The Mercer University School of Medicine MD program

Years 1 and 2 form the preclinical phase. Each semester pairs a PBL block, which carries the basic sciences, with a Medical Practice course in clinical skills. The four blocks last 16 to 17 weeks and are divided into modules of four to six weeks.

Foundations of Medicine, the first block, emphasizes anatomy and clinical skills. The other three take the organ systems in turn, from normal function to disease, diagnosis and treatment.

Within each block, subjects such as anatomy, physiology, pathology and pharmacology are studied together through the cases rather than as separate courses. Ethics, population health and research methods, including statistics, run through the same blocks, with a focus on the needs of rural and other underserved communities.

The curriculum's objectives and assessment tools are identical on every campus, and distance-learning classrooms link Macon, Savannah and Columbus. Interprofessional education, where you learn with students of other health professions, and simulation-based clinical skills activities run through both preclinical years.

From Year 3 the teaching moves into clerkships, where you learn by caring for patients on wards and in clinics under supervision, with seminars in radiology and ethics built in.

Anatomy is concentrated in your first semester. Foundations of Medicine (FOM 600) takes the body region by region over its four modules: the upper limb, the lower limb, the thorax and abdomen, then the pelvis. Histology, the study of tissue under the microscope, and embryology are taught in the same modules.

Macon, Savannah and Columbus each have a gross anatomy lab. The organ-system blocks of Years 1 and 2 return to the normal structure of each system before its diseases.

Clinical skills start within your first few weeks. In Medical Practice 1 you learn to take a full history and do a complete physical exam, from vital signs to the eyes, head and neck, heart, lungs and abdomen. You also learn to write a detailed clinical note.

Skills build each semester: neurological and musculoskeletal exams in Medical Practice 2, focused heart and lung exams in Medical Practice 3, then gastrointestinal and genitourinary exams and breaking bad news in Medical Practice 4. The emphasis moves from a complete exam to a focused one guided by clinical reasoning.

Real patients come in the POH 600 rotation at the end of Year 1, in a rural, medically underserved community, where you take part in clinical practice. Full-time clinical work starts with the Year 3 clerkships in late July, after Step 1.

Everything except the Year 3 core clerkships is graded satisfactory or unsatisfactory on your transcript: Years 1 and 2, the other Year 3 courses and all of Year 4. The six core clerkships are graded honors, high pass, satisfactory or unsatisfactory. You need at least a satisfactory grade in every required course to graduate.

Grades rest on the program's six competencies: patient care and procedural skills, medical knowledge, interpersonal and communication skills, professionalism, practice-based learning and improvement, and systems-based practice. Every course of four weeks or more gives formative evaluations, feedback meant to help you improve rather than to grade you. Classroom exams run on your own laptop using ExamSoft testing software.

During the two-week MPRA 810 course at the end of Year 3, you take the MPRA: you see a series of standardized patients and write notes. You then present and discuss the cases one-on-one with clinical faculty, who give you feedback on your presentation, clinical reasoning and notes. The school reviews each student's performance and decides whether any remediation, extra work to fix a weakness, is needed. The catalog's accelerated-track rules also refer to final NBME shelf exams in clerkships.

The USMLE is the national exam series for medical licensure in the United States. Step 1 tests the sciences basic to medicine and has been reported only as pass or fail since January 26, 2022. Step 2 CK, for Clinical Knowledge, tests the clinical science you need to care for patients under supervision.

To sit Step 1 you must complete all of Year 2, including APS 700 or 701, and you must pass it to start Year 3. The catalog says a student who has not attempted it by the end of the first Year 3 term after becoming eligible, or passed it by the end of the second, is dismissed.

You must pass Step 2 CK to graduate. You become eligible with at least a satisfactory grade in five of the six core clerkships, including internal medicine, and no incomplete or unsatisfactory clerkship. You cannot sit it during a core clerkship.

• Mercer's latest posted calendar is for 2026-27; in 2025-26, late May to late July was set aside for Step 1.
• On the current schedule, a 2027 entrant would sit Step 1 between late May and late July 2029, before Year 3. Step 2 CK would follow the clerkships, which end in spring 2030, before graduation in spring 2031.
• 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 exams for a 2027 entrant would fall after the change.
• The USMLE program has encouraged schools to review rules that restrict when students must test.
• Mercer has full accreditation from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), which accredits MD programs in the United States. The LCME directory, updated October 14, 2026, lists 1982 as its first year of accreditation and 2028-29 for its next survey. All campuses come under that one accreditation.
• For MD students, enrollment in an LCME-accredited program is what makes you eligible for Step 1 and Step 2 CK. Osteopathic (DO) students and graduates of schools outside the United States qualify through other routes.
• Accelerated-track students sit Step 1 and Step 2 CK at times set by the Office of Academic Affairs.

After acceptance you return a Campus Preference Request Form. Places at Macon, Savannah and Columbus are assigned first come, first served and cannot be guaranteed; if you miss your first and second choices you can join a wait list. You find your own housing, using online listings.

Each four-year campus has its own clinical partners, listed by city below. Clerkships also use other sites around Georgia, and a statewide network of community physician preceptors teaches students.

Valdosta and Carrollton are clinical campuses where students live and train for Years 3 and 4, in dedicated medical education units inside the partner hospitals. Each offers all the Year 3 core clerkships and electives, plus the Year 4 sub-internship, required elective and electives, with local clerkship directors and a simulation center for standardized-patient work. Students also rotate at other regional facilities.

