The University of Kansas School of Medicine MD program

Phase I is built from nine blocks. Apart from the three-week Introduction to Doctoring that opens year 1 and the four-week Transition to Clerkships that closes year 2, each block lasts nine weeks. The ninth week is kept for scholarship, remediation and enrichment; these Scholarly Enrichment and Reflection (SER) weeks support research and professional development.

Blocks are multidisciplinary, taught by foundational science and clinical faculty, and combine foundational, social and clinical sciences. KU describes ACE as active learning: you learn to judge your own learning needs and plan how to meet them.

All three campuses teach the same curriculum, and teaching is shared between them. In Salina, lectures arrive by interactive televideo, with podcasts available, and on-site basic scientists are backed by experts in Kansas City. KU's Wichita campus described a similar pattern in 2025: lectures typically come remotely from Kansas City, while Wichita faculty work with first- and second-year students in their home rooms.

Phase II puts you on clinical teams, with rotations on teaching services, teaching rounds and departmental case conferences. Transition to Clerkships prepares you through case-based interactive lectures, illness-script sessions on how diseases typically present, journal club, simulation and skill stations.

Under KU's policy on pre-clerkship hours, each Phase I block is divided into two-week units, and each unit holds three CBCL sessions and, on average, seven flipped classroom sessions. Each session comes with about an hour of pre-work, so expect around 5 hours of preparation a week.

Scheduled contact time averages 15 hours a week, which with pre-work makes about 20 hours of required work. The policy caps both averages, at 5 hours of pre-work and 15 hours of required activities a week. Summative exams, the ones that count toward progression, come every two weeks.

Cadaver dissection is required at KU. First-year students spend two semesters in the anatomy lab, and KU says donors are used in the first- and second-year curriculum.

In Kansas City, eight students share each donor for a semester and alternate days, so four work at the table at a time. On the first day you start by observing your donor for scars, calluses or wasted muscles that hint at how the person lived. You are told only the donor's age, gender and cause of death. Instructors also teach procedures on the donors, such as practice injections into arm and leg muscles, one rehearsing how anti-spasticity medicine is given.

The Kansas City lab, on the fourth floor of Orr-Major Hall, opened in 2020. Its 4,800 square feet hold 30 tables, each with overhead surgical lights, a monitor and its own downdraft ventilation, and two teaching stations stream demonstrations to screens around the room.

Salina has three dissection tables, two for first- and second-year students and one for clerkships when needed. Wichita students currently share the cadaver lab at Newman University; a 12-table lab is planned at the Wichita Biomedical Campus, due to open to students in fall 2027.

Before new students first meet their donors each year, KU holds a Willed Body Tribute, a memorial service for donors' families. At the September 2025 tribute, first-year students sat among the families.

Your first patients are standardized patients. Introduction to Doctoring teaches you to take a medical history and perform a head-to-toe exam, along with basic life support and the electronic medical record. Every Phase I block then includes clinical skills sessions such as simulations and objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs), timed stations where an examiner watches you carry out clinical tasks.

Real patients can come in year 1 if you choose them. Rural Enrichment Week, offered through the SER lottery, places you for a week with a family physician in a rural practice at least 45 miles from Kansas City, Kansas. You see clinic, hospital and emergency care, keep a daily diary and write a one-page reflection.

Faculty-supervised, student-run clinics add more. The JayDoc Free Clinic serves about 2,000 uninsured Wyandotte County patients a year. Wichita students run the JayDoc Community Clinic, and KU students also train at the BullDoc Health Clinic at Wyandotte High School. Salina students can help care for residents of Ashby House, a facility for a vulnerable population.

Full-time patient care starts with the year 3 clerkships. Duty-hour rules then apply: no more than 80 hours a week averaged over four weeks, one day off a week on average and at least one free weekend every four weeks. You log hours weekly in Jaylog.

Each Phase I block assesses you through multiple-choice exams, small-group and clinical skills performance, and professional development. Faculty write narrative comments after small groups, standardized patient sessions, OSCEs and simulations. To move into year 2, you can fail no more than nine summative exams in year 1.

The newest grading rules in the 2026-27 catalog, written for the class that entered in 2023, grade the foundational blocks, third-year clerkships and fourth year as pass/fail. Class rank comes from total aggregate performance, and you can earn Honors in academics and in clinical skills. Classes entering from 2020 to 2022 had clerkships graded pass with distinction, pass or fail, so check the rules for your own entering class.

