The University of Minnesota Medical School MD program

The school describes basic and clinical science as integrated across all four years. It says Serve was designed to give plenty of active learning, shorten the classroom phase and add outpatient experience early. Discipline-based curriculum threads run through all the systems courses; the school's 2024 overview lists threads such as anatomy and embryology, pharmacology, physiology, histology and pathology, and public health.

Courses mix formats: large-group active learning, small-group discussion, case-based and problem-based learning, team-based learning in Musculoskeletal, pre-recorded lectures in Endocrine and Reproduction, and lab exercises in Renal and Urinary. Systems courses are timed with Clinical Skills. During Cardiovascular, for example, you study the heart in a concurrent anatomy lab and practice the related examinations and procedures in Clinical Skills.

Social and Community Health runs in four parts through the Foundations phase. It focuses on Minnesota communities that have been underserved by the health system, including 2SLGBTQIA+, immigrant and refugee, Indigenous, rural and urban communities, and on stigmatized conditions such as addiction, disability and housing insecurity. Becoming a Doctor, a series of required on-campus weeks in every year, covers reflective practice, advanced clinical skills and professional identity.

In clerkships you learn on care teams with residents and attending physicians. LICs add their own teaching: VALUE students have a weekly half day on quality improvement, evidence-based medicine, interprofessional practice and health equity, and RPAP students follow an online curriculum.

In the Foundations phase, the school's workload policy plans 25 hours a week of required activities, counting live sessions and set online work, and assumes an hour of study for each of those hours. The estimated total is capped at 50 hours a week on average; students who regularly go over are encouraged to contact the Office of Learner Development. On the Twin Cities track, many weeks also include a clinic or hospital afternoon.

Clinical weeks depend on the clerkship. On medicine you care for patients six days a week, with rounds starting at 7:00 or 7:30 a.m. and days ending around 4 p.m., or as late as 9 p.m. on call days. Psychiatry runs weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., family medicine roughly 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. with Wednesday morning teaching, and pediatrics uses daily shifts of 10 to 12 hours.

• Core clerkships give you at least one day off in every seven, a second consecutive day off every two weeks on average, and a half weekday off every two weeks on average.
• You get at least 10 hours off between shifts. Call stretches are capped at 24 hours, plus up to 4 for patient care and teaching, and overnight call comes no more than every fourth night.
• The critical care acting internship mixes day and night shifts at 80 hours a week.

Anatomy is not a single stand-alone course in Serve. The school's 2024 overview of the Foundations phase lists anatomy and embryology as a thread through the systems courses, and the 2026 St. Cloud preceptor guide says anatomy runs alongside each systems course, focused on the structures relevant to that system. Cardiovascular includes a concurrent anatomy lab on the structures of the heart, and Foundations assessments include anatomy exams.

On the Twin Cities campus, first-year students learn in the dissection lab during set dissection blocks. Senior students can return as teaching assistants through Advanced Clinical Gross Anatomy (ANAT 7601), an elective of two weeks or more. They help faculty plan and run labs, assist with dissection demonstrations and help with lab practical exams, and can time the elective to match a first-year dissection block.

Integrated Preparation for Internship (ANAT 7800) is a four-week Twin Cities elective that several specialty designs list as a surgery boot camp. Each week includes nine hours in the anatomy lab, set up as a simulated operating room, and four hours in the SimPortal simulation lab.

Clinical Skills begins in the first fall. At St. Cloud, whose first clinical week fell in March in 2026, the preceptor guide says first-year students have by then taken full histories from standardized patients, learned examination techniques and written practice notes. On the 2026 Twin Cities schedule, clinic afternoons start in the first week of January of Year 1.

Early Clinical Experience (ECE) then brings real patients. Under the 2026 guides, the Twin Cities track gives 20 clinical afternoons over 24 weeks of Years 1 and 2, with online modules in the other weeks. Twelve are with an outpatient preceptor and eight on a hospital team at Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC), Regions Hospital, the VA Medical Center, Abbott Northwestern or the University of Minnesota Medical Center (UMMC).

