The MUSC College of Medicine MD program

Preclerkship teaching runs in organ-system blocks. Within a block you study how a system normally works and what goes wrong with it, so health and disease are not separate subjects. Six core sciences run through the curriculum, from molecules to organ systems: biochemistry and nutrition, genetics, physiology, pathology, pharmacology and immunology. Gross anatomy and embryology, and cell biology and histology, add human structure and development.

Clinical preparation is longitudinal, meaning it continues across blocks instead of appearing once. Clinical skills, evidence-based medicine and behavioral sciences all work this way. The school's list of core elements adds ultrasound and procedures training, a health systems curriculum, the patient-centered medical home (primary care organized around a coordinated team), telehealth and advocacy.

From Year 3 the balance flips. You learn by caring for patients under supervision in inpatient, outpatient, emergency, surgical, primary care and specialty settings. Classroom time shrinks to short threads in ethics, geriatrics and clinical topics, and departments add their own teaching, such as an average of 20 contact hours in the psychiatry clerkship.

In the fall of Year 1, a block lasts about six weeks. On the Class of 2030 calendar each one has an interim exam about two weeks in and a block exam on a Thursday at the end, with the next block starting the following Monday.

On the Charleston campus, the OB/GYN clerkship shows how a clinical week can look. You spend about two weeks each on antepartum care (patients admitted during pregnancy), labor and delivery, and gynecology. Antepartum and gynecology run Monday to Friday. Labor and delivery is either all day shifts, 7am to 6pm Monday to Friday, or all night shifts, called night float, 5pm to 8am Sunday to Wednesday.

Tuesdays start with the department's required Grand Rounds at 7:30am, then a Student Learning Team from 9 to 11am, working through case scenarios with faculty. You also spend one half-day a week in a mentor clinic at an MUSC Women's Health clinic. Students on the AnMed track take OB/GYN in Anderson, on a schedule set there.

In Charleston, psychiatry adds evening and weekend duty. You take three on-call shifts, on one long weekday, one short weekday and one weekend, plus two weekend days of rounding with your team, except on the Consultation-Liaison Team. A planned absence needs at least six weeks' notice, and you get one half-day of personal time in the first three weeks.

On the Year 3 and 4 calendars you are guaranteed Thanksgiving, the day after and Winter Break. All other dates may be used by rotations at each department's discretion. Absences go through separate preclerkship and clinical request forms.

You learn anatomy by dissection in the Human Anatomy Lab. Each table works as a dissection team and shares one copy of Netter's Atlas and one of Grant's Dissector, which stay in the lab. Your equipment must be ready by Week 2 of Block 1: dissection instruments, a three-quarter-length white lab coat, non-latex gloves and a clipboard, with scrubs recommended.

Gross anatomy and embryology are taught together, from embryonic development through adult anatomy. Anatomy is examined in practical exams. The Class of 2030 calendar shows an anatomy practical in February and one in each of the two summer blocks. The Class of 2029 calendar, the latest to show Year 2, adds practicals in the fall of Year 2, including neuroanatomy.

Patient contact starts in Year 1. Early clinical experiences run through the preclerkship phase, in the hospital, the community and simulation, and help you apply the basic science of each block. The Bulletin says they include real patients as well as simulation. Your first fall course includes early clinical exposure to health disparities.

The Senior Mentor Program runs through all four years. Two students are paired with each mentor and meet in the mentor's home at least twice a year, in a non-clinical setting. Preclerkship assignments include reflective papers, a nutrition analysis and a review of medication use. Year 3 adds a fall risk assessment and a life review, and Year 4 an advance directive.

CARES, a nonprofit student-run organization, exposes students to patient care early in training. MUSC professional students have operated it since 2005, with supervision from volunteer licensed providers, offering free primary care to uninsured adults in Mount Pleasant.

CARES also runs a primary care clinic at the Navigation Center and street medicine outreach in the Charleston area for people without homes. Its Pediatric Prevention Clinic works with the Charleston County School District to give free vaccinations to uninsured or underinsured children. Its rural outreach provides health care and tackles needs such as food insecurity.

Full-time patient care starts with the clerkship year. By the Year 4 externship you work at the level of an intern, the name for a first-year resident.

