The FAU Schmidt College of Medicine MD program

Under the Integrated Patient Focused Curriculum, anatomy, physiology, pharmacology and pathology are woven through the courses. Most of the science comes through small-group cases and your own study, backed up by labs, simulations, sessions linking science to clinical problems, and lectures kept to core ideas.

Years 1 and 2 run two strands side by side. The science strand is Fundamentals of Biomedical Science (FBS), Neuroscience and Behavior (NSB) and four Pathophysiology and Therapeutics (PT) courses, each covering a group of body systems. In the four FOM courses you learn interviewing, examination and clinical reasoning: forming possible diagnoses and testing them against the best evidence.

Five threads run through all four years: Health Systems Science; Ethics, Professionalism and Professional Identity; Geriatrics and Healthy Aging; Lifelong Learning and Discovery; and Technology in Medicine, including artificial intelligence. Nutrition is built into courses and clerkships too. In FOM 2 you join interprofessional sessions with students from FAU's College of Nursing and School of Social Work.

From Year 3, learning moves onto clinical teams, with didactic (classroom-style) teaching built into each LIC. Transition to Residency in Year 4 uses simulated scenarios, team-based learning exercises and larger group lectures.

The M.D. program page says a typical week in Years 1 and 2 combines dedicated independent study time, no more than 10 hours of lectures and two to three half days of clinical experiences. The handbook adds that, on average, three half days a week are kept free for independent study.

The college's sample Year 1 week puts lectures on most mornings, with anatomy quizzes and lectures on Monday and an anatomy lab on Tuesday. PBL groups meet on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and Science of Clinical Practice on Thursday. Afternoons are for clinical skills, on Monday and Wednesday, or independent study, and a Friday lunch hour is kept for career planning, wellness or student events.

In the sample Year 2 week, Inquiry cases meet on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, around lectures, Science of Clinical Practice on Tuesday, and lectures or a pathology lab on Thursday. Monday and Wednesday afternoons go to a preceptor or independent study, and Tuesday afternoon to clinical experiences, service learning (community service tied to your coursework) or independent study. Thursday afternoon brings a clinical learning group or advanced clinical skills, and Friday afternoon is for independent study.

Anatomy is taught inside the science courses rather than as a course of its own. FBS includes an introduction to the anatomical sciences, along with histology and embryology, and PT 4 in Year 2 builds on the gross anatomy taught there.

In NSB, in the spring of Year 1, lectures and PBL are combined with anatomy laboratory instruction. Neuroanatomy is taught through clinical cases that lead you to work out where a brain lesion is, and the gross anatomy of the head and neck is tied to clinical problems. Each PT course then covers the anatomy of its body systems, together with histology, physiology and pathology.

Your first patient encounters are with standardized patients in the FOM courses, from your first semester, mostly at the Clinical Skills Simulation Center. The Year 1 calendar adds a Mini-OSCE in October and a history and physical (H&P) OSCE in December. An OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination) is a structured exam with standardized patients that tests your clinical skills.

From the spring semester of Year 1 you regularly take part in direct patient care under the supervision of physician preceptors in the community. PT 3 includes a visit to a dialysis center, and FOM 4's Introduction to Hospital Medicine prepares you for inpatient work.

Full-time clinical work starts with the first LIC in May. On every clerkship you work under a faculty supervisor or a designee, such as a resident. Duty hours follow the limits the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) sets for first-year residents: no more than 80 hours a week, averaged over four weeks, with one day off in seven.

Years 1, 2 and 4 are pass/fail: your transcript shows Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory. Year 3 clerkships are graded Honors, High Satisfactory or Satisfactory, with Unsatisfactory as a fail. Every course, clerkship and rotation is mapped to the eight competencies of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Physician Competency Reference Set, and each syllabus sets out which of them it grades. An Unsatisfactory in any graded competency means failing the course.

A single Satisfactory with Concern grade brings a support plan but shows as Satisfactory on your transcript. Most written exams are secure, timed web-based exams, proctored in a classroom. Formative feedback, which guides you without counting much toward your grade, includes mid-block PBL feedback, low-stakes quizzes worth no more than 5% each and practice OSCE stations.