In clinic you see a patient first each half day, present to your preceptor, write a note and are observed for a few minutes, with feedback on the related EPAs. Three immersion weeks add about 10 clinical half days, including hospital rounds and a half day in the emergency department. Twin Cities students can opt into a rural track that mirrors Duluth's, as capacity allows, or apply for an Indigenous track.

Duluth and St. Cloud run Early Clinical Immersion as whole weeks with community physicians, in 2026 one week each in March, April and October. Duluth's Rural and Indigenous preceptorship can span clinic, hospital and long-term care; St. Cloud students move to a different site each week, including rural primary care. The 2027-28 calendar moves Year 1's first immersion week to early January.

Foundations courses are pass or no pass. Grading is criterion-referenced, measuring you against the material rather than your classmates, and you need 70 percent of a course's points to pass. A score just below that, within the margin of error, is reviewed with your name removed by a small faculty committee. Courses use multiple-choice midterms and finals, anatomy exams and quizzes, and a failed course gets one remediation attempt.

Required clerkships have been pass/no pass since 2021-22; electives are graded Honors, Excellent, Satisfactory or No Pass, or pass/no pass. The school does not formally rank students in the Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), the summary letter residency programs receive. Clerkships assess you on the 13 Core EPAs defined by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), with at least three observed each week.

An Assessment and Coaching Expert (ACE), a faculty coach, helps you improve, and a Clinical Competency Committee decides when you can do each task under indirect supervision. You must reach that level for EPAs 1, 2, 5 and 6: the history and physical, a prioritized differential diagnosis, documentation and the oral presentation. You also log Required Clinical Experiences, a set list of conditions and procedures, at least weekly.

Some core clerkships end with a National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) shelf exam, a national multiple-choice subject test. The school's exam guide lists internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology and neurology, whose shelf is graded pass/fail; others use their own tests, such as a surgical skills exam (OSATS). The Clinical Competency Assessment is held on the Twin Cities campus in spring.

The USMLE has three steps. Step 1 tests the science behind medicine and has been pass/fail since January 26, 2022; Step 2 CK tests the clinical decisions expected of a first-year resident. You must pass Step 1 by the end of the first Clinical Immersion semester, in the spring of Year 2, to progress. You must pass both exams to graduate, and three failures of either lead to a dismissal hearing.

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, if you enter in 2027 you would spend January 2029 in structured Step 1 preparation. You would sit the exam at the end of that dedicated time, around February 2029, shortly after the switch. Step 2 CK would follow in 2030, under the new model.

• The LCME directory, updated October 14, 2026, lists the school as fully accredited, first accredited before the LCME was founded in 1942, with its next survey in 2027-28. The school's next site visit is set for April 24 to 26, 2028.
• For MD students, attending an LCME-accredited school is what makes you eligible for Step 1 and Step 2 CK; students at osteopathic (DO) schools and eligible international schools qualify through other routes.
• Graduation also requires proficiency in competencies across nine domains, adapted from the AAMC's Physician Competency Reference Set.

Your offer of admission assigns a Location Campus, Twin Cities, Duluth or St. Cloud, for the whole program, including that campus's clinical sites; the Twin Cities is the home campus that awards every degree. The school calls reassignment extremely rare, limited to new caregiving duties or a medical condition needing local care, and not granted for personal preference.

Required clerkships are planned within a 50-mile drive of your campus, or 40 miles when you must be on site four weekdays a week. RPAP, rural immersion weeks and the Duluth and St. Cloud lanes can go farther, with housing or travel allowances where no housing is provided; students from other campuses can opt into these lanes. The Clinical Housing Program keeps a list of volunteer hosts for stays of 1 to 8 weeks.

Hospital names are changing. On October 19, 2026, Fairview, which runs the M Health Fairview hospitals, said that brand retires at the end of 2026. UMMC's East Bank and West Bank become the East Bank and Riverside campuses of Fairview Minneapolis University Hospital, and Masonic Children's becomes Fairview Masonic Children's University Hospital.

On June 12, 2026 the University's Board of Regents unanimously approved its new agreements with Fairview, including an academic affiliation agreement, and with University of Minnesota Physicians. They take effect on January 1, 2027, the day the M Health Fairview brand ends.

