The Howard University College of Medicine MD program

The College describes years 1 and 2 as an integrated curriculum. Rather than a separate course for each science, you take units that combine them: Molecules and Cells and Structure and Function in year 1, then six Organ Systems units in year 2.

Scheduled class time in years 1 and 2 is lectures, team-based learning (TBL) and small-group learning (SGL). The College's list of teaching methods also includes problem-based learning, case-based discussions, standardized patients, simulation and self-directed learning. Each course starts with learning objectives that you research and study on your own.

Alongside the science units, Population Health+ teaches population health, health systems, and clinical and communication skills, and Introduction to Clinical Medicine teaches physical diagnosis. One of the College's 13 educational objectives for the MD is awareness of the need to address and resolve health disparities at all levels.

From year 3 you learn on clinical teams. An attending physician keeps medical and legal responsibility for every patient, though some day-to-day supervision may pass to residents. By graduation the College aims for every student to be able to perform the 13 Core Entrustable Professional Activities of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). These include handing over a patient, obtaining informed consent and placing an intravenous catheter.

In years 1 and 2, scheduled class time, meaning lectures, team-based and small-group sessions and other required contact with faculty, is limited to about 24 hours a week, averaged over each unit. On top of that, Population Health+ meets on Tuesday afternoons in year 1, and Introduction to Clinical Medicine meets for about four hours a week in year 2. Attendance is required at all of these sessions, lectures included, and every educational and clinical session in years 3 and 4 is mandatory.

The College estimates two hours of preparation for every hour of lecture, team-based or small-group learning, and one hour for every hour of lab. That time goes on assigned reading, cases for class discussion, flipped-classroom preparation and online modules.

Exams are frequent. In 2025-26, year 1 and 2 students sat a written exam every two to three weeks, mostly at the testing center on the fourth floor of the Louis Stokes Health Sciences Library.

In years 3 and 4, each department sets the daily hours. Duty is capped at 80 hours a week averaged over four weeks, including in-house call. You get one day in seven free and at least 8 hours between shifts, with call no more than every third night. A shift can last 24 hours, plus four for handover, followed by at least 14 hours off. Some public holidays and spring recess are off only for years 1 and 2.

Anatomy is taught in year 1 through three Structure and Function units, from late October to late April: bones, muscles and skin; then head, neck and nervous system; then the thorax, abdomen and pelvis. Tissue histology is part of Molecules and Cells 1 at the start of the year, and Structure and Function 3 has its own histology exam.

The teaching is cadaver-based. The Department of Anatomy's Anatomical Gifts Program, a whole-body donation program, provides donors for hands-on learning by future physicians, dentists and other health professionals. Most Structure and Function exam days pair a morning written paper with an afternoon lab exam in the Gross Anatomy Lab. To be eligible for a reexamination, you need a weighted average of at least 65% on that course's cadaver lab exams.

The Anatomical Gifts Program describes donors as students' first teachers. Each year the department holds a memorial service to honor donors and their families, with students taking part; the 2026 service was on April 26.

Clinical skills start in year 1, when Population Health+ includes clinical and communication skills development and its first unit is examined partly by a case presentation. In year 2, Introduction to Clinical Medicine brings you together with faculty, standardized patients and real patients, and is examined through OSCEs.

In years 1 and 2, a physician on the College's medical staff, or a resident they delegate, supervises you at all times. Under direct supervision you may take histories, examine patients, analyze clinical data and read records, and you may observe surgery with the patient's and surgeon's consent. You may not write in the permanent medical record or give orders.

Full-time clinical work starts with clerkships in mid-July of year 3, once you have passed Step 1. From then on you can take part in patient care, including procedures, under direct supervision, and write progress notes, histories and physicals, operative notes and discharge summaries marked as student notes.

Grades are tied to fixed scores, not a curve, so in principle every student can earn Honors. A final score of 85 or more is Honors (H), 70 to 84 is Satisfactory (S) and under 70 is Unsatisfactory (U). The College does not issue a grade point average, and professionalism is graded separately, Pass or Fail, each semester.

In years 1 and 2, every exam, from faculty-written papers to customized NBME exams, has a pass mark of 70 and an Honors mark of 85. Faculty set how exams, quizzes and assignments are weighted in each unit.

