The Indiana University School of Medicine MD program

Statewide course directors work with site leaders on all nine campuses to build shared teaching and assessments. In Phase 1, each block course, such as Host Defense, runs alongside two courses that last the whole year: Foundations of Clinical Practice (FCP) and Health Systems Science (HSS).

Block courses mix lectures with small-group sessions built on clinical cases, labs, self-directed learning assignments and statewide grand rounds, such as the renal panels in Renal and Respiratory. Nutrition is threaded through several courses and taught most fully in Gastrointestinal System and Nutrition, which registered dietitians help teach.

In Phase 2 you learn mainly by caring for patients on clinical teams, and the school says most clerkships have one student per preceptor. In Phase 3 the emphasis shifts to responsibility: on emergency medicine, for example, you act as the primary caregiver, placing orders for a faculty co-signature.

Anatomy is taught in Human Structure, a nine-week course from mid-August to mid-October of Year 1. It covers gross anatomy, histology and embryology, and trains you to explain the anatomical basis of common conditions and injuries. Embryology lectures follow the matching gross anatomy lectures, and surface anatomy is linked to the examination skills you learn in FCP.

You learn by dissecting donated bodies in assigned groups, using Grant's Dissector as the official instructions. Prosection videos, recordings of specimens already dissected, preview each lab, and peer-teaching guides set out what to cover when students teach each other. After student feedback, gross anatomy labs were lengthened from two hours to three.

The course includes an Introduction to Anatomical Donors session, with a video on the perspectives of donors and their families, and more than 500 practice questions. Anatomy returns in the final-year radiology rotation, which uses imaging to review anatomy, physiology and pathology.

Clinical skills start in the third week of Year 1, when Foundations of Clinical Practice 1 begins. You learn to take a history and examine a patient, practicing on standardized patients, and the course includes clinic visits that you debrief in your small group, plus POCUS and nutrition counseling. Summative OSCEs come in November and from late April to early May.

FCP 2 runs from August to February of Year 2 and builds communication skills before clerkships. Two campus tracks add real patients from the first semester. The rural track's page describes weekly work with a rural physician preceptor and a monthly free clinic. Urban Medicine Program students join a clinic team at a federally qualified health center, a community clinic for underserved patients, and follow the same patients for four years.

In the summer after Year 1, the Hospital Medicine Education program offers four to eight weeks at a community hospital, up to 40 hours a week. Student-led free clinics in Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, South Bend, Terre Haute and West Lafayette let you help care for uninsured patients under physician supervision.

Phase 1 courses are examined several times each: Human Structure has four exam dates in nine weeks for 2027 entrants. Exam scores still count after Step 1 went pass/fail, because the school uses them, with clerkship grades, to decide who is eligible for Alpha Omega Alpha, the national medical honor society.

In FCP 1 the spring OSCE counts separately from the rest of the course grade: you need at least 75% on it and 70% overall to pass. A failed Phase 1 course means four weeks of study for a remediation exam or, if you fail the FCP spring OSCE, a bridge program and another OSCE. Successful remediation shows on your transcript as F/P, a remediated failure.

The CBSE, taken in person on your campus, shapes your Step 1 plan. Under the current Step 1 guide, students whose CBSE predicts a 50% or lower chance of passing get an open block at the start of Phase 2 for extra study. Everyone aims for a 99% predicted chance on two practice exams before sitting Step 1. You must take Step 1 before clerkships, and after a failure you must retake and pass it before going on.

Third-year clerkships are graded Honors, High Pass, Pass or Fail, combining clinical evaluations with an NBME subject exam, often called a shelf exam, at the end of each rotation. Pediatrics, for example, weights clinical evaluations at 50%, the exam at 25% and assignments at 25%. A mid-rotation practice quiz counts for 2 to 3%, and at the end of the year you may retake one shelf exam to raise a grade.