RPAP students live in their host community. More than 120 communities in Minnesota and western Wisconsin have taken part since 1971, with hospitals of 15 to 140 beds, and each site provides free housing or a housing stipend. MetroPAP students are based in urban family medicine residency clinics, and UCAM uses clinics such as Broadway Family Medicine in Minneapolis and United Family Medicine in St. Paul.

From the Class of 2027, graduation requires 90 clinical credits, one credit being one week. They comprise 52 credits of required courses, 4 acting internship credits and 34 elective credits, of which at least 14 must be hands-on and 8 specialty-specific. You book most electives yourself in the MEdIS system; arranged electives need the coordinator's approval first.

The school publishes recommended electives for each specialty, some also offered in Duluth or St. Cloud, such as a rural rotation in family medicine. Research electives can earn up to 12 credit weeks.

Away rotations are applied for through Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO), the national application service, and must be approved at least four weeks before they start. They count as hands-on if at least half the time is direct patient care. Specialty designs suggest how many to take, from none required for pathology to up to three away acting internships for orthopedic surgery.

The Global Medical Education and Research (GMER) program aims to help every student take a global health elective in Year 4, in the United States or at 11 international affiliate sites. In the summer after Year 1 you can take the two-week rural Summer Internship in Medicine or the eight-week Summer Internship in Medical Education, a paid project with the Office of Medical Education.

The Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), funded by the National Institutes of Health, leads to an MD and PhD on the Twin Cities campus in about eight years. After a lab rotation before Year 1 and more in the first summer, you complete Foundations and Step 1. You then spend three to four years on a PhD in one of 12 partner graduate programs, with about a day a month with a clinical mentor from its second year.

Other dual degrees pair the MD with a Master of Public Health (MPH), an MS in Biomedical Engineering or a JD. The MD/MBA takes five years in all, and the MHI in health informatics adds a single year of coursework to the four MD years.

The Flexible MD lets you take up to six years for research, service learning, a fellowship, global health or another degree other than the MD/PhD. An oversight committee approves each plan, and you hold a re-entry meeting 10 weeks before returning. In the Class of 2026, 79 percent finished in four years.

You can do research for credit, for pay or as a volunteer, but not credit and pay for the same work. The Medical School reported $354.6 million in sponsored research funding in fiscal year 2025, and options include $3,000 University of Minnesota Foundation grants for 8 to 12 weeks and several summer research programs.

The optional Arts and Medicine Scholarly Concentration needs no application. Students graduating from 2027 complete 8 credits of courses and arts activities, at least 4 of them formal coursework, plus a 4-credit capstone with a faculty mentor. The capstone, such as a portfolio, paper or arts-related project, is shown at an exhibition in the spring of your graduation year, and your MSPE includes information about the concentration.

On the Twin Cities campus, M Simulation in the Health Sciences Education Center provides simulation-based training in a safe setting before you work with patients. The surgical internship course, ANAT 7800, is based on the fifth floor of Jackson Hall and uses the SimPortal and the anatomy lab.

The Duluth Simulation Center has adult, child and baby manikins, a birth simulator and task trainers for pelvic examination, ultrasound, and heart, breath and bowel sounds. Every required course on the Duluth campus includes a simulation case there. The Duluth campus is at 1035 University Drive, and the St. Cloud campus at 1600 County Road 134.

The Houses Program is the Medical School's learning community structure. Each of three Houses, Beacon, Centennial and Zestar, named after apples developed at the University, holds about a third of the student body. Each has an Academic Advisor, Faculty Advisors, tutors and representatives of the Well-being Committee, Peer Mentorship Committee and Peers Supporting Peers. In Duluth, students meet regularly with faculty advisors in Duluth Learning Communities.

Your Academic Advisor is your first contact for academic progress, scheduling, Step registration and timing, lane and LIC choices, and changes to the four-year plan. Your Faculty Advisor, a clinical faculty member, advises on career and professional development, holds scheduled meetings each fall and spring and works with you on your MSPE. Specialty Experts advise on residency applications in their field, and career development staff support you through the Match.

The Office of Learner Development offers one-on-one consultations, exam preparation, peer tutoring and well-being services, including confidential bridging counseling. In Duluth, the Center of American Indian and Minority Health supports Native American and minority students and provides Indigenous health curricula and clinical opportunities at Tribal sites.