Clerkship grades combine clinical performance, judged against each department's competencies, with an NBME subject exam, often called a shelf exam, which you must pass with 70. Failing the clinical part means failing the clerkship. Honors requires Honors in every part, shelf exam included. If you reach Honors in the clinical work but not on the shelf exam and average 85 or more, you get High Pass (HP), recorded as 84. HP exists in internal medicine, family medicine, psychiatry, pediatrics, surgery, and obstetrics and gynecology.

Missing more than 10% of active-learning sessions without an excuse costs four points from the final grade and rules out Honors.

Step 1 has been reported only as pass or fail since January 26, 2022. You must pass it to start year 3. With an approved extension you can start in September instead, if your pass arrives a week before clerkships begin. No one starts year 3 after September, and a later pass means waiting until the next July. Step 2 CK must be passed before the rank-list deadline of the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP), or you are withdrawn from the Match. It must also be passed at least 14 days before graduation.

On the current schedule, a 2027 entrant would sit Step 1 around June 2029 and Step 2 CK around August or September 2030, six to eight weeks after year 3 ends. That projection rests on the 2025-26 Schedules Booklet and Policies Manual. 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. On that schedule, both exams would fall after the change.

• Reexaminations in years 1 and 2: up to two a semester, in early January for fall units and about 10 days after the last spring exam. A pass on a reexamination is capped at 70.
• Three or more final failing grades in year 1 or year 2 mean dismissal. With one or two, you may be offered the Summer Directed Study Program (late May to early July in 2026), with the grade capped at 70.
• In years 3 and 4 you may be offered one reexamination for a failed clerkship exam, at its next sitting, capped at 70. Failing two clerkships in one year means dismissal or repeating the year.
• In year 3 you must pass a clinical skills exam run with other regional medical schools. If you fail, you join an enhancement program and must pass a retake before graduating.
• Failing Step 1 or Step 2 CK three times means dismissal.
• You must finish the MD within seven years of starting, leaves of absence included, or you are dismissed. The limit is eight years for the MD/MBA and ten for the MD/PhD.

Howard University Hospital is the College's major teaching facility. It opened in 1975 in the Shaw neighborhood, just south of the College, on the former grounds of Griffith Stadium, once home to the Washington Senators and the Homestead Grays of baseball's Negro leagues. It replaced Freedmen's Hospital, founded in 1862, which moved to the Howard campus in 1869.

The hospital describes itself as a private, nonprofit teaching hospital and a Level I trauma center since 1990. It says it has been the safety-net hospital for the District of Columbia since DC General Hospital closed in 2001. It gives care regardless of ability to pay, including to the uninsured, the underinsured and Medicaid recipients.

Two partner hospitals name Howard on their own sites. Children's National Hospital calls itself the pediatric partner for Howard and George Washington University and accepts third-year students from those two schools into its pediatric clerkship. The Washington DC VA Medical Center offers its internal medicine rotations, with pages for clerkship and acting internship students, only to its four affiliated schools, Howard among them.

You take each rotation at the site you are approved for. To change an assigned site, you ask the clerkship director, who weighs space and feasibility. You can appeal the director's decision to the Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. Changing a rotation without permission means no credit and no liability coverage.

Elective time is not part of year 3. In year 4 you take 16 to 20 weeks of electives, as four or five four-week rotations in clinical specialties or research. You can spend no more than 8 weeks on research and, if you take 16 weeks of electives, no more than 8 in any one specialty or subspecialty.

Electives can be at Howard University Hospital or, with approval, at another institution in the United States, known as away rotations. Most applications for away rotations go through the Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO) service. International electives are possible too, with applications due in June before year 4 (June 15 in 2026). The Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs approves every elective.

You plan year 4 during year 3, from a senior-year orientation in January to a final schedule due in May (2026 dates). Howard's own electives are listed in a Senior Elective Courses booklet published each year.

The College encourages research throughout the four years. Through the Medical Student Research Program (MSRP), its Office of Research connects students with faculty mentors for basic, clinical, translational and collaborative research. Its resources include the Howard University Cancer Center, the Center for Sickle Cell Disease and the Georgetown-Howard Universities Center for Clinical and Translational Science.