All required courses must be passed to graduate, and the program calculates no grade point average and produces no class rank. The Class of 2030 calendar shows interim assessments and final exams in each block, anatomy practicals and NBME exams in April and July. Each term is followed by extra exam dates that the calendar marks for use only if needed.

Clinical skills are assessed in small groups, labs, hospitals and clinics, and in Objective Structured Clinical Exams (OSCEs), where you work through timed, observed tasks, often with standardized patients. Clinical competency exams, CCX 2 and CCX 3, run in the CCAT and give feedback that helps you prepare for national boards.

The Bulletin's Medical Scientist Training Program page sets out clinical grading. Core clerkships are honors, pass or no pass, and selectives are pass or no pass. Year 4 rotations are pass, no pass or honors, and Internship 101 is pass or no pass. The psychiatry department's page lists Honors, High Pass, Pass and No Pass for its clerkship.

Psychiatry combines three parts: an NBME shelf exam (a national subject test at the end of a clerkship), an OSCE and a clinical performance evaluation from your attending, the senior physician supervising you. Honors there needs 91% or higher on the shelf, a passed OSCE and 2.8 or higher on the evaluation.

USMLE Step 1 has been reported as pass/fail since January 26, 2022, and Step 2 CK (Clinical Knowledge) comes next, reported on a three-digit scale. The program's LCME accreditation makes you eligible to take them. In August 2026 the USMLE program announced a move to designated testing dates from January 2029, with Step exams offered less often each year. The date had already moved once: the June 2026 notice said 2028. The USMLE's FAQ lists 17 Step 1 and 14 Step 2 CK administrations for 2029.

On the current schedule, a 2027 entrant would start Step 1 review in January 2029 and take the exam in about February to April 2029, within a few months after the switch. That projection comes from the Class of 2029 calendar, the latest to show Year 2. Clerkships would then begin in spring 2029, so Step 2 CK would come after the switch.

• Class of 2029 calendar: review starts January 4, 2027 on Tracks 1, 2A and 2B, with Step 1 deadlines of February 14, February 28 and March 14.
• On the same calendar, Track 3 opens with Academic Remediation, starts review on February 1 and has an April 11 deadline.
• The psychiatry OSCE gives you 20 minutes to interview a standardized patient, 20 minutes for a write-up and 20 minutes to review a recording of your interview and critique it.
• The OB/GYN clerkship has an OSCE on its last Wednesday and an NBME exam on its last Friday.

Where you go depends on the clerkship. For students based in Charleston, the OB/GYN page puts most of the clerkship on the downtown campus, with outpatient time at a Women's Health clinic around the metro area. Psychiatry uses the MUSC Institute of Psychiatry and the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center. Neurology mixes MUSC and VA wards with subspecialty clinics, some off campus, and the neurology department's page puts every student's rehabilitation week at Roper Hospital.

The Family Medicine Rural Clerkship takes you further. AHEC coordinators in four regions contact you in the weeks before you start, and some visit you at your site. AHEC arranges housing when it is needed and available and helps you settle in. In some areas you can work on established community projects.

The MUSC AnMed Clinical Campus in Anderson, between Atlanta and Charlotte, is the school's regional campus, and MUSC and AnMed have been partners since 2015. Applicants state their interest in the secondary application or contact the campus dean. You must first be accepted to the College of Medicine, then compete for a limited number of places per incoming class. Students there keep full access to Charleston support systems.

The Anderson track adds a primary care layer. In Year 3 you manage chronic illness for your own group of patients at the Anderson Free Clinic, supervised by a core group of clinicians called preceptors. The Essentials of Primary Care course meets on Friday afternoons, and the track adds longitudinal professor rounds, a wellness curriculum and service learning.

Your two Year 3 selectives last two weeks each, and the Careers in Medicine team can advise you on which to pick. Year 3 also has an optional one-week Intersession Week in August, and departments list one-week intersession selectives.

Year 4 has 24 weeks of electives, at MUSC or other institutions. A rotation elsewhere is called an away rotation, and the Bulletin says these may be at LCME-accredited medical schools or approved sites around the state or country. You can also apply for a design-your-own clinical elective, a longitudinal research elective or the four-week Developing Scholarly Skills elective.

