interviewing, clinical preceptorships and patient presentations. A required half-day First Responder Course teaches first-years to act in emergencies outside the hospital: three lectures, then six small-group simulations of cases such as choking and stroke, played by standardized patients with mannequins.

In LEAP, you follow assigned patients and meet monthly with faculty and other students to reflect on what you see. Its goals include linking basic science to clinical experience and understanding what patients face in the health system. When a patient event clashes with class, LEAP rules set priorities, and you still need permission to miss the class and a plan to make it up.

Beyond the required curriculum, you can volunteer at the Weill Cornell Community Clinic, a student-led clinic giving free or low-cost primary care to uninsured adults under an attending physician. Psychiatry faculty also supervise students at the student-run Weill Cornell Center for Human Rights. Career advising lists shadowing as an option in Phases 1 and 2.

Once clerkships start, you may take histories, examine patients and discuss plans with them when a supervisor is in the hospital and immediately available. Findings you enter in the record must be co-signed within 24 hours. Sensitive examinations, consent, procedures such as drawing blood or suturing, and entering orders need a supervisor at your side, and orders count only once co-signed.

Clerkship duty hours are capped at 80 a week, averaged over four weeks, with at least one full day off each week. On shift-based rotations such as emergency medicine, a shift lasts at most 12 hours, followed by at least 10 hours off, or 12 after a night shift.

Phase 1 courses are graded pass/fail and assessed through weekly quizzes, your performance in small groups and clinical skills assessments, and HID 1 adds clinical reasoning exams. You must pass every learning unit to pass a course. A Marginal is a temporary grade for below-standard work: it becomes a Pass if you complete remedial work satisfactorily and a Fail if not.

Clerkships are graded Honors, High Pass, Pass or Fail, except anesthesiology/critical care and emergency medicine, which are pass/fail. Seven clerkships include a subject exam from the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME), a standardized written test often called a shelf exam. Electives and all Phase 3 courses are pass/fail, and grades carry no numerical value, so they are never averaged into a GPA.

Courses and clerkships of four weeks or more give formative feedback, which supports learning without counting toward your grade. It comes by the midpoint, and on clerkships in a scheduled meeting. Each clerkship's comments are combined into one narrative. Your MSPE lists every core clerkship completed by June of year 3, with its grade and that narrative.

To graduate you must pass every required course, complete 16 weeks of electives, complete three milestone Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) and take USMLE Step 1 and Step 2 CK. In an OSCE you move through timed stations, each testing one clinical task. Step 1 has been reported only as pass or fail since January 2022, while Step 2 CK still gets a three-digit score.

School policy says you must take Step 1 by December 31 of year 3 and Step 2 CK before March 15 of the year you graduate. Passing is not a graduation requirement, but you will need to pass both on the path to a US medical license. In August 2026 the USMLE program announced a move to designated testing dates from January 2029, with Step exams offered less often each year. The start had already moved once, from 2028, and the change reaches students entering in 2027.

For a 2027 entrant, the Class of 2031, the following is our arithmetic from earlier classes' calendars and the advancement policy, not a published schedule. Phase 1 would end in December 2028, and the clerkship year would fill 2029, with Step 1 due by December 31, 2029. The Step 2 CK block would open Phase 3 in about January 2030, with Step 2 CK due before March 15, 2031, ahead of graduation that May. On the current schedule, both Steps fall after the January 2029 change.

• Clerkship assessments vary: oral exams in psychiatry and surgery, an oral presentation in obstetrics and gynecology, evidence-based medicine assignments in neurology and pediatrics, and case write-ups in most.
• Each foundational course runs once a year, so a failed course is retaken when it next runs, which can delay graduation.
• You must normally finish the MD within six years. Failing a repeated course, failing three clerkships or collecting six non-passing grades can lead to dismissal.
• A Marginal or Fail in any earlier required course keeps you from starting the required sub-internship.

Phase 1 is based on the main campus. From the clerkship year, training spreads across NewYork-Presbyterian (NYP) hospitals, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) and Houston Methodist, listed by area below. You can swap a clerkship or its site more than 30 days ahead if enrollment numbers allow.

Department pages, which are undated and may lag the current curriculum, give these clerkship sites. Medicine runs on inpatient services at NYP/Weill Cornell, NYP Queens, NYP Brooklyn Methodist, Houston Methodist and MSK. Surgery is 4 weeks at NYP/Weill Cornell plus 4 at NYP Queens, MSK or Houston Methodist. Obstetrics and gynecology uses NYP/Weill Cornell, Queens, Brooklyn Methodist and Houston Methodist, and ambulatory care has a main-campus track and a Brooklyn Methodist track. Psychiatry names an associate clerkship director for Westchester Behavioral Health.

School shuttles leave the northeast corner of 68th Street and York Avenue at 6:15 am for Brooklyn Methodist, 6:30 am for Queens and 7:30 am for Westchester, returning from Westchester at 5 pm. Public transportation is reimbursed, and a clerkship-year Lyft Pass covers travel to sites from 7 pm to 5:30 am on weekdays and all weekend.

If you are assigned to Houston Methodist, the school reimburses travel to and from Houston and taxi or rideshare trips to the hospital, and provides housing at no cost; rental cars are not covered.

The clinical-sites page (read October 2026) lists seven hospitals. NYP Lower Manhattan Hospital appears only in the June 2026 transportation policy, for emergency medicine clerkship shifts and required sub-internships.

