The University of Louisville School of Medicine MD program

Rather than separate classes in anatomy, biochemistry or pharmacology, each preclinical course blends several disciplines. UofL began this redesign in 2011. In October 2015 it reported that the LCME had lifted the school's probation after reforms that included moving to this integrated model and renovating its teaching building.

In year 1, CADE pairs anatomy with physical examination, and the spring course turns to molecules, cells and the body's defenses. Year 2's Human Systems courses take each organ system from normal function to disease, pathology, infection and drug treatment.

Policy caps lecture at half of years 1 and 2, and every course must include engaged learning. Graded problem-based learning (PBL) sessions run through both years to build self-directed learning. You work out what a case requires you to learn, find and judge the evidence, and get feedback on how well you did it.

ICM runs alongside the science courses, covering interviewing, examination, professionalism, ethics, health systems and health law. As described in 2025, its Interdisciplinary Clinical Cases small groups kept the same faculty member for both years and met monthly, joined by members of community advocacy groups.

In years 1 and 2 you are expected to be available from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. The scheduling guideline averages 20 hours of contact time a week, counting classes and required assignments set outside class but not exams. The Bulletin's credit-hour policy also assumes an average of 40 hours a week of your own study.

A fall week in year 1 centers on CADE; as the school described it in 2025, you are in the anatomy lab three times a week. Around it sit PBL and team-based learning, online modules, ICM small groups, standardized patient sessions and shadowing. The same description stresses weekly team-based learning in year 2.

Clerkship weeks are longer. The credit-hour policy puts clinical work at 40 to 80 hours a week, depending on specialty, season and patient needs. Duty hours are capped at 80 a week averaged over four weeks. You spend no more than 24 hours on site at a stretch, plus up to four for handover and teaching, and get on average one day off in seven.

Anatomy is concentrated in CADE, the 19-week course that fills the fall of year 1. It integrates gross anatomy, embryology and physical examination by body region, and it includes practical exams as well as written ones.

Teaching uses bodies given through the Willed Body Program, the university's whole-body donation program, studied in the gross anatomy lab in the Instructional Building. The technical standards that every student attests to, approved in May 2026, list dissection of cadavers among the lab activities you must be able to take part in.

UofL's former teaching-methods page, last archived in October 2025, gave more detail; its address now redirects to the school's new website. That page said students met their assigned donor in orientation week and began dissecting in the first week. It described teams of six sharing a donor and working in the lab three times a week through the fall. It said students were assessed on evidence-based presentations of their findings and on identifying structures on every donor in the lab.

An anatomy faculty profile also describes Anatomy in the Evening sessions for first-year students, with fresh-tissue prosections (specimens dissected in advance) and demonstrations. Each spring, students from medicine, dentistry and audiology honor the donors at a public ceremony with speeches, poetry, letters and music.

You start working with standardized patients in year 1. They give feedback on your history-taking, examination and communication, and encounters can be recorded for review with faculty. First- and second-year students wear white coats whenever they meet patients.

ICM 1 adds real clinical settings through required community-based shadowing or preceptorship experiences, where you follow a working physician. You also begin practicing motivational interviewing and behavior-change counseling, including conversations with patients about weight.

In year 2, ICM 2 ends with an OSCE, an exam in which you rotate through timed stations with standardized patients. A pilot Longitudinal Ambulatory Clinic course places about half the class with community physicians at free clinics, diagnosing and treating patients.

Full-time clinical work starts in late June on the current calendar. In each clerkship you log a required list of diagnoses and procedures at least weekly. Each has a minimum level of involvement, from observing to performing under direct supervision.

Under the policy revised in August 2026, students from the Class of 2030 onward, including 2027 entrants, get Honors, High Pass, Pass or Fail in preclinical courses of four or more credit hours. ICM 1 and 2 stay pass/fail. The 2025-26 Bulletin graded all first- and second-year courses pass/fail.

High-stakes assessments, such as exams, NBME custom exams and clinical skills exams, make up 70 to 80 percent of a preclinical course grade. Low-stakes work such as PBL, team-based learning, online modules and quizzes makes up the rest. You need 70 percent overall and a 70 percent exam average to pass. No final is must-pass, and every required course counts toward class rank.