In each clerkship, the director meets you at the midpoint to review your progress, duty hours, narrative feedback and patient encounter and procedure logs. At the end, supervising faculty complete a Clinical Performance Assessment with written comments, and a committee of clerkship directors from all campuses tabulates grades. Year 3 ends with the Clinical Skills Assessment (CSA).

To graduate, KU requires you to pass USMLE Step 1 and Step 2 Clinical Knowledge (CK), a one-day exam on applying clinical knowledge to supervised patient care. Step 1, a one-day exam on the sciences behind medicine, has been reported only as pass or fail since January 26, 2022. You take it at the end of year 2, after the seven-week preparation block (KU's pages say after completing year two). You can start year 3 once you have sat it, but a failing score interrupts your clerkships until you pass.

Step 2 CK comes in year 4, after the four-week preparation block that opens the year, and you may sit it only after passing every required clerkship and the CSA. You must meet all graduation requirements within six years of first enrolling, unless the Academic and Professionalism Committee grants an extension.

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. The estimate below uses KU's block lengths, its late-July class start and the late-May fall refund dates that KU's financial aid office lists for third- and fourth-year students. On the current schedule, a 2027 entrant would sit Step 1 in about March or April 2029, a few months after the switch, and Step 2 CK in about June 2030.

• The LCME's directory, updated October 14, 2026, lists the program as fully accredited, with the next survey in 2029-30. All three campuses fall under that single accreditation, which makes students eligible to sit the USMLE.
• KU's last full survey visit, on October 4 to 6, 2021, ended in full accreditation for another eight-year term.

You apply to the one M.D. program, not to a campus. After accepted applicants are notified in February, the Office of Admissions sends a campus preference form, which also asks about extraordinary circumstances that limit where you can live. Campuses are then assigned by institutional need, capacity, and student needs and preferences, with a lottery for oversubscribed campuses. You hear in March. In 2026, 211 students started: 175 in Kansas City, 28 in Wichita and eight in Salina.

Your campus is a condition of the offer and cannot be appealed before you enroll. Afterwards, a change is considered only for an unforeseeable hardship, such as a custody order or a medical need, backed by third-party documentation. Preference, housing, money or distance from family do not qualify. In fall 2026 KU counted 614 M.D. students in Kansas City, 195 in Wichita and 34 in Salina.

Wichita opened in 1971 for third- and fourth-year students and became a full four-year campus in 2011. In 2025 KU said Wichita typically had 28 students in each of years 1 and 2 and about 70 in each of years 3 and 4. The difference is students who spend their first two years in Kansas City and then transfer in.

The 2026-27 catalog says the Wichita Biomedical Campus will open in 2027 alongside a larger Wichita class and the gradual sunsetting of what it calls the 2/2 program. The building is designed for up to 70 Wichita students a year.

At the Salina campus, which opened in 2011, you train in local clinics, rural physicians' offices and Salina Regional Health Center, a 390-bed hospital where more than 120 physicians practice across all specialties. Students also take part in the Smoky Hill Family Medicine Residency Program, and KU puts the physician-to-student ratio at over 4 to 1.

During rural rotations, the host site or community is expected to provide housing, so you do not keep two homes, and many hospitals let students eat free or at a reduced rate. In year 3 you can also do part, or sometimes all, of four clerkships at rural sites. The first four lengths below come from the rural office's page, which names the Kansas City clerkship teams:

• Family medicine: six weeks, with the first and last weeks of the rotation at KU for orientation and testing.
• Obstetrics and gynecology: two-week rotations.
• Pediatrics: two, four or six weeks.
• Surgery: three weeks at a rural site, for students selected from those interested.
• The 2026-27 catalog gives a shorter range, 2 to 4 weeks on-site depending on the clerkship, so check lengths with the rural office.

Fourth-year electives fill 20 weeks, or 24 if you met the rural requirement in year 3. At least 12 weeks must be clinical, and no more than 8 credits of non-clinical electives count toward graduation. You choose from electives on all three campuses: the catalog lists 22 areas in Kansas City, from anesthesiology and biochemistry to radiation oncology, and 11 in Wichita.

Away rotations let you work at another hospital or medical school, often one where you hope to train as a resident. You can take up to three. The policy allows at most 12 weeks of electives at institutions outside KU's health system and affiliates, and only 8 of those weeks count toward graduation. KU's year 4 page lists instructions for applying through the Visiting Student Application Service (VSAS).

In Kansas City and Salina you can add a two-week Rural Family Medicine Elective (FAPR 975) after the rural preceptorship, taken by four students a month for two credits. Through KU's partnerships abroad, fourth-year students can take clinical rotations in countries such as Thailand, Ireland, Germany, Zambia, Mexico, Brazil and Spain. In years 1 and 2, a student organization leads spring break trips to Central America.

