The University of Mississippi School of Medicine MD program

After Fundamentals of Biomedical Science, the main courses each cover one or two organ systems. Each first-year system course reviews the relevant embryology and anatomy, then introduces that system's diseases, focusing on diagnosis and treatment. In many courses the school has added sessions taught jointly by a scientist and a clinician.

Integration takes getting used to. The school's own review after two years noted that a topic introduced early may not return in depth for months, which is part of the design. In January 2026 it reported revising nervous system, behavioral health, multisystem and microbiology teaching after their first run.

Introduction to the Medical Profession I and II, which teach clinical and professional skills, run through both years. In year 2 you also train with nursing, pharmacy, dentistry and social work students. Examples include a domestic violence simulation with Jackson State University and a three-part pain management series.

In the clinical years you learn mostly through patient care on teams, with set teaching around it. Internal medicine, for example, pairs podcast lectures with live question sessions, and obstetrics and gynecology adds weekly problem-solving tutorials. Transition to Residency in year 4 mixes lectures, small groups, simulations and standardized patients.

In years 1 and 2, classes are in the School of Medicine building. Course directors decide which sessions are mandatory, from labs and small groups to simulations, workshops, POPS cases and OSCEs. You must attend at least 80% of all other sessions in each course. A Career Development Series for first-year students meets on Thursdays at noon.

As described in December 2023, each POPS session works like this. You get a week to complete a 10-question open-book pre-test, and about a week and a half to research one of five cases. In the hour-long session, three groups share a room with the facilitator, and each student leads their group through their case. A five-question post-test follows that evening.

In clerkships the day changes. On internal medicine you see your patients and write notes before pre-rounds, catch a lecture or its podcast during morning report, then join attending rounds. After-hours call with your team comes every fourth night at the VA and every fifth night on University Hospital's general wards, and varies on its subspecialty wards. A fourth-year emergency medicine rotation runs on shifts instead: 10 to 11 eight-hour shifts in the month, plus Thursday morning resident conference.

Anatomy is taught within the organ-system courses, and the Department of Advanced Biomedical Education reorganized the gross anatomy lab experience to fit the new curriculum. In 2023-24, first-year students dissected donor hearts in the cardiovascular course and donor kidneys in the renal and genitourinary course.

The bodies come from UMMC's body donation program, which in 2023 had about 10,000 registered donors and served about 170 medical students a year. Donors are honored at an Annual Ceremony of Thanksgiving, typically each April at the school cemetery, where their names are read and students thank the families.

Faculty photograph dissected organs to build photogrammetric 3D models, so students could revisit the very hearts and kidneys they had dissected, from anywhere online. The department has also expanded virtual reality systems for gross anatomy. The library's e-Anatomy atlas, described as new in October 2026, adds more than 27,000 CT, MRI, X-ray and ultrasound images and illustrations.

In year 4, Review of Human Anatomy is an elective that needs the course director's permission. The Department of Advanced Biomedical Education lists it for March, April, June and July.

Your first patient encounters are simulated. From year 1 you interview and examine standardized patients, and OSCEs are part of the preclinical courses. On Primary Care Day in January, clinical departments teach first-year students simulated procedures.

In a clinical preceptorship, a faculty member guides you in clinical practice. In May 2024 the school said it would move the preceptorship, until then entirely in year 2, to span the spring of year 1 and the fall of year 2. During the 2020-24 IMPACT the RACE grant, year 2 students also had to join the School of Nursing's Mercy Delta Express, screening children's health at a rural elementary school.

Outside the required courses, the Mississippi Rural Physicians Scholarship Program's Primary Care Exploration Program places students with rural preceptors in the summer after year 1. You can also volunteer at the Jackson Free Clinic, which UMMC medical students launched in 2002 and students still run. It gives free medical, dental and psychiatric care to people who cannot afford health insurance, with students supervised by physicians. Its medical clinic opens every Saturday.

Year 3 starts in late May with a two-week boot camp on the electronic medical record, advanced cardiac life support and the duties of a third-year student. A Student Clinician Ceremony marks the move to the wards, and clerkships begin in June.

Courses in years 1 to 3 are graded as a percentage of available points: A is 90% or more, B 80% to 89.99%, C 70% to 79.99%, and below 70% fails. Year 4 courses are honors (97% or more), pass or fail. First-attempt grades set your grade point average and class rank, which decide honors and awards. The top ten graduates receive diplomas cum laude or higher.