Clinical skills are checked in ICAs at the end of Years 1 and 2 and twice in Year 3, and you must pass each to progress. Small-group facilitators and clinical preceptors write narrative assessments of your performance. Each Year 3 clerkship director's summary of them goes almost word for word into your Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), the dean's letter for residency applications.

In Year 3 you sit NBME subject exams, or shelf exams, after each LIC. The Year 2 ICA includes the NBME Comprehensive Basic Science Examination, a required self-check for Step 1 that does not affect grades, and you get up to three self-assessment vouchers.

The USMLE is the national licensing exam series for M.D. students. Step 1 covers the sciences behind medicine and has been pass/fail since January 2022; Step 2 CK covers clinical medicine. You must sit Step 1 at least 10 days before Synthesis and Transition starts and pass it to be promoted to Year 3. You may start the first LIC while your score is pending, but a fail withdraws you.

Your first Step 2 CK attempt is due by September 1 of the year before graduation. If you have not passed by the deadline for certifying your residency rank order list, you may be withdrawn from the Match. To graduate on time you need a passing score by April 15.

• On the current schedule, a student who starts in 2027 would sit Step 1 in spring 2029, at the end of Year 2. The first Step 2 CK attempt would be due by September 1, 2030. Both dates follow the 2026-27 calendar, the latest one posted, and the 2026-27 handbook.
• 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. Both of your Step exams would fall after the change.
• The USMLE program has encouraged schools to review policies that restrict when students take the Step exams.
• Delaying Step 1 past the deadline means waiting until the following May to start Year 3, on a one-year leave of absence, with the exam due by July 15. Failing a first attempt also means a year's leave, with the retake due by September 30.
• You may take each Step at most four times. Any failure goes to the Medical Student Promotions and Professional Standards Committee (MSPPSC), and four failures mean dismissal.
• To graduate you must also pass every summative ICA, hold Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) and Basic Life Support (BLS) certification and show consistent professionalism. Everything must be finished within six years of starting, except for M.D./Ph.D. students.
• Numeric medical knowledge scores still count in the pass/fail years. Students whose weighted scores over Years 1 and 2 are in the top 25% of the class are eligible for an Academic Honors commendation in the MSPE.
• For M.D. students, attending an LCME-accredited program is what makes you eligible to sit the USMLE; DO students and international graduates qualify through other routes.

The college calls itself a community-based medical school. The 2026-27 catalog says the Year 3 LICs run at seven affiliated hospitals in Palm Beach and Broward counties.

Year 3 and 4 schedules are built through a lottery, within the academic calendar and curriculum rules. Information sessions in the late fall of Year 2 help you plan your Year 3 LIC schedule, and the handbook asks you to flag planned absences and religious accommodations before you choose.

The LIC outpatient blocks mostly have no night or weekend call. On clerkships and Year 4 rotations, university holidays can still be working days, including call, depending on your clinical site.

The 2026-27 student handbook lists 17 FAU affiliate hospitals and clinics in its protocol for needlestick and other exposure incidents. Five of those hospitals also form the FAU Consortium for Graduate Medical Education, set up in 2011 to train residents: Boca Raton Regional Hospital, Bethesda Hospital East, and Tenet Healthcare's Delray Medical Center, St. Mary's Medical Center and West Boca Medical Center. FAU's residencies with them cover emergency medicine, general surgery, internal medicine, neurology and psychiatry.

Year 3 includes white space time, set aside for your own interests, such as clinical experiences in subspecialties, research or community health projects. The handbook calls these significant periods of unstructured time and suggests planning personal events in them. The catalog lists the elective rotation course (6 to 12 credits) in Year 3, or in Year 4 if you do not take it in Year 3.

Year 4 combines required acting internships with a wide range of selective and elective rotations. Acting internships are called sub-internships at some schools. Selectives give hands-on patient care, under supervision, in specialties you choose, and electives let you explore other fields of medicine. The handbook refers to two- and four-week rotations.

For fourth-year students visiting from other schools, FAU lists four-week acting internships in general surgery and internal medicine. Both place the student on an inpatient team, with admissions, rounds, consultations and discharges, a panel of patients, possible night shifts and one or two weekends a month. The emergency medicine acting internship for visitors is worked in shifts, some at night.

If you take an away rotation, a rotation at another institution, you follow the host's supervision policy. In Year 4 you cannot take personal days during an AI or on blackout dates, and other rotations allow at most 1.5 days in two weeks or three in four.