The summer after year 1 lasts nine weeks, and you can take electives worth up to 4 credit hours. Options include research or clinical training (IDSP 800, four credits for eight weeks), the Summer Clinical Elective (IDSP 845) and an individually planned international experience. STORM combines clinical work with practice-based research in rural primary care. KU-run choices include eight-week research programs at the KU Cancer Center and in cardiology and radiation oncology.

The M.D.-Ph.D. Physician Scientist Training Program, which KU also calls its Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), is supported by a National Institutes of Health training grant. Acceptance admits you to the School of Medicine and graduate studies together, and students spend about seven to eight years in the program, depending on how long their research takes.

The program starts in June, with lab rotations in the summers before and after year 1. You sit Step 1 in year 2 and choose a research mentor by December. The research years, shown as years 3 to 5 though their length varies, center on your dissertation, and up to eight research credit hours count toward M.D. electives. You then return to medical school for years 3 and 4.

The five-year M.D./MPH adds a Master of Public Health (42 credit hours) in the Public Health Practice concentration. You apply after starting medical school and take a year out, usually between years 2 and 3 or years 3 and 4, from June to the end of the following May. The M.D./MHSA adds a Master of Health Services Administration in five years. Its 2017 program sheet places the MHSA year at the same two points, with 39 credits in subjects such as health care economics, finance, policy and law.

Certificates of Distinction let you follow an interest alongside the M.D. There are eight: Bioethics and Humanities, Global Health, Community Health and Service, Health Systems Science, Leadership and Education in Medicine, Lifestyle Medicine, Research and Rural Medicine. Each involves relevant activities, a project proposal and a final project. Completion appears on your transcript and in your Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), the dean's letter sent with residency applications.

Research also fits into the SER weeks and the summer after year 1. The Summer Research Training Program takes you from a literature review to written and oral presentations at the Student Research Forum; it is taken for credit, and some slots are paid.

In Kansas City, the Health Education Building, opened for the 2017-18 year, is the main teaching building for the schools of Medicine, Nursing and Health Professions. It has learning studios seating up to 225, thirty 10-seat classrooms used as student home rooms, and a clinical skills floor with 17 mock exam rooms, an outpatient lab and a mock home environment.

ZIEL, the Zamierowski Institute for Experiential Learning, is a simulation partnership with The University of Kansas Health System. Its simulation hospital on the building's fourth floor has rooms set up as an operating room, labor and delivery room, intensive care unit, emergency department and recovery unit. ZIEL also runs a simulation center in Sudler Hall.

Wichita students use the George J. Farha Medical Library-Wichita and a Simulation Center focused on interprofessional teamwork. The Wichita Biomedical Campus, an eight-story tower at Broadway and William shared with KU's School of Pharmacy, Wichita State University and WSU Tech, opens to students in fall 2027. KU's floors hold a standardized patient center with 24 exam rooms, two 80-seat lecture halls, 20 home rooms for seven students each, a library and a student center.

Salina's Health Education Center, five blocks north of Salina Regional Health Center downtown, is a former bank converted into 56,000 square feet of teaching space, shared with the School of Nursing. It has classrooms, a clinical skills area with two clinic-style exam rooms, simulation and procedural skills labs, the anatomy lab, study areas, a student lounge and a fitness room.

Learning communities at KU sit within a societies program, started in 1999 with the KU Medical Alumni Society. Each society is named after a notable alumnus or school leader: Avery-Curtis, Cates, Fitzsimons, Holmes, Schrepfer and Williams in Kansas City, Lukert in Salina and Jager in Wichita, where Sweet begins in 2027. You receive your society pin at the White Coat Ceremony.

A society is made up of four learning communities of seven or eight students; Salina has one learning community per class. You meet your coach at least twice in every nine-week block of years 1 and 2 to review your exam results and narrative comments, and twice a year in year 3. Coaches point you to academic, professional development and counseling help when you need it.

Society student leaders run monthly lunch meetings on topics such as stress relief and the humanities, plus off-campus events. In Kansas City the six societies compete each year for a Society Cup, which starts with Society Field Day in October.

KU Medical Center's Counseling and Educational Support Services offers counseling, psychiatric evaluation and medication management, study and test-taking help, and writing specialists. Salina students can also use a local counseling service, see counselors who visit once or twice a semester, or connect by secure video. Wichita has a one-stop Academic and Student Affairs office.