The Medical Student Summer Research Program (MSSRP) is open to first-year students in good academic standing who have passed all their first-year exams. The 2026 program was set for seven weeks, May 14 to July 3, and listed 29 faculty projects, from stroke and gestational diabetes to seafood allergy among African Americans in the Washington area. A separate program offers Howard medical students eight weeks of summer research in Stanford Medicine labs.

The MD/PhD, run by the College and the Graduate School, takes about seven or eight years; the College allows up to ten. The PhD runs through the Interdisciplinary Biomedical Sciences (IBMS) program: core courses and at least two lab rotations, then one of five research tracks, in anatomy, biochemistry, microbiology, pharmacology or physiology. You must pass Step 1 before taking leave for the PhD. In August 2026 the IBMS reported four MD/PhD matriculants by April 2026, with one MD/PhD student joining its cohorts in fall 2025 and another in fall 2026.

MD/PhD students, like other Howard PhD students in the biomedical sciences, can also join the HU-CCR Cancer Track, run with the National Cancer Institute's Center for Cancer Research (CCR). You first do at least one lab rotation there, typically 6 to 10 weeks. Then, if the lab's head and your program director agree, you can do all or part of your dissertation research in a CCR lab. CCR's labs are on the National Institutes of Health campuses in Bethesda and Frederick, Maryland.

The five-year MD/MBA with the School of Business is open to a limited number of students. After two or three years of the MD and a pass in Step 1, you take a one-year leave to complete the MBA, then return to finish the MD.

The BS/MD is for students entering Howard's College of Arts and Sciences from high school as biology or chemistry majors, by invitation. Phase I, four semesters and a summer, covers general education, medical school prerequisites, clinical and volunteer experience, seminars and projects. Moving on to the MD is conditional on set grade point averages, an AMCAS medical school application with a minimum MCAT score and an interview. BS/MD students join the regular entering class, the first medical year counts toward the BS, and the MD comes in year six.

The Howard University Simulation and Clinical Skills Center, opened in 2009, is a 12,000-square-foot facility shared by the health sciences colleges. It uses standardized patients, manikins from low to high fidelity, task trainers, computer simulations and virtual reality. Training covers history taking, examination, bedside procedures for adults and children, laparoscopic and ultrasound skills, and neonatal resuscitation.

Sessions are recorded for observation and feedback, and after a clinical skills exam your course or clerkship director asks the center to release the video to you for review. The center has been accredited by the American College of Surgeons as an education institute since 2016 and, from 2026, in human simulation by the Association of Standardized Patient Educators.

The Louis Stokes Health Sciences Library, at 501 W Street NW, covers 80,000 square feet over four floors, with seats for 600. It has eight problem-based learning rooms for up to 10 people, 11 small study rooms, two single rooms for board-exam study and the College of Medicine's Class of 1955 Student Lounge. Its fourth floor holds the Health Science Testing Center, with 130 workstations.

Before year 1, some incoming students chosen by the Admissions Committee take the six-week Preliminary Academic Reinforcement Program (PARP). It covers first-year material, learning skills, counseling and tutoring, and in 2026 was scheduled for May 18 to June 26. For everyone, the Office of Medical Education (OME) gives workshops in orientation week and early in year 1 on problem solving, critical thinking, learning styles and concept mapping, and individual sessions all year. Students who need reinforcement are referred to the OME for academic counseling or group tutoring.

Anyone in academic difficulty must meet the Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and the OME's learning specialist. MedSTAR (Medical Student Taught Academic Review) provides student tutors, chosen for their academic record and personal qualities, mainly for years 1 and 2. In years 3 and 4, clerkship directors and the OME draw up individual plans for students who struggle, and an administrator, a faculty member or you can make the referral.

The College's Spiritual Health and Wellness Center offers brief, short-term therapy, in person or online, only for medical students, alongside University Counseling Services. It is temporarily in room 533 of the Seeley G. Mudd Building, with a new location expected in 2026. The OME can also give you a list of outside psychiatrists and psychologists.

At the Student Health Center on Georgia Avenue, one or more physicians see only medical students. Any clinician who treats you takes no part in assessing you or deciding on your promotion. The Office of Student Affairs and Admissions keeps a list of service-learning opportunities and oversees student organizations.