Clerkships are graded Honors, High Pass, Pass or Fail. The NBME shelf exam and clinical evaluations each make up 40 percent of the grade, administrative tasks such as case logs 5 percent and other components 15 percent. Passing needs at least the 4th percentile on the shelf, passing evaluations and a 70 percent average; a failed shelf is retaken at the end of year 3.

USMLE Step 1, the licensing exam on the basic sciences, has been reported only as pass or fail since January 26, 2022. You must pass it before progressing in year 3. You submit two timed NBME practice exams: reach that year's cutoff and you test before third-year orientation; otherwise you may be allowed a Directed Studies elective that delays your first clerkship. You have up to three attempts in 12 months.

Step 2 CK, the clinical knowledge exam, comes once all year 1 to 3 courses and rotations are complete. It must be attempted before the last semester of year 4 and passed to graduate. 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 2027 would sit Step 1 in about May or June 2029, after the switch. Step 2 CK would fall between the end of year 3 in mid-2030 and January 2031, so both exams come under the new model. These are projections from the school's calendar and policies, not published dates.

• Fail one major preclinical course and you may remediate it in a six-week summer block ending in an NBME custom exam, with 70 percent the best grade possible. Only one major course can be remediated in years 1 and 2.
• Scoring more than one standard deviation below the mean on two clerkship OSCEs means remediation with the standardized patient program director.
• The NBME Comprehensive Clinical Science Examination, required at the end of year 3, helps you plan your Step 2 CK study.
• Your MSPE covers preclinical coursework, clerkship evaluations and three noteworthy characteristics you write yourself; electives and fourth-year coursework are left out.
• All degree requirements must be completed within six years of enrolling.

Years 1 and 2 are on the Health Sciences Center campus, and the main clerkship hospitals are nearby in the Louisville Medical Center. UofL Hospital, the main teaching hospital, is immediately east of the school. Jewish Hospital, home to the Heart Hospital and Trager Transplant Center, is a block away, and Norton Children's Hospital and Norton Hospital are within two blocks. The Robley Rex VA Medical Center is about three miles east.

You rank the sites or services you prefer within each clerkship and can ask the clerkship director for a change, with priority for health, accommodation and mistreatment concerns. Each February and August the school compares shelf scores, evaluations, grades, patient logs and work hours across sites to keep each clerkship comparable.

Family medicine includes four weeks with a family physician at a Kentucky AHEC site, rural or urban, in an underserved area. The AHEC network links UofL, the University of Kentucky and eight regional centers. You request a region after a spring orientation; regional coordinators arrange housing if needed, and eligible students get a stipend.

The Trover Campus in Madisonville has offered UofL students their third and fourth years in a rural community since 1998, with room for up to 12 students in each year. Clinical training is based at Baptist Health Deaconess Madisonville. You apply through a separate Trover Rural Track application, and enrollment is settled before you matriculate. An enrolled student can ask to withdraw by contacting the Senior Associate Dean for Student Affairs, who makes the final decision after consulting the medical education deans.

Trover also hosts RMAT, the three-year track for up to two students a year. RMAT students meet all the core objectives of the four-year program in at least 130 weeks of instruction. RMAT-only courses replace the third-year family medicine clerkship and the fourth-year acting internship, palliative care and intensive care rotations.

In July of year 2, RMAT students give free school physicals to sixth graders in two counties near Madisonville designated as health professional shortage areas. Later come four weeks at a free clinic in Hopkins and Webster counties and a six-week rural acting internship.

Electives are not required in years 1 and 2 and do not count toward later requirements, but several are offered for credit. Examples include Mind-Body Medicine, the student-run Hope Clinic for homeless women and children, an evening Elective in Rural Medicine, Street Medicine and Career Exploration, up to four weeks in a specialty you are considering. Approved research and other UofL classes can also earn credit.