You need at least 16 weeks of electives to graduate. Two weeks come during the clerkship year as a required Weill Cornell elective, meant for exploring an interest rather than auditioning for a specialty. At the end of year 3 you declare your career interest and have a plan of study approved by your specialty advisor. At least four of your 16 weeks must fall outside that specialty.

Department catalogs show the range. Medicine offers point-of-care ultrasound, advanced clinical reasoning and a two-week hospital medicine elective on a non-teaching service, with more direct responsibility. Radiology runs two-week introductory electives and a virtual one open to third- and fourth-years. Obstetrics and gynecology offers four-week electives in high-risk obstetrics, complex benign gynecology and gynecologic oncology, and KiPow, a service-learning elective, sends students into a local public grade school each week.

Away rotations, electives at another institution, are allowed. You follow the host's attendance rules, and its evaluations become part of your Weill Cornell record. With a non-passing grade in a required course, you cannot take international or non-Weill Cornell electives until you pass it, unless the associate dean for academic affairs makes an exception. Electives must be booked before they start, and you can add or drop one up to 30 days ahead.

The Office of International Medical Student Education lists partner programs in 23 countries. Year 4 clinical electives at partner sites usually last four to eight weeks. Options include Kilimanjaro Christian Medical College and Weill Bugando in Tanzania, Christian Medical College Vellore in India and Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, and most sites take one to three students a year. A four-week Austrian elective, usually in February, comes with a travel stipend and housing, and sites in Costa Rica, Ecuador and Peru require Spanish.

In the summer after year 1 you can apply for an 8-week mentored project abroad. Before any international elective you attend a pre-departure workshop and complete an online global health ethics course. The Center for Global Health adds sites in Brazil, Haiti, India, Tanzania, Lebanon and Uganda. Sustained involvement in the global health curriculum is noted in your dean's letter. The admissions FAQ says between a third and a half of students take part in clinical care or research abroad each year.

The Area of Concentration is the program's scholarly requirement. You are assigned an AoC core faculty advisor, explore during your first 18 months and choose a faculty mentor. Late in the fall of year 3 you submit a project proposal, which AoC and other faculty peer review. The six dedicated months come as a four-month block in the spring of year 3 and a two-month block in year 4, followed by a final written report.

AoCs are run by many departments and span laboratory science, clinical practice, population research, health information technology and medical education. A 2017 school article put the number of areas at about 50. The Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute lists seven neuroscience AoCs, from addiction medicine to systems neurology. Others include patient-centered care and health equity, geriatric medicine, palliative medicine and global health, where some students have spent an AoC block of about 8 weeks at an international site.

The Extended Curriculum for Research allows one or two years of full-time research, and a single manuscript of publishable quality can earn an MD with Honors in Research. An MD with Honors in Service recognizes at least a year of leadership in community service. A funded global health research year, through programs such as Fulbright/Fogarty or Doris Duke, is another option, and academic leave for another degree can last up to two academic years.

Linked Cornell master's degrees fit between years 3 and 4. The MD-MBA with Cornell's Johnson School, in Ithaca or at Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island, takes 12 months from May of year 3, and you must finish the medicine and surgery clerkships first. The MD-MPH, 12 months from May, and the MD-MEng, a 30-credit engineering degree with a hands-on project, are taught in Ithaca and start after AoC Block 1.

The Tri-Institutional MD-PhD Program, a Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), is run by Weill Cornell, Rockefeller University and MSK. You arrive on July 1 for a lab rotation and take 18 months of foundational courses, 18 weeks of clerkships and Step 1. Then come 3.5 to 4.5 years of PhD research at one of three graduate schools and a final 18 months of clinical training, with a full-tuition scholarship and a living stipend throughout.

The Margaret and Ian Smith Clinical Skills Center is where you practice clinical skills in a controlled setting. It has a patient simulator suite with high-tech mannequins, 10 outpatient and two inpatient rooms where actor patients play out clinical scenarios, a case study room and conference spaces for study groups.

The Skills Acquisition and Innovation Laboratory (SAIL), opened in 2008 and run jointly by the departments of surgery, anesthesiology and radiology, is open 24 hours a day. Its simulation operating room has a full-body mannequin that breathes, blinks and talks in response to drugs and procedures. There is also a simulated emergency room and a procedural skills lab with tissue models and minimally invasive surgery equipment, and cameras record sessions so you can review your performance.

Advising is one-to-one. In years 1 and 2 an early career faculty advisor, deliberately not matched to any specialty you may favor, helps you settle in and reflect. They play no part in grading, and your conversations stay off your record. In year 3 you are assigned a specialty career advisor, based on your preferences, who guides your fourth-year plan, assesses your competitiveness and suggests residency programs that fit. Career Night each February in Olin Hall brings faculty and residents from each specialty together.

Peer-to-peer mentors support you through the clerkship year. An undated Office of Alumni Relations page describes a Family System that divides the student body into 30 groups of about 15 students from different class years, each with one or two alumni mentors. The Office of Student Affairs supports it with events. If your performance falls short, you receive individual feedback and can be referred for academic support, including a learning specialist who offers tutoring.

The Student Mental Health Program offers free, confidential appointments with psychologists and psychiatrists. You refer yourself, visits are not part of your educational record, and its clinicians have no role in evaluating students. Peers Advocating Wellness (PAWs) are students trained by mental health faculty to talk through problems. A student ombudsperson and the Teacher-Learner Committee handle concerns, including mistreatment. All students are guaranteed school housing.