Preclinical exam questions are written in the style of Step 1. National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) customized assessments, exams schools build from NBME questions, are also used. If you fail a year 1 or 2 course, you can show competency on an NBME re-test after two weeks of supervised summer study. Failing more than one course, or the re-test, can mean repeating the year.

In clerkships, faculty and residents rate you on a standard clinical performance form whose comments feed into your MSPE. Grades can include NBME subject exams, or shelf exams, national multiple-choice tests in each specialty. Fail one and you retake it within three months; fail twice and you may have to repeat the clerkship.

Clinical skills are tested with trained simulated participants at the Clinical Skills Assessment Core, for family medicine, internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, OB-GYN, and psychiatry and neurology. In September 2023 the school described two cases at the end of each core clerkship. It also described a final clinical skills exam at the end of year 3 that had to be passed to enter year 4.

Two of the three USMLE Steps come during medical school. Step 1 has been reported only as pass or fail since January 26, 2022; Step 2 CK still has a three-digit score. Year 2 classes end in April for study time, and most students sit Step 1 in May. It must be scheduled before year 3 and passed before promotion to year 4. Most take Step 2 CK in the summer between years 3 and 4, and must pass it 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, so the date has already moved once, and the change reaches students entering in 2027. On the current schedule, a 2027 entrant would sit Step 1 in about April or May 2029, after the switch. Step 2 CK would follow around summer 2030, so both fall under the new model; these are projections, not published dates.

• UMMC's September 2026 newsletter says the school has begun planning how designated testing dates will affect scheduling, progression and remediation.
• After failing a Step you have one year to pass it, and three failures in total across Step and NBME exams bring a review that can end in dismissal.
• In clerkships each unexcused half day of absence costs 2.5% of the final grade.

Most clinical training is on UMMC's main campus in Jackson. Its four hospitals there have 827 beds: University Hospital, Children's of Mississippi, Winfred L. Wiser Hospital for Women and Infants and Wallace R. Conerly Critical Care Hospital. UMMC says its locations serve as teaching sites. In its words, University Hospital has the state's only Level I trauma center, the highest level, and Children's of Mississippi is the state's only children's hospital.

The G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery VA Medical Center, beside the campus and affiliated with the school since 1955, is its principal teaching affiliate. It hosts internal medicine wards, the VA surgery service and fourth-year rotations. A primary care clinic run jointly by four departments is at the Jackson Medical Mall Thad Cochran Center.

Family medicine takes every student beyond Jackson for four weeks. In year 4 you can choose a family medicine preceptorship elsewhere in the state. Another option places you with a primary care physician in an economically underserved area; the internal medicine department lists it as Rural Internal Medicine Practice. Rural dermatology takes place in Louisville, Mississippi. The family medicine inpatient sub-internship is at UMMC Madison in Canton.

Rural training runs through the IMPACT the RACE Rural Track Program, short for Improved Primary Care for the Rural Community through Medical Education. It grew from a 2020 HRSA grant, and a February 2024 newsletter said a second grant funds it until 2027. It turned nine unused patient rooms at UMMC Grenada into student housing, with a lounge, kitchenette and video-linked classroom. At UMMC Holmes County, a 25-bed critical access hospital in Lexington, it converted three more.

Both rural options are voluntary. As of October 2025, students could spend part of the surgery clerkship in Grenada, with OB-GYN and pediatrics to follow in the near future. Since December 2025, interested third-year students can spend four weeks of family medicine in Lexington, living in the hospital. UMMC took over Greenwood Leflore Hospital in August 2026, and its leaders said UMMC Greenwood would add training sites for learners.

In February 2026, 25 students received one-year rural scholarships after pledging to practice primary care in rural Mississippi after residency. Separately, the state's Mississippi Rural Physicians Scholarship Program, created by the Legislature in 2007, offers scholarships and mentoring by rural primary care doctors. In return, its scholars practice primary care after residency in a community of 15,000 or fewer people, for as many years as they were funded.

Each preclinical year includes one 1-credit elective from 13 options, such as Medical Spanish, End-of-Life Care, Race and Medicine and Data Analysis in Medicine. When introduced in 2023-24, all were pass/fail and ended with a capstone project or reflective piece.