The M.D./Ph.D. joins FAU's colleges of medicine and science with the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience (MPFI), on FAU's Jupiter campus. You take the Year 1 pre-clinical curriculum at the College of Medicine and start Ph.D. research at MPFI that summer. Coursework and the dissertation, in an MPFI lab, typically take 4 to 5 years, and you then return for the last three years of the M.D.

The Ph.D. is in Integrative Biology, concentrating in Biomedical Sciences or Neuroscience. The M.D./M.B.A. and M.D./M.H.A. are taken with FAU's College of Business, each with at least 30 credits, or 36 for the M.B.A. without its finance and accounting prerequisites. The Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) or Graduate Record Examination (GRE) is waived, and business classes can start as early as the summer after Year 1.

On the M.D./M.S. Biomedical Science thesis track, 24 credits from Years 1 and 2 count toward the master's, and you add at least 6 thesis credits. The college also runs Bachelor's/M.D. programs completed in seven to eight years: Med Direct on the Boca Raton campus, Wilkes Medical Scholars on the Jupiter campus and the FAU High School M.D. Direct Program.

The Research Distinction Track (RDT) is an optional parallel curriculum for up to six students a year. Prerequisites include research training modules and eight weeks of full-time mentored research in the summer after Year 1. You apply in January of Year 2. You then need a manuscript submitted to a peer-reviewed journal by December 1 of Year 4, ideally as first author, and presentations at one local and one regional or national meeting. Completing the RDT earns a Distinction in Research in the commencement program.

You can work with college faculty on research at any time. The Summer M1 Fast Track offers ready-approved summer projects in six tracks: discovery and translational research, cancer prevention, emergency medicine, epidemiology, geriatrics, and physical medicine and rehabilitation. Each track includes a poster at the Medical Student Research and Scholarship Day each February.

The Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine building (BC-71) holds lecture halls, small-group rooms, the anatomy lab and clinical skills rooms. A second building next door (ME-104) has offices, study space and lounges, including the Sam W. Klein Student Hub, with a lounge, wellness room and study rooms for medical students only.

The Clinical Skills Simulation Center (CSSC), on FAU Boulevard in Boca Raton, trains students in all four years. Its labs are set up as hospital patient rooms, exam rooms, intensive care and emergency rooms, surgical suites and skilled nursing units, with more than 20 simulators, including birthing, pediatric and neonatal models.

Medical students use venipuncture trainers to learn to draw blood, skin pads for suturing, intubation heads, and rectal, pelvic, breast and testicular exam trainers, plus the Harvey simulator for heart sounds. The center also runs American Heart Association ACLS, BLS and PALS (Pediatric Advanced Life Support) courses.

FAU's medical library collection is online and in the S.E. Wimberly Library on the Boca Raton campus, and medical librarians keep offices in the College of Medicine.

Learning communities are smaller groups within a class that give you a base for community and mentoring. Every student is assigned at the start to one of two Academic Parliaments, named by the college's first class, the Class of 2015, after Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and Dr. Charles Drew. They support your personal and professional development, peer relationships and self-care.

The faculty handbook calls them Academic Societies, the Elizabeth Blackwell Society and the Charles R. Drew Academic Society, each with a Society Dean. Every new student also gets a second-year peer mentor, matched on goals, specialty interests and outside interests, and you meet at least three times in the year.

Early in Year 1, the Student Affairs deans and the Director of Student Success Services hold check-in meetings with students. The director runs study skills sessions and Step 1, NBME subject exam and Step 2 CK preparation sessions, and oversees free tutoring by upperclassmen for Years 1 and 2.

In Year 3, each clerkship director meets assigned students every two months as a Feedback Mentor. Career advising runs through the MedOwls N.E.S.T. (Navigating and Exploring Specialties and Transitions) program in all four years. It offers career advisors, alumni mentors, Visioning Night in January of Year 3, Mock Interview Day and specialty faculty mentors in 16 fields.

For well-being, the HealthFirst initiative offers wellness resources and activities in the college and around Boca Raton, and duty-hour violations or mistreatment can be reported anonymously. Project Grow, a student-led initiative funded by the Arnold P. Gold Foundation, runs a community garden that gives local residents produce and nutrition education.