The MSU College of Human Medicine MD program

The Shared Discovery Curriculum (SDC) puts the patient at the center of teaching and includes clinical experiences in every phase. The Early Clinical Experience falls in year 1, the Middle Clinical Experience in year 2 and the Late Clinical Experience in years 3 and 4. Basic, clinical and social science themes are integrated throughout, and service is built in: every student completes 40 hours of structured service learning, with preparation and reflection.

The SCRIPT competencies set what you must be able to do: Service, Care of Patients, Rationality, Integration, Professionalism and Transformation. All but service are based on residency competencies adopted by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). In February 2026 the college said its curriculum and evaluation are now organized around its educational program objectives. These fall into six groups: Serving the People, Care of Patients, Reflective and Rational Approach to Learning, Integrating into Systems, Professionalism and Transforming Knowledge.

The SDC was revised with new courses from fall 2025, and a 2027 entrant takes the new version. In MSU's course catalog, new versions of the year 1 courses took effect in fall 2025 and spring 2026, new year 2 courses from summer 2026 and new clerkship versions from spring 2027. In February 2026 the college said updates to the basic science curriculum and improvements to clerkships had shaped this next version.

A year 1 week includes scholar group sessions, basic science sessions, labs and clinical simulation. You also take part regularly in assessment activities that check your understanding and skills, and in sessions on health and wellness, career advising and study skills.

College policy caps your hours. In years 1 and 2, scheduled activities average no more than 28 hours a week over the semester, or 38 including required preparation. In clerkships, work hours are limited to 80 a week averaged over four weeks, with one day in seven free. Continuous duty is capped at 28 hours, with at least 14 hours off after 24 hours in the hospital.

Anatomy is taught within the integrated first-year courses, with anatomy and integrative biomedical laboratory sessions every week of year 1. The Division of Human Anatomy teaches both MSU medical colleges, human and osteopathic, and its Willed Body Program receives the donated bodies that make anatomy study possible.

The anatomy laboratory is restricted to medical students, faculty, staff and students of health professions. At the Grand Rapids campus, the anatomy site director works with the clinical simulation team to bring anatomy into simulated patient care.

In years 3 and 4 you can return to anatomy through Directed Study in Clinical Prosection, an elective worth 3 or 6 credits. It covers anatomical prosection (the dissection of specimens to display anatomy for teaching) and the diseases of particular body regions.

In year 1 the fall course, Medical School I (HM 552), builds foundations in the sciences and clinical skills. In the spring, Medical School II (HM 553) is the primary care clinical experience: a focused clinical block in which you work as part of the team at a primary care clinic.

College policy sets how closely you are supervised. You never provide care without supervision. You can take a history or check vital signs while your supervisor is immediately available rather than in the room. Once you have completed HM 552, the same applies to most physical exams, but breast and genital exams and all procedures need a supervisor present.

Year 2 adds a series of clinical rotations in the Middle Clinical Experience. In the year 3 family medicine, internal medicine and pediatrics clerkships, you take primary responsibility for managing patients' care under the supervision of attending physicians or senior residents.

Assessment is competency-based, measured against the SCRIPT competencies. From your first semester a progress suite checks your growth at regular intervals. It combines the Comprehensive Necessary Science Examinations, progress tests of scientific and clinical knowledge, with the Progress Clinical Skills Examination (PCSE), which tests your skills with standardized patients twice a semester. You must pass these to advance, and the college calls progress testing its graduation test for the MD.

The MSU catalog records that Pass-No Grade (P-N) grading, a pass/fail system, is approved for College of Human Medicine students in the college's 500- and 600-level courses, which include HM 552 and HM 553. If you narrowly miss a pass, or fall short in one definable part of a course, you may receive a Conditional Pass. You then have a deadline, usually the middle of your next semester, to fix the gap instead of repeating the course.

Core clerkships of four weeks or more include oral and written feedback at the midpoint, and clerkships and rotations of two weeks or more end with written feedback on the SCRIPT competencies. Only comments from end-of-semester letters, final clerkship evaluations and clinical preceptor evaluations can go into your Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), the school's summary letter for residency applications.

