The CUSM School of Medicine MD program

From the first day of class, basic science and clinical medicine are taught together. The pre-clerkship phase is built from a foundations course and seven organ-system courses, from musculoskeletal and skin to nervous system and behavior. Interdisciplinary faculty teams weave anatomy, histology, embryology, biochemistry, genetics, physiology, nutrition, microbiology, immunology, pathology and pharmacology into these courses, so you learn a system's structure, function, diseases and treatments together.

The school describes its approach as team-based learning in a flipped classroom: you prepare before each session, and class time goes on applying what you learned. The 2024 assessment handbook lists readiness assurance tests, which check your pre-class preparation, among the formative assessments in organ-system courses, the ones used for feedback. Longitudinal courses in clinical skills, health systems, community engagement, Spanish and research run alongside the organ-system courses.

In the clerkship phase, most learning happens on hospital and clinic teams supervised by faculty preceptors and residents. Weekly Core Learning Activities and specialty-specific Engaged Learning Activities revisit foundational science and tie it to clinical practice.

Pre-clerkship classes run Monday to Friday, 8:00 to 5:00, with independent study time built in. A workload policy caps scheduled, faculty-led sessions in each course at an average of 25 hours a week over the year. It expects at least 15 more hours a week of required work outside them, such as preparing for flipped sessions.

A typical week combines flipped sessions in the current organ-system course, a case with your college team, a clinical skills session on the same topic and medical Spanish. A weekly online quiz in USMLE Step 1 style shows your progress, but its score does not count toward your grade.

In most of the 2025 clerkship syllabi for the Class of 2027, a day starts with morning report, where the team discusses cases, then patient rounds, and ends with handover rounds. Specialty teaching falls on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, or a Thursday half-day in surgery. On Wednesdays all clerkship students meet at CUSM for two hours of Core Learning Activities. Teams assign evening, on-call and weekend shifts.

Duty hours follow limits adapted from those for first-year residents. You work no more than 80 hours a week or 24 hours in a row, with at least 8 hours off between shifts and one day in seven free, not always at a weekend. Missing more than three days of a six- or eight-week clerkship, or two days of a four-week one, means making up time.

Anatomy is taught within the organ-system courses. The 2026-27 catalog describes a cadaver laboratory for dissection-based learning: 10 dissecting tables arranged around an island, room for up to 65 students and refrigerated storage for 20 donors. A touchscreen at each table runs guided and self-directed lab sessions.

You also learn from prosections, donor specimens dissected in advance and then plastinated or preserved, with a full donor library. Virtual anatomy software and videos accompany each lab, and the labs also teach radiographic and ultrasound imaging. The technical standards you sign include being able to take part in cadaver dissection and lab work, with or without accommodations.

Before your first lab session you sign an agreement that includes treating donors with respect at all times. Photography is banned, and phones, laptops and other devices with cameras stay outside the lab.

Surgical and Procedural Anatomy (SURG-8411), an optional four-week, three-credit course in the Professional Development Semester, uses unembalmed donors. The June 2025 faculty newsletter reports that in that May's offering, students acted as primary surgeons, with surgeons and anatomists present. They performed procedures such as cricothyrotomy, chest tube placement, vascular dissection and coronary artery bypass grafting.

Your first clinical encounters are simulated. In the first semester's Simulated Patient Care Clinic you interview and examine standardized patients in exam rooms whose cameras record each encounter for feedback. Simulation moves to hospital scenarios in the second semester and an Advanced Hospital Rounds Program of complex cases in the third.

Community contact starts in Year 1 too. At your CHANGE partner nonprofit, someone from that organization supervises you on site. The Vida medical Spanish program also links volunteers with local organizations, mobile clinics and health fairs serving Spanish-speaking patients across the Inland Empire.

Clerkships, where you help care for patients on hospital and clinic teams, begin in January of Year 2, or July of Year 3 if your Professional Development Semester comes first. The 2026-27 catalog also lists a one-credit Clerkship Boot Camp, open once you have passed every pre-clerkship course. It rehearses full histories and examinations, note-writing and presenting on rounds, and ends with an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE), a circuit of timed stations scoring your clinical skills.