A failed shelf exam is remediated after at least four weeks of study and caps that clerkship at Pass. In late April everyone sits the Comprehensive Clinical Science Exam (CCSE), a practice exam for Step 2 CK, the USMLE's clinical knowledge test. Step 2 CK is a graduation requirement, due by the end of August of Year 4: Aug. 25, 2027 for the Class of 2028. Final-year clerkships, selectives and electives have been graded Satisfactory or Fail since 2023-24.

Step 1 has been reported only as pass or fail for exams taken since January 26, 2022. 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 the current schedule, a student entering in 2027 would take the CBSE on Jan. 8, 2029 and sit Step 1 in the study period from Feb. 24 to April 4, 2029. Step 2 CK would follow by about the end of August 2030, if the school's deadline pattern holds.
• Both Step dates fall after the switch, so the days you can book will depend on the USMLE's testing calendar. The USMLE says it will publish that calendar more than a year ahead, and school calendars may still change.
• The Clinical Performance Exam (CPX), an end-of-clerkship-year OSCE, is held between May and July at the IU Health Simulation Center at Fairbanks Hall in Indianapolis. It also scores your notes, oral presentation and POCUS; results stay off your transcript, but you must pass or remediate it to graduate.
• The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) accredits MD programs in the United States. IU received full accreditation for the maximum eight-year term on Nov. 13, 2025, and the LCME directory, updated Oct. 14, 2026, lists its next survey in 2032-33.
• For MD students, attending an LCME-accredited school is what makes you eligible to sit Step 1 and Step 2 CK. Students at osteopathic (DO) schools and at eligible schools outside the United States qualify through other routes.

After acceptance you rank all nine campuses, and a computerized lottery assigns you based on applicants' rankings and each campus's capacity, with notifications from May. Early Decision Program students commit to their campus for the first three years, though they may be assigned up to three clerkships on another campus. Others can stay for all four years, space permitting, or ask to move for Years 3 and 4.

The school works with over 400 clinical partner sites statewide, and all third-year rotations are in Indiana. Students based in Indianapolis must do some clerkships at regional campuses, as many as four months not counting family medicine, with housing provided. Regional students may take one third-year clerkship in Indianapolis with housing paid, and campuses without inpatient pediatrics may send students elsewhere for it.

Within a clerkship, hospital sites are usually assigned about a month ahead, after the clerkship collects your preferences. In the final year you can transfer campuses if most of your rotations will be there, and regional students get housing for one rotation in Indianapolis. Student numbers below come from the school's fact sheet, which is updated each February.

You need at least 20 weeks of electives, taken across Years 3 and 4, from a catalog of more than 500 courses. At least 12 weeks must be clinical, and at least 12 must be catalog courses rather than special electives you arrange yourself. Most electives last four weeks, and all are graded Satisfactory or Fail.

Catalog electives come in four types: Clinical Practice; Advanced Clinical, where you work as an integrated team member, a good source of residency letters; Advanced Science Research; and Professional Development. A completed scholarly concentration counts as eight weeks of non-clinical credit, and up to two career exploration electives, mostly shadowing, can count.

Using your Year 3 open block for an elective adds a month of open time to Year 4. Year 4 already has two four-week open blocks and one two-week block besides winter break, used for interviews, Step 2 CK or more electives.

Away rotations at other schools are optional, and the school says many of its students do none. You apply through the Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO) service of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) or directly to a host. A special elective request is due at least 30 days ahead, and a host's acceptance does not guarantee IU credit.

International electives are open only to fourth-year students, through approved courses: Medicine in Kenya, Healthcare in Developing Countries, International Research, a Latin America global health elective (ENLACE) and a global health elective in Ghana. The family medicine department describes ENLACE as four weeks in Nicaragua with Spanish classes, a host family and clinical shadowing.

The Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), run with Purdue's Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, awards the MD and a PhD, usually in seven to eight years, and admits about eight students a year. After summer research rotations and Phase 1, you spend about years three to six on the PhD, then return for clerkships.