USMLE Step 1 tests how you apply the science behind medicine, and has been reported only as pass or fail since January 26, 2022. Step 2 CK is a multiple-choice exam on applying clinical knowledge. LCME accreditation is what makes students in MD programs like this one eligible to sit both; DO students and international medical students and graduates qualify by other routes.

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 August 2027 would finish the year 2 courses in December 2028 on the two-semester series, or in May 2029 on the three-semester series.

The college says intensive Step 1 study typically begins in the spring of year 2, and the spring 2029 semester starts on January 8, 2029. So you would sit Step 1 shortly after the USMLE moves to designated testing dates, or a few months after it on the three-semester series. Step 2 CK comes later, in years 3 and 4, before graduation. These dates are projections from the college's sequence and calendar.

• Faculty, peers and health care team members give you feedback, and faculty observe you in clinics and review portfolios of your essays, reflections and scholarly work. A Student Competence Committee recommends grades for the core HM courses.
• The internal medicine clerkship includes formative (practice) exercises on chest X-rays and electrocardiograms.
• Elective preceptors submit a clinical performance evaluation at the end, and some electives add written or oral exams, presentations, papers or observed clinical assessments.

For years 1 and 2 you are based in East Lansing or Grand Rapids, and clinic time in the Early and Middle Clinical Experiences takes place at more than 90 clinics. For years 3 and 4 you join one of the eight community campuses listed below, which between them use nine primary teaching hospitals and 57 community hospitals.

Each campus is led by a community assistant dean and a student programs administrator, and campuses range from about 20 to about 140 third- and fourth-year students. The campus pages describe students working in street medicine, free clinics, food banks, shelters and refugee services, and mentoring premedical students.

Grand Rapids hosts all four years, as does the Lansing campus, which teaches years 1 and 2 in East Lansing. But the LCPH program says only a minority of East Lansing and Grand Rapids students stay put for years 3 and 4. Some routes set your campus or give you priority for one. LCPH students are guaranteed Flint. MSU MD/PhD students are placed in East Lansing or Grand Rapids for years 1 and 2 by where their research mentor will be, and their clerkship community is set individually. VAI-CHM MD/PhD students, whose PhD is at the Van Andel Institute Graduate School, get priority for the Grand Rapids campus throughout.

Students selected for the Rural Community Health Program are assigned to a community campus and a rural educational site: a rural hospital, its local medical community and the public health department. Traverse City's sites are Alpena, Cadillac, Charlevoix, Grayling and Ludington, where students live and work for up to 26 weeks over four years.

Electives make up 28 weeks (42 credits) of the degree. At least 16 weeks must be clinical electives with direct patient care. At least 4 weeks of clinical electives must be at your own community campus, and at least 4 weeks in your final two semesters. One 4-week clinical elective must involve caring for medically underserved patients, with approval and reflective work required to graduate.

Elective clerkships are normally four weeks long and are scheduled through your community assistant dean's office. The 2026-27 catalog lists 126 elective courses, emergency medicine and neurology among them. They range from cardiology and neonatology to a Veterans Affairs elective, one on the care of migrant and seasonal agricultural workers and one called Northern Wilderness, Emergency and Sports Medicine. You can also design your own clinical or non-clinical elective, or take a research clerkship.

You can take electives at other medical schools, arranged through the AAMC's Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO) service, and the college covers you with professional liability insurance on away electives.

Students in years 1 and 2 can join a college program in Costa Rica over spring break. In years 3 and 4 you can seek approval for an international elective through your campus's student programs administrator, applying through MSU's Office for Education Abroad at least 8 weeks before you leave. The catalog's Global Health Experience in India covers rural health delivery, with pre-travel preparation and work in pediatrics, women's health, mental health and tropical disease.

The Indigenous Pathway offers third- and fourth-years a two-week elective with tribal health partners. They include the clinic of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians and, since 2024, the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community Health System in the Upper Peninsula.