Valdosta opened with SGMC Health in July 2024, when 17 third-year students moved there from Columbus, Macon and Savannah. Carrollton opened with Tanner Health in July 2026; its first seven third-year students, also from the three four-year campuses, began rotations in early August.

Rural training continues in the clinical years. In February 2025, Mercer announced a rural clerkship experience: at least two weeks of a core clerkship at a rural clinical site, rising to four weeks for the Class of 2028. It then listed 17 rural medical centers across Georgia as sites.

Your first elective choice comes at the end of Year 3, in the four-week patient care experience. If you use it for the sub-internship or the required elective, you take an extra four-week patient care elective in Year 4 instead of repeating it.

Year 4, meant for rounding out your training and exploring specialties, needs at least 20 weeks of electives. At least 12 weeks must be patient care majority (PCR) electives, with half or more of the time spent caring directly for patients, and at least four of those weeks must be Mercer-sponsored. No more than 12 weeks in one sub-specialty count toward the 20.

You choose from Mercer's Senior Catalog or from courses at other medical schools and clinical sites. These away rotations, also called visiting student or audition rotations, need approval from the Year 4 director and a Year 4 subcommittee of the curriculum committee. If nothing fits, you can propose a Student Generated Elective with a sponsoring faculty member.

Every student completes a population health project. The PBL blocks teach the methods it needs, from the research process to statistics and epidemiology, and you plan the project in POH 600 and finish it in POH 900.

Beyond that, research is open to any student. Summer Scholars offers six weeks of faculty-mentored research, plus a week of vacation, in the summer after Year 1 on any campus. Projects range from bench science and community health to clinical studies, case reports and medical education, with weekly professional development sessions and a final presentation.

The Landings Cancer Research Scholars program follows the same summer pattern but is limited to cancer bench research on the Savannah campus, ending with a talk at the Mercer Joint Research Conference. A six-week Maternal Health Observership at the Georgia Rural Health Innovation Center lets rising second-year students shadow providers in rural maternal health, with a journal club and publication work.

At other times you can volunteer on a faculty project or arrange outside research, such as opportunities identified by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) or the Grady STaR Program. Year 3 and 4 students can research during clinical rotations and electives. Each four-year campus has a director of student research, and students present at the Summer Research Enrichment Symposium, MU BEAR Day and the Joint Research Conference.

Mercer's undergraduate admissions site describes two routes into this MD for students who start college at Mercer. Mercer Medical Scholars complete a four-year bachelor's degree in an eligible major, then the four-year MD: eight years in all. Accelerated Mercer Medical Scholars finish their undergraduate requirements in three years, so the two degrees take seven years in all. Their Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Sciences is awarded after the first year of the MD.

Each four-year campus has small-group tutorial rooms for PBL, distance-learning classrooms, a simulation center, a clinical skills wing and a gross anatomy lab. Its Skelton Medical Library branch is open around the clock with your Mercer ID. The clinical skills wings have 16 exam rooms in Macon, 13 in Savannah and 12 in Columbus.

Macon's Simulation Center covers 4,300 square feet. Columbus's 77,000-square-foot building, on a six-acre site by the Chattahoochee River, was completed in December 2021, and classes began there in January 2022. Its research labs are on the second floor. In Savannah the campus sits on the grounds of Memorial Health University Medical Center, steps from the hospital.

The libraries offer more than 17,000 online journals, 300,000 online books and 140 databases, point-of-care tools such as DynaMed and the Cochrane Library, and National Board study resources.

Mercer's simulation team, working with engineering faculty and students, designed low-cost 3D-printed trainers for cricothyrotomy, an emergency airway through the front of the neck, and for chest tube insertion. They are used at the Savannah and Valdosta campuses, and medical students in the Summer Scholars program helped develop them.

A new building is planned in downtown Macon. At the November 2025 groundbreaking, Mercer said the school would move from its 126,000-square-foot main-campus building into a 150,000-square-foot one, with three- and five-story wings around a courtyard, expected to open in fall 2028. It also said Macon's MD enrollment had grown from 96 to 240 since 1982.

Student Affairs has an associate dean on each four-year campus, led by a senior associate dean for all campuses. The deans hold individual career counseling and academic advising sessions and guide you through residency applications. That includes the Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), a summary of your record sent to programs, which you can review before it goes out.

Bear Buddies groups provide near-peer mentoring, with at least six sessions across the semesters of Years 1 to 3, as older students mentor younger ones. Bears Prepare sessions in the same semesters cover academic advising, ethics and professionalism, career counseling, financial planning and wellness. Career planning follows the AAMC's Careers in Medicine program.

Academic Success Counselors see any student one-on-one about study skills, organization, time management and Step preparation, and run group sessions on USMLE study. In 2023 the school created an associate dean role for academic achievement, to monitor every MD student's progress, direct mentoring by trained faculty advisors and run Step 1 and Step 2 preparation programs.

A Director of Wellness serves all campuses, and wellness teaching at orientation and Bears Prepare half days covers physical, emotional, spiritual, professional and financial health. Students have a 24-hour crisis support line, an anonymous line for reporting mistreatment, and named health and counseling services for the Macon, Savannah, Columbus and Valdosta campuses.

Aid for the Impaired Medical Student (AIMSS), run by a council that includes two peer-elected students from each MD class, supports students struggling with stress or substance use and helps them find treatment. If you ask for help with a substance use problem yourself, or discuss it with a personal therapist inside or outside Mercer, that information is kept confidential. It is not used in decisions about whether you stay in the program or move up a year.