Pre-clerkship courses are pass/fail, with 70 percent as the pass mark. Summative assessments, the ones that count, include an end-of-course multiple-choice exam, lab exams, case presentations and professionalism ratings, plus midterms in some courses. Clinical skills holds OSCEs at regular intervals, and the Spanish courses use them too. If you fail a pre-clerkship course, you retake the assessment after the semester ends, and you can sit Step 1 only once that remediation is passed.

Clerkships and most Year 4 rotations are graded Honors (90 to 100), High Pass (80 to under 90), Pass (70 to under 80) or Fail. The 2025 syllabi for the Class of 2027 built a core clerkship grade from five parts. Preceptor evaluations counted 30 percent, the shelf exam and OSCE 25 each, and patient logs and Core Learning Activities 10 each.

Step 1 of the USMLE, on the science behind medicine, has been reported only as pass or fail since January 26, 2022. Step 2 CK (Clinical Knowledge) still gives a three-digit score. CUSM requires you to pass both to graduate, with scores posted two weeks before the September residency application deadline. Step 1 before clerkships is encouraged, not required, and you may sit it during a clerkship, missing at most two days.

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 notice had named 2028. Dates are to be published more than a year before each calendar year, and the USMLE has urged schools to review rules that restrict when students test.

On the current schedule, a July 2027 entrant finishes pre-clerkship courses in December 2028. The board-preparation semester, your dedicated time for Step study, then runs January to June 2029 (Option 1), July to December 2029 (Option 3) or January to June 2030 (Option 2). Passing scores for both Steps would be due two weeks before the September 2030 application deadline. Every option puts that semester in or after January 2029, when designated testing dates begin.

• In the 2025 syllabi, dual-pass clerkships counted the higher of your two shelf scores and of your two OSCE results. Passing also required a passing shelf score and at least 70 percent on the final OSCE.
• A clerkship grade earned after remediation cannot exceed High Pass. Failing one course or clerkship after remediation brings a recommendation to repeat it; failing two or more can mean repeating the year or dismissal.
• Not passing Step 1 or Step 2 CK in a timely manner is one ground for academic probation.
• In the 2025-26 syllabi, preceptor evaluations made up 80 percent of a sub-internship grade and all of a clinical elective grade. Some Year 4 electives are pass/fail.

Core clinical training happens primarily at ARMC, at 402 North Pepper Avenue in Colton, which the catalog describes as a 456-bed hospital. ARMC's own pages report more than 4,000 employees, 400 physicians and more than 60 specialty services. Each year it sees about 90,000 emergency patients, 250,000 outpatient visits and more than 25,000 admissions.

ARMC's graduate medical education page lists 11 residency programs and five fellowships, with more than 230 residency positions; CUSM's MD page says ten residency programs. ARMC also takes students from Loma Linda University, St. George's University, the University of California, Riverside and Western University of Health Sciences.

The 2026-27 handbook names 15 more clerkship sites, from hospitals such as Riverside Community Hospital and Eisenhower Health to group practices. It adds that smaller Southern California sites are used less often and that new sites are added. The curriculum page's list also names Interim Psychiatric Care, Mission Community Hospital and Kidstrong Medical Group. Some clerkship time is spent in outpatient practices.

You must travel to whichever affiliated site you are assigned. Before clerkships you rank your preferred rotation order in the OASIS scheduling system, and the Office of Medical Education runs the lottery three to four months ahead. You then have a week to swap with classmates. For rotations more than 35 miles from campus, CUSM provides housing: a house, an apartment or a hotel room.

CUSM does not provide student housing near campus; the catalog points to more than 20 apartment complexes nearby. Public transport around Colton is limited, mostly local Omnitrans buses, and campus parking is first come, first served.

Pre-clerkship electives run in the summer break after Year 1. A one-credit Healthcare Administration elective, covering hospital operations, quality and patient safety, health law and finance, is open from Year 2. In the clerkship phase, electives sit in the Professional Development Semester rather than the clerkship year.

Year 4 holds 26 weeks of electives in blocks of 2 to 4 weeks. Clinical electives put you on a team in a field that interests you. Non-clinical electives, approved in advance, cover research, scholarly activity or professional training; the curriculum page's examples include a teaching elective and advanced medical Spanish.