Research starts in year 1, when every student completes a scholarly project as part of HM 553. The Early Mentors for Research Program matches first- and second-year students with research mentors each fall and spring. The college's Medical Student Research Group also runs three open enrollment periods a year for mentor matching, once you have completed training in the responsible conduct of research.

In years 3 and 4, research electives are full-time clerkships of 40 hours a week. You need a research mentor, an application and proposal 30 days before the start, and a final research summary. A research elective in the summer before clerkships earns credit only once you pass Step 1. In 2026 the college offered 13 research awards: 12 scholarships in oncology, breast cancer, innovation and neurology, and one supplement for a student taking a year off for cancer research.

The Human Medicine Research graduate certificate is for students who want a long research commitment. It adds 6 to 10 weeks of full-time research, a regional or national conference presentation, a manuscript for the certificate's advisory committee and 12 credits of research clerkship.

The MSU MD/PhD program began in 1985. You take medical and graduate courses on a tailored schedule for three years and sit Step 1 by the end of year 3. Years 4 and 5, or more, go to dissertation research, with a monthly continuity clinic to keep up your clinical training, and clerkships follow the PhD.

In the VAI-CHM MD/PhD, you complete years 1 and 2 and Step 1, then earn a PhD in molecular and cellular biology at the Van Andel Institute Graduate School in Grand Rapids. You return for the final two years of clinical training. In both routes, PhD research counts as three two-week research electives, shortening medical school by six weeks. The college's MD/PhD FAQ gives seven to eight years as the average time to complete both degrees.

• MD/MBA with MSU's Broad College of Business: a 61-credit MBA, 12 credits of which transfer from medical school, designed to take five years. You take the MBA classroom year either before medical school or after year 2, and the remaining MBA courses online.
• MD with MPH: MSU's online 43-credit Master of Public Health, with sample plans that start it before medical school or in a gap year. One MD clinical experience can serve as the MPH applied practice experience if it is public health related and approved.
• MD/OMFS with Henry Ford Health: for dentists who hold a DDS and have been accepted to Henry Ford Hospital's oral and maxillofacial surgery residency. They start at the M2 year, spend three semesters in East Lansing, must pass Step 1 and finish the MD and residency in six years.

The Secchia Center on the Grand Rapids Medical Mile is the college's headquarters. The privately funded $90 million building opened in 2010 and has a simulation center where students practice skills for clinical settings. Nearby, the MSU Grand Rapids Innovation Park holds the Grand Rapids Research Center, opened in 2017 and home to 33 biomedical research teams, and the Doug Meijer Medical Innovation Center, opened in 2021.

Research also centers on East Lansing, where MSU's Institute for Quantitative Health (IQ) brings engineering into biomedicine, and on the Flint campus, home to community-participatory public health research.

Simulated patients come through MSU's Simulated Patient Program, which employs more than 300 people to portray cases for the human medicine, osteopathic medicine, veterinary medicine and nursing colleges at four locations. Some sessions teach breast, pelvic, genital and rectal examinations with simulated patients.

In your learning society, a group of faculty act as your coaches, advisors and mentors for the first two years. The four societies are named after John Dewey, Daniel Hale Williams, Jane Addams and Justin Smith Morrill, architect of the Morrill Land Grant Act.

The Office of Academic Achievement offers free one-on-one and small-group coaching, peer tutoring of up to two hours a week, and peer-led Question Review Sessions on Zoom that teach you to use board-style questions. Coaches usually meet online but can meet in person in East Lansing or Grand Rapids.

Career advising runs through all four years. In years 1 and 2 you meet physician career advisors in small groups and use the AAMC's Careers in Medicine curriculum. In years 3 and 4 your campus's community assistant dean and a subspecialty career advisor help you build your residency applications.

For well-being, the Office of Student Affairs and Services has an assistant dean for student wellness and engagement and assistant directors of student counseling and wellness. In February 2026 the college said a new dean for wellness and extra counselors had doubled its personal counseling capacity. By April 2025 it also had a central system for reporting mistreatment, with an oversight committee.