The Albert Einstein College of Medicine MD program

Preclerkship courses are interdisciplinary. Each organ-system course combines physiology, pharmacology, pathophysiology, histology and pathology for one part of the body. The teaching links the science to diagnosing, preventing and treating disease, and to the structural determinants of health and health disparities. Longitudinal courses in bioethics, health systems and health equity, and biostatistics and epidemiology run alongside.

Lectures sit alongside active formats: problem-based learning, case conferences, laboratory sessions, clinical encounters, small-group discussions and team-based learning. The applicant guide adds flipped classrooms and case-based learning. In small groups you work through clinical problems of varying complexity, with faculty facilitators to help.

In the clinical phase, teaching moves to wards and clinics, backed by problem-based and team-based learning, case-based discussion and online modules. Every student also gets access to ChatGPT Edu, and the curriculum explores how AI can support learning, research and clinical reasoning while stressing its limits and the need for human judgment.

In the preclerkship phase, Einstein caps required activities at 50 hours a week and leaves at least two half days free. Quizzes and exams are set on Fridays, so weekends are for rest and review, and Thursday afternoons are kept unscheduled for exam preparation. Your Becoming a Physician small group meets every week.

On clinical rotations the cap is 80 hours a week, with required time off between shifts and at least one full day off every week. During the clerkship year you can leave your clinical site after morning duties on designated WellMed Fridays.

Anatomy is taught in Clinical and Developmental Anatomy, a Block 1 course running from August to December of year 1. You attend lectures and learn how the body is built from carefully dissected cadavers in the anatomy lab.

Since August 2025 the course has used the Harry H. Gordon Anatomy Lab and Surgical Skills Center, named for Einstein's second dean. At more than 10,000 square feet it is nearly twice the size of the lab it replaced. The lab has surgery-room-quality lighting, and each of its nine dissection stations has a flexible boom holding a tablet, lights and a dissection kit, plus a 75-inch monitor.

Cameras and ceiling-mounted tablets project fine structures onto large monitors in real time. The course director's example is the thin nerves that run to the eye, once hard to show to a group of seven or eight students. Small groups move between neighboring stations: a lesson on the chest wall and lungs uses one for muscles, one for bones and one for organs. A conference room for 50 students holds two 65-inch Sectra touchscreen tables.

Patient contact starts in year 1 through Becoming a Physician, which pairs small-group skills sessions with clinical experiences. Einstein Magazine reported in 2025 that first-years go to assigned clinical sites in the fall. There they interview hospital patients while a faculty preceptor observes and gives feedback.

In lessons on physical examination and point-of-care ultrasound, classmates can volunteer to be examined, with confidential follow-up from the Student Health Service if something unexpected turns up. Einstein also names the Einstein Community Health Outreach (ECHO) Free Clinic among the places its students train.

Full-time clinical work starts with the clerkships in late March of year 2. You work with attending physicians, fellows, residents, physician assistants, nurse midwives and advanced practice nurses. You take fuller histories and examinations, interpret lab and imaging results, and draw up and evaluate treatment plans under supervision.

Responsibility peaks in the acting internships. At the Children's Hospital at Montefiore Einstein, the main site for pediatric acting internships, you are treated as your patients' primary caregiver under close supervision. You admit, manage and discharge them, write notes and orders, present on rounds and take part in night float and sign-out.

Preclerkship courses are pass/fail, which the applicant guide says is meant to encourage cooperation. To pass, you complete all of a course's requirements and reach its minimum score. Every course also has low- or no-stakes formative assessments, practice questions and quizzes that show how you are doing. Final grades are due within six weeks of a course or clerkship ending.

Exams are written with Step 1 in mind. Instructors add Step 1-style questions through the Customized Assessment Service of the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME), which co-sponsors the USMLE with the Federation of State Medical Boards. You also take the NBME Comprehensive Basic Science Subject Exam to get used to the Step 1 format.

Clerkships, acting internships and clinical electives are graded Honors, High Pass, Pass, Low Pass or Fail, each with a written performance summary. On every required rotation of four weeks or more, a faculty member, fellow or chief resident watches you take key parts of a history and examination. A midcycle feedback session helps you set goals before the rotation ends.