The MD/MPH with the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health takes four years if you join at admission, starting with three courses the summer before Year 1, or five if you apply in Year 3. Its courses are online. The MD/MBA with the Kelley School of Business starts after Year 3 and adds a year, taken as one expedited year or over two years alongside rotations.

There are also an MD/JD with the McKinney School of Law, master's degrees in fields such as bioethics and biomedical engineering, and a Notre Dame master's in global health within a five-year MD. The Indiana University Medical Student Program for Research and Scholarship (IMPRS), the school's office for student research, supports summer research with mentors and funding. Fort Wayne also runs a nine-week summer research fellowship.

Scholarly concentrations are optional programs that run alongside the MD without adding time or cost, and you can join only one. Each combines an online research fundamentals course, topic courses, a mentored project, a manuscript submitted to a peer-reviewed journal (publication is not required) and a poster at Education Day. Most students start in the summer after Year 1 and must finish by Jan. 31 of Year 4.

You apply in December and January of Year 1, though some regional concentrations recruit on arrival, so the school encourages applicants to favor campuses hosting the ones they want. The 18 current concentrations are listed below.

• Bloomington: Human Sexuality and Health, with the Kinsey Institute; Medical Education.
• Evansville: Quality and Innovation in Health Care.
• Fort Wayne: Health Care Integration and Healthy Aging.
• Indianapolis: Biomedical Research, which requires an IMPRS summer after Year 1; Genetics in Medicine.
• Muncie: Health Promotion and Disease Prevention.
• Northwest-Gary: Urban Medicine and Health Care Disparities, required in the Urban Medicine Program.
• South Bend: Ethics, Equity and Justice.
• Terre Haute: Rural Health, open only to Terre Haute students.
• West Lafayette: Biomedical Engineering and Applied Medical Technology; Care of Hispanic/Latino Patients; One Health and Translational Research.
• Statewide and online: Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, Business of Medicine, Global Health, Public Health, and Religion and Spirituality in Medicine.

In Indianapolis, Phase 1 teaching is based in the Medical Education and Research Building, opened in 2025. It has two 200-seat classrooms, 24 small-group rooms, a gross anatomy lab for 210 students and 46 clinical skills rooms. Each of the 12 learning communities has a suite with lockers, a members-only study area and a kitchenette.

The IU Health Simulation Center at Fairbanks Hall, run by the school, the IU School of Nursing and IU Health, hosts the Clinical Performance Exam. The Ruth Lilly Medical Library serves all nine campuses and delivers print books to yours.

Evansville teaches in the Stone Family Center for Health Sciences, opened in 2018, with a large human structures lab, a virtual hospital and a 12-room virtual clinic. Muncie's Edmund F. Ball Medical Education Center has a 10,000 square foot simulation facility, and Terre Haute uses the Rural Health Innovation Collaborative Simulation Center at Union Hospital.

Support runs through the Mentoring and Advising Program (MAP): academic advising, career mentoring, wellness and connection. Your first-year campus assigns you a lead advisor, a full-time staff member you must meet one-on-one at least three times a year. Lead advisors track your progress, direct you to tutoring and, in Year 4, help prepare your Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), the school's summary letter for residency programs.

Career mentors, usually residency program directors or department heads, help plan Year 4, from electives to Step 2 timing and applications. The school says every student can get academic counseling from people with no role in grading or promoting them, and peer tutors are free.

Every student belongs to a Professional Learning Community, whose physician mentors lead discussions on professional identity and the emotional side of medicine. Indianapolis has 12, each named after a native Indiana tree such as Paw Paw or Redbud, with two physician mentors. In spring 2026 each had 36 students from Years 1 to 3, with plans to grow to 48 across all four years.

Mental Health Services offers confidential counseling on every campus, in person in Indianapolis and by video, with some local services on each regional campus and a 24-hour crisis line. A Wellness Coalition spans all nine campuses.