Year 4 is largely yours: 26 to 28 weeks of electives, approved by a residency program director, clerkship director, advisory dean or UofL faculty mentor. The Bulletin says roughly 12 to 14 of those weeks usually relate directly to your intended specialty. Up to six weeks of third-year electives can count toward the total, and registration order is set by lottery.

Away rotations, electives at other institutions, can fill up to 16 weeks if you are in good standing, and up to 8 weeks can be online. Global health electives cover clinical work or research abroad and study at a foreign medical school; clinical trips require pre-departure training. Home options include Culinary Medicine and Medical Students as Teachers. The 2026-27 catalog lists AHEC electives, mostly four-week fourth-year rotations in rural Kentucky practices, in 14 specialties, including family medicine, internal medicine, surgery, anesthesiology, radiology and ophthalmology.

UofL offers four dual degrees, and admission to each depends on admission to the MD program. The MD/PhD, run as the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), takes about seven to eight years: two preclinical years, Step 1, typically three to four years of PhD research, then the clinical years. The program reports a 10-year average of 7.7 years, with full tuition remission and a stipend.

The PhD can be in anatomical sciences and neurobiology, pharmacology and toxicology, microbiology and immunology, biochemistry and molecular genetics, or physiology. You can rotate through labs you are considering for your dissertation before and after year 1, and current UofL students can join after year 2.

The five-year MD/MBA adds a full-time MBA year, placed between years 2 and 3 in the Bulletin's plan, with the application made in year 2. The Bulletin also allows the MBA after year 3. The MD/MPH begins with a 12-credit online public health certificate in the summer after year 1 and finishes with the MPH in a gap year between years 3 and 4.

The MD/MA adds a 33-credit master's in bioethics and medical humanities, which the Bulletin lists under applied philosophy and healthcare ethics. It takes five years, with one year away from the MD before year 1 or after year 3, and includes an individualized capstone internship.

Without a second degree, you can join the Summer Research Scholar Program, a 10-week, full-time mentored project of about 350 hours between years 1 and 2. You can also join one of seven Distinction Tracks: Research, Physician-Scientist Development, Medical Education, Business and Leadership, Global and Public Health, Urban Primary Care, or Medicine and Social Impact.

You apply in spring of year 1, or in the summer after it for the Research track. Each track runs for several years with a mentor and ends in a scholarly product. You can join only one and must stay in good academic standing, including passing Step 1 on the first attempt. About 20 percent of students are enrolled.

Preclinical life centers on the three-story Instructional Building, with three auditoriums, two collaborative lecture halls, 20 small-group rooms, study space and the gross anatomy lab. It underwent significant renovations in 2014.

On its third floor, the Alumni Center for Medical Education houses the John M. and Dorothy S. Paris Patient Simulation Center. Its computer-driven manikins can reproduce a patient of any age and realistic disease states. The same center holds the Standardized Patient Clinic, whose 12 equipped exam rooms are used for teaching and high-stakes exams.

The Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, connected to the complex, is open 24 hours. A new six-story Health Sciences Building with extensive simulation space, shared with dentistry, nursing and public health, broke ground on April 21, 2026, with completion expected in 2029.

At matriculation you join one of six Advisory Colleges (Moore, Bodine, Fitzbutler, Gross, Ganzel or Pickett), each named for a past dean or historical figure tied to the school. You also get a mentor from the class above. Events such as the College Cup, Dinner with the Deans and ULSOM Outreach Day mix students across the four years.

Since 2007-08 each student has had an Advisory Dean for advice on wellness, study skills, Step preparation, interviews and specialty choice, and advisory deans play no part in grading their advisees. You keep the same Advisory Dean through medical school unless that dean leaves the role.

The Learning Team in Medical Student Affairs offers learning coaching and tracks every student's progress. It also supports students with learning difficulties and a tutoring program called LEAD Tutor, and it runs board preparation workshops and peer-led programs.

Career planning runs from year 1 to Match Day and includes required sessions of Careers in Medicine, the career-planning program of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). You also meet one to one with an associate dean in year 3 and have mock interviews in year 4. Alpha Omega Alpha elects students in years 3 and 4, and the Gold Humanism Honor Society in the spring of year 3.