Subject exams, often called shelf exams, are standardized end-of-rotation tests of clinical knowledge, and the academic support office runs a Clerkship & Shelf Prep 101 workshop. You must log the patients you see on required rotations before you can receive a final grade or sit the subject exam. The pediatrics clerkship adds a practice simulation or Observed Structured Clinical Exercise (OSCE) day. An OSCE is usually a circuit of short stations where you perform clinical tasks while being observed.

Step 1 tests the science behind medicine and has been reported only as pass or fail since January 26, 2022; Step 2 CK is still scored. Because the program is LCME-accredited, its students are eligible to sit the USMLE, and passing both is required to graduate. You take Step 1 after the study block at the end of preclerkship, and Step 2 CK after the clerkships, by August 31 of senior year.

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 August 2027 would have the Step 1 study block in about January and February 2029, so Step 1 would fall shortly after the switch. Step 2 CK would follow a clerkship year of about March 2029 to March 2030, with the deadline on August 31, 2030. These dates are projected from the calendars for the classes of 2029 and 2030 and the 2026-2027 applicant guide.

• Einstein's USMLE policy, held on the student intranet, sets the exam timelines, eligibility, when you may postpone and what follows a failure.
• The Clinical Skills Center's recording system is used throughout the curriculum to assess and sharpen your examination and communication skills.

Einstein describes its sites as spanning private, public and government health systems. The applicant guide names Montefiore's Moses, Weiler and Wakefield campuses, the Children's Hospital at Montefiore Einstein and Jacobi Medical Center as the major sites. Jacobi belongs to NYC Health + Hospitals and is a designated adult Level 1 trauma center with a burn center and 457 beds.

Weiler stands on the Einstein campus and Jacobi is close by; Einstein's M.D./Ph.D. program description says many clerkships are done at those two hospitals. The Children's Hospital at Montefiore Einstein says most Einstein students take their six-week pediatrics clerkship there.

Einstein runs a weekday shuttle from campus to the 180th Street subway station and to the Moses Campus. For required activities at sites off the shuttle routes, or outside its hours, you book a car service in advance and share rides where you can. On acting internships you follow the clinical site's schedule, which can include holidays.

In the preclerkship years you can add electives. Medical Spanish has run for first- and second-year students for more than 25 years, at beginning, intermediate and advanced levels. After year 1 you can apply for funding for a summer Spanish program in Central America or Mexico. Medical Mandarin, a one-semester course of 19 sessions, is for students who already speak conversational Mandarin.

Nutrition and Health covers US dietary guidelines, nutrition assessment, popular diets and counseling patients. In Current Topics you research a subject in biochemistry, genetics, pathology or pharmacology, such as cancer immunotherapy, and present it for feedback. Fundamentals of Innovation and Applications in Healthcare is an eight-week course, shared with graduate students, on spotting unmet needs and building solutions.

The clerkship year includes two two-week clinical electives. The applicant guide lists topics such as pathology, radiology, emergency medicine, physical medicine and rehabilitation, dermatology, radiation oncology, anesthesiology, pain management and surgical subspecialties.

The final phase holds 20 weeks of electives, with clinical electives in virtually every department as well as research electives. Away rotations, electives at another medical school, must last four weeks unless the deans for students approve a shorter one. You apply through the Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO) service of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), or the host school's own form.

About 30 seniors a year receive global health travel awards for projects of at least two months, in countries such as Uganda, Ethiopia, Colombia, Chile, India and Brazil. A registrar page that still shows a 2024 deadline lists exchanges, mostly for seniors, with schools in Israel, France, Sweden and Japan. They include the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and Saitama Medical University near Tokyo.

Since January 2026 you can also work toward a Distinction in Global Health. You need at least 10 hours of global health learning and a year or more of sustained project work. You also need a scholarly or applied product, ethics training, a reflection of about 750 to 1,500 words and a final portfolio. Work in the Bronx counts as fully as work abroad.