Global health electives run in Year 4. Four-week options include Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, with Muhimbili National Hospital and the Jakaya Kikwete Cardiac Institute, and OneWorld Health sites in Masindi, Uganda, and El Viejo, Nicaragua. Through Child Family Health International you can take a 2- or 4-week elective in countries such as Ghana, India and Argentina, or a virtual elective. The college offers global health travel scholarships for fourth-year rotations.

At AnMed you choose from 40 electives of two or four weeks, including rural medicine and wilderness medicine.

Students on the four-year plan complete a scholarly concentration in Year 2, after Step 1. The two courses carry 11 credits. Whichever track you pick, you design and carry out a project, assess the results and present a structured abstract and a poster or talk at the FLEX Fair. The MD page reports that 91% of students take part in research with faculty.

The Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) is the combined MD/PhD, partially supported by a National Institutes of Health training grant. The Bulletin's plan runs over eight years, at 415.5 credits or more. You follow the medical curriculum for about 18 months, take Step 1, rotate through research labs and finish your PhD before returning for the third year of medical school. Accepted students who meet academic requirements generally receive tuition, health insurance and stipend support.

The MD/MSCR adds a Master of Science in Clinical Research for students already enrolled, and most finish in five years. The 38 MSCR credits include biostatistics, clinical trials and grant writing, and the earliest entry point is spring of Year 1.

The Accelerated Medical Pathway lets eligible students meet graduation requirements in three years, at 210 credits, and move into a participating MUSC residency. After the shared preclerkship curriculum you complete all clerkships, 4 weeks of selectives, a pathway selective and tailored courses in the final phase. The pathway page says eight MUSC residency programs take part. Its table lists seven, with 0 to 1 up to 0 to 3 positions each: emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, OB/GYN, pathology, pediatrics and psychiatry.

• Research: a project with a faculty mentor in the clinical or basic sciences, with a co-authored publication as one desired outcome. Tracks include artificial intelligence and data science, cardiology, neuroscience and surgery.
• Global Health: mini-lectures, case discussions and workshops on topics such as water and sanitation and maternal and child health, plus a field study.
• Health Humanities: literature, visual arts, music, theater and narrative medicine, with service learning opportunities.
• Physician as Teacher: online modules on medical education, a microteaching session and evaluating a faculty teaching session, with a project in educational research or new learning tools.

Until the new building opens, you share classrooms and study spaces across campus with students from MUSC's five other colleges. The new College of Medicine building is going up at the corner of Bee and President Streets and reached its topping-out milestone on August 14, 2026. Planned features include active learning spaces, large classrooms, and study and wellness spaces.

Clinical skills are taught and tested in the CCAT, in the Colbert Education Center and Library. The center's page dates its last full update to 2011 and describes 8,500 square feet with 10 examination rooms, matching observation rooms and three small classrooms.

The MUSC Healthcare Simulation Center, in the Colbert Library Building, lets you experience representations of real healthcare events in a safe environment.

AnMed students have their own simulation lab, with skill-specific models and ultrasound training mannequins, and classroom sessions in the Dr. Stoney Abercrombie Medical Education Suite at AnMed North Campus.

Each student is assigned an academic coach, a preclerkship faculty member who is your first point of contact. Your coach receives updates on your block exams, reviews your first practice exam, meets you after each block exam in your first year and can help with goal setting and study strategies.

Every first-year student joins a COM TEAM peer group of nine, with second-year leaders and two faculty preceptors, and leaders run lunch meetings through your first semester. A separate program, Assistance for Resilience and Confidence (ARC), offers one-on-one help from trained peers on issues such as remediation exams, Step 1 preparation and returning from leave.

The Center for Academic Excellence and Writing Center offers one-on-one help with learning strategies and high-stakes exams, plus peer-led Supplemental Instruction for some courses. Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) provides confidential short-term therapy and medication management. Its records are separate from academic records, and its providers do not grade students or decide on promotion.

The Student Wellness Program encourages a personal wellness plan at the start of Year 1, and runs monthly discussions on topics such as burnout and annual financial literacy workshops.

Careers in Medicine is a longitudinal career planning course. You complete required self-assessments in the preclerkship years. In the fall of Year 3 you are assigned a clinical advisor, matched to your preferred specialty where possible, and you must meet that advisor during Years 3 and 4.

You can report mistreatment or concerns about the learning environment to named deans and course directors, or through a named or anonymous online form. A Learning Environment Review Committee reviews reports.