Year 3 includes two electives, typically two weeks each, from 38 options. They run from Survey of Anesthesia and Radiation Oncology to Trauma Surgery, where you can join the daytime team or night float. Independent Study can give credit for Step 1 preparation or an approved project.

Year 4 requires at least 14 weeks of electives, at least four of them at UMMC. Some are acting internships, in which you carry much of an intern's responsibility, such as the Clinical Neurology Acting Internship. Others include Medical 3D Printing, Medical Ethics and Ambulatory Medicine in the Amazon Jungles of Peru. The Peru elective is two weeks reviewing tropical medicine at UMMC, then two weeks giving primary care in Peru with UMMC faculty.

Away rotations, called extramural rotations, let you take senior electives at other institutions. In any one specialty you can take up to three away rotations, totaling 6 to 12 weeks. Sixteen departments offer extramural credit, and each rotation must be scheduled through the Office of Medical Education, with malpractice coverage confirmed, before you go.

From summer 2027, a scholarly project is built in for everyone through the Discovery Curriculum. Students finishing year 1 pick an area such as basic science or clinical research, community engagement, public health, advocacy or clinical care. With a mentor, they then frame and investigate an answerable question. The aim is practice in systematic inquiry, not formal research. Everyone submits an abstract, and the highest-scoring are presented at Discovery Day in the fall.

The optional Medical Student Research Program (MSRP) has two routes. The Summer Option is a competitive eight-week project with a faculty mentor after year 1, with a lecture series and a stipend. The Full Option runs from year 2 to year 4, with a required four-week research block in year 4, presentations in years 3 and 4, and a special distinction on your degree.

Two MD/PhD programs train physician-scientists over seven years in a 3-3-1 pattern: years 1 to 3 of medical school, three years of PhD study, then year 4. One runs with the School of Graduate Studies in the Health Sciences, the other with the John D. Bower School of Population Health. Both cover tuition and health insurance and pay a stipend.

According to the 2026-27 catalog, MD/PhD students do lab rotations in the summers before years 1 and 2 and choose a PhD program during year 3. Current first- and second-year students can also apply, and three students who entered in August 2026 joined the program.

The MD-MPH pathway, with the John D. Bower School of Population Health, took its first students in 2026. It starts with a summer Certificate Program in Population Health Science. The plan for UMMC students spreads the 44-credit Master of Public Health from the summer before year 2 to the spring of year 4, ending in a research capstone. The MPH page says accreditation by the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) will be pursued.

The school began in 1903 on the University of Mississippi's Oxford campus, teaching the first two years of medical training. It moved to Jackson in the summer of 1955, adding the third and fourth years, and its first class graduated in June 1957.

You are taught in a five-story School of Medicine building that opened in 2017. On its top floor, the Judith Gore Gearhart Clinical Skills Assessment Core sits beside the Simulation and Interprofessional Education Center. The core has 16 exam rooms, each with a door for students and another for standardized patients and faculty, plus a monitor room for observing encounters.

A 2023 description of the simulation center lists trainers for drawing blood, spinal taps, central lines and intubation, plus high-fidelity manikins that respond to what you do. The Rowland Medical Library is open around the clock with a UMMC badge, and the Bower Center for Culinary Medicine's teaching kitchen is in The Meridian Building on Lakeland Drive.

During welcome week you join one of eight houses with other first-year students, a physician mentor and a second-year buddy, and you stay in that house until graduation. Houses run wellness activities, deliver the AAMC's Careers in Medicine program and connect you with preclinical advising.

Each first-year student also has a preclinical faculty advisor. A 2023 newsletter describes meetings twice a year, with the advisor's narrative evaluation going into your MSPE. The Medical Student Success Network offers confidential academic counseling, learning strategies and Step preparation. A program called Testing Wisely builds test-taking skills across years 1 to 3.

The network's Academic Achievement System tracks results from the start. You must join it if you score below 65% on a first-semester test, below 60% on a later exam, or need remediation. Before year 1, students identified by admissions may take a six-week pre-matriculation course, two weeks online and four on campus.

The calendar builds in wellness retreats in years 2 and 3, and UMMC students get free counseling for up to 10 visits a semester.