Every student completes a mentor-guided capstone through the IMPACT course and the Scholarly Impact and Research Program (SIRP). Fields include basic and clinical research, global health, community engagement, health technology and AI, quality improvement and medical education. The Capstone Product can be a research paper, a systematic review, a case report, a bioethics paper, a book, an app, a curriculum or a podcast.

At the 2026 Impact Day, on March 11, students showed 117 posters and gave seven podium talks, the largest showcase since the event began in 2023. By then 59 Class of 2026 projects had been published and 35 more submitted. SIRP also provides fellowship stipends and conference funding, and Einstein awards a Distinction in Research.

In the summer after year 1, nearly two-thirds of students receive fellowship funding for research, global health or community work, including SIRP's six-week Summer Scholarly Fellowship with a stipend. The one-year M.D. Student Research Year Fellowship, unfunded but keeping your student-loan eligibility, usually follows the clerkships.

The M.D./Ph.D. is Einstein's Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), funded continuously by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) since 1964. You start in June with a physiology course and a lab rotation, then combine graduate courses with the M.D. preclerkship. After Step 1 you spend three to four years on Ph.D. research in one of more than 200 labs. You can keep seeing patients one evening a week at the MSTP Continuity Clinic at Jacobi. The 116 graduates of the past decade took 8.4 years on average.

The M.D./M.P.H. takes five years and adds a Master of Public Health from the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy in upper Manhattan. Its page says it is not formally a dual degree: each school's requirements are met separately, and credits do not transfer. If you start in year 1, you take two online courses that summer, then spend year 4 on the M.P.H.; you can also join after year 3. Both schools are reviewing the structure after 2025 federal student-loan changes.

Two other master's degrees take a year. For the M.D./M.S. in Clinical Research, through the Clinical Research Training Program, you study research methods, epidemiology, biostatistics and ethics between the clerkship year and year 4, and write two first-author papers. The online M.S. in Bioethics usually comes between years 3 and 4, and a nine-month Advanced Certificate in Bioethics and Medical Humanities is an alternative.

The Belfer Education Center for Health Sciences holds the main classrooms and Riklis Auditorium, the main lecture hall for first-years. The Leo Forchheimer Medical Science Building has research labs, lecture halls, Robbins Auditorium, the D. Samuel Gottesman Library and student spaces including the Albert's Den lounge and a café.

The Education Center's rooms are designed for both small and large groups. The main lecture halls and the Belfer classrooms were recently upgraded for livestreaming, and when they are not booked you can study in them.

The Van Etten Building holds the clinical training spaces. The Ruth L. Gottesman Clinical Skills Center has 28 clinical examination rooms, a classroom and a standardized patient lounge, plus a system that records your encounters for feedback. Next door, the Montefiore Einstein Center for Innovation in Simulation has a fully equipped operating room and a four-bed emergency department, each with a viewing room behind a one-way mirror. Montefiore trains its residents there too.

Van Etten's first floor also houses the anatomy lab, alongside a simulated operating room with two surgical tables, a student lounge and a locker room.

The Einstein Learning Communities Program gives every student a home base. It was launched in fall 2024, according to the dean's message in the Fall/Winter 2025 issue of Einstein Magazine. On enrolling you join one of four houses, each with six or seven faculty advisors, one of them the house leader, and students from every class year. Within your house you belong to a small group of about six or seven classmates with one advisor, and you stay with that group throughout medical school.

Your advisor teaches your Becoming a Physician sessions and meets you one-on-one several times a year. In your third year, the same advisor helps you choose a specialty, build your residency application and prepare for interviews. A committee of faculty and students selects the advisors, and older students in your house act as near-peers.

The Office of Academic Support and Counseling offers confidential one-on-one help, workshops such as Step Prep Success and Overcoming Imposter Syndrome, review sessions and office hours. Its Peer Support Team pairs you with upper-year students, and peer tutors are available. After a failing or low-pass exam grade you can book a review of what went wrong, and the office also coaches you for Step 1 and Step 2 CK.

Career advising follows the curriculum. Preclerkship students get career nights and speed networking with specialty advisors, clerkship students plan their final year with student affairs deans, and seniors get panels with residency program directors and mock interviews. The Student Mental Health Center gives free, confidential care, including short-term counseling, medication management and group therapy.