To keep Year 4 broad, no more than 16 weeks of clinical electives may be in one specialty. The school strongly encourages one elective in your intended specialty, one outside it, and one service elective in global or public health, in resource-challenged settings at home or abroad.

Most electives are at CUSM's affiliated sites, but you can also take away rotations at other institutions. One route is Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO), a service of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). The number of away weeks allowed is announced before Year 4 scheduling, and international electives are offered when possible.

Research is part of the core curriculum. In Academic Research Study I, in the spring of Year 1, your college team of five or six designs a study using a public clinical dataset, mentored by college faculty. You complete human-subjects research training and a mock application to an Institutional Review Board (IRB), the committee that approves research on people. In Academic Research Study II, in the fall of Year 2, the team analyzes its data and presents a poster.

You can also apply in Year 1 to one of 15 optional Scholars Programs, usually running from the second semester of Year 1 to the end of Year 3. Each combines an education stage, a practicum of at least 30 hours and a capstone, such as a presentation or publication. Topics include basic science, biostatistics, global health equity, addiction medicine, point-of-care ultrasound and lifestyle medicine. Rural Medicine Scholars complete a clinical rotation at a rural partner site.

You may join only one program, and some are built to use the Professional Development Semester. Finishing by the deadline, typically the June before Year 4, earns the distinction of MD Scholar in your Medical Student Performance Evaluation, the dean's letter sent to residency programs.

The Biomedical Research Fellowship offers laboratory research in CUSM's research lab for four consecutive semesters, from Year 1 through the Professional Development Semester, at 8 to 12 hours a week. Fellows receive a $4,000 scholarship each semester and support for a national conference and a journal publication. First-year students with research experience apply by September 15.

There is also a seven-week summer research program with a stipend for first-year students, and grants of up to $1,000 a project. An external research elective gives 1 to 6 credits for research programs elsewhere, outside the credits needed to graduate. A leave of absence, which can be for scholarly enrichment, may total two years, within a six-year limit for the degree.

The school building in Colton, more than 85,000 square feet, opened in July 2020. MD classes meet in lecture halls called Learning Studios that seat more than 130. Each college has its own classroom, 12 in all, which doubles as study space after hours. You receive a laptop at orientation, and required textbooks are provided online.

The Clinical Skills and Simulation Center has 15 examination rooms with multi-camera recording, four high-fidelity simulation labs with advanced manikins, a central monitoring room and three debriefing rooms. Training uses an electronic health record system, AI-generated feedback on your performance, and virtual and augmented reality for procedures. Interprofessional sessions bring medical, nursing and pharmacy students together.

The histology lab holds up to 72 students, and the research facility has more than 3,250 square feet of lab space for up to four principal investigators' teams. The Information Commons, the library, is on the first floor, with round-the-clock reference chat. There is also a 24-hour fitness center and a prayer and meditation room.

In September 2025 CUSM announced a grant from Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation for M-PATH, its Mobile Program for Advancing Training in Healthcare. The program embeds students in rural clinics and community hospitals in high-need areas, with high-fidelity simulation on site.

Your college is your home base. Each has four student teams, two from Year 1 and two from Year 2, guided by four Core College Faculty, physicians and PhD scientists. Alternate and visiting faculty add specialist views. You stay in your college through the clerkships and Year 4.

In the pre-clerkship phase you also have a faculty advisor, who sees your academic record. You meet two or three times a semester, before the midpoint of each organ-system course, to review your results, study habits and well-being. From the Professional Development Semester, the Office of Personal, Academic and Career Excellence (PACE) provides academic coaching, tutoring, USMLE preparation and residency application help. Its counselors play no part in grading or promotion decisions.

Peer tutoring is free. Career advising follows the AAMC's Careers in Medicine model: every student completes its specialty assessments, followed by resident and specialty panels and application workshops. The Director of Counseling and Wellness offers one-to-one appointments, and a 24-hour Student Assistance Plan connects you with licensed counselors by phone or video, with up to three free visits.

Students run more than 80 registered organizations, each with a faculty advisor, from family medicine and pediatrics groups to street medicine and rural health.