The Perelman School of Medicine, UPenn MD program

Core 1 is built on integration: science and clinical medicine are taught together, one organ system at a time. The cardiology block, for example, takes in the heart's normal development and function, its diseases and their treatment, and the imaging and lab tests used to diagnose them. The first semester is the exception, with separate foundation courses in subjects such as genetics, biochemistry and immunology.

The school organizes the curriculum around three themes: the science of medicine, the technology and practice of medicine, and professionalism and humanism. In Core 1 the clinical side is taught through Introduction to Clinical Medicine (ICM), Doctoring 1, Ultrasound Diagnostics and Health Systems Sciences. The last covers health policy, how care is financed and the social causes of ill health.

During the first 18 months, the work hours policy caps scheduled teaching, teamwork and self-study at 50 to 60 hours a week. Lectures are optional to attend. Labs, small groups and clinical encounters, meaning sessions with patients present or clinical skills and simulation work, are required and flagged in OASIS, the school's online scheduling system. Three afternoons a week are unscheduled.

Clerkship weeks are longer. Students can be assigned up to 80 hours of clinical duties a week, averaged over a rotation, with at least one day in seven free and at least 10 hours off between shifts. Internal medicine, emergency medicine and OB/GYN include weekend work.

The Core 3 course page's 2026 updates describe the internal medicine sub-internship schedule. At HUP, Penn Presbyterian and Pennsylvania Hospital, students work 7am to 7pm three days a week and 7am to 5pm on three more: 66 hours a week. From 2027 the VA switches from 27-hour calls every fourth day to the same pattern.

Anatomy is taught as clinical anatomy, linked directly to radiology images, ultrasound techniques and physical exam findings, and it includes a virtual reality component. In the first semester it sits in the Anatomy & Imaging course within Biomedical Science. The fall 2026 calendar schedules three anatomy exams for first-years, in October, November and December.

The school's Technical Standards, approved in August 2022, say that dissecting the human body and examining normal and abnormal specimens, by eye and under the microscope, require sensory, motor, emotional and intellectual abilities. The school receives donated bodies for teaching through the Humanity Gifts Registry, Pennsylvania's body donation agency. Senior students can also work as anatomy teaching assistants through the Medical Education concentration.

Your first patient encounters in Core 1 are mostly with standardized and virtual patients, so you can practice safely. Each organ-system block also includes patient panels. By the end of Core 1, the school expects you to take a basic history that covers social factors and to use basic exam techniques in a simulated setting.

You can meet real patients earlier through community programs, which start in the first year. The 2026 brochure lists 12 student-led clinics, such as United Community Clinic, Puentes de Salud and the Refugee Health Clinic, and Penn clinicians supervise all clinical care. The school says over three-quarters of students work in a student-led clinic or alongside Penn professionals in schools and community centers.

In Year 2, CARE-7 adds a palliative medicine experience. Students who join the Measey Primary Care Pathway in Year 1 or 2 also take PLACE. It places you with a primary care doctor for one or two afternoons a month, in spring of Year 1 and fall of Year 2. Full-time patient care begins with Core 2 in January of Year 2, in hospital and outpatient settings across all age groups.

Core 1 is graded Pass/Fail. Clerkships, the sub-internship and Core 3 electives are graded Honors, High Pass, Pass or Fail; the Scholarly Pursuit, Measey STeP and Bioethics are Pass/Fail. Final grades must be in within six weeks of a course ending.

Core 1 exams run from 8am to 1pm unless noted otherwise. Many have a team part and an individual part, and some midterms are team-only. An OSCE, or objective structured clinical exam, has you rotate through timed stations, each testing a clinical task such as interviewing or examining a patient. The Core 1 OSCE comes in the last weeks of the phase.

Each main clerkship ends with an NBME shelf exam, a standardized test from the National Board of Medical Examiners. It has 110 questions in 2 hours 45 minutes, written by the committees that prepare USMLE Step 2 material. The Core 2 FAQ lists OSCEs in family and internal medicine (at the Simulation Center, with standardized patients), neurology (at HUP, without them), pediatrics and surgery. The 2027 exam calendar has OSCE columns for those and for psychiatry, emergency medicine and OB/GYN. If illness makes you miss a requirement such as a shelf exam, you get an Incomplete until it is done.

The United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) is the national licensing exam series. Step 1 has been pass/fail since January 2022; Step 2 Clinical Knowledge (CK), a one-day, nine-hour exam on clinical science, is still scored. Policy UME.CU.106 (effective August 10, 2026) requires you to pass both to graduate. Step 1 must be taken by June 30 of your third year, can come before Core 2, and must be passed before you start a master's, PhD or research year.

The August 2026 Core 3 slides say 36% of students took Step 1 within four weeks of January 1 and 66% within six. The policy strongly encourages Step 2 CK by August 31 at the start of your final year, or before a scholarly year, and requires a pass before you submit your Match rank list. The slides also note that designated test dates begin in 2029. That is a national USMLE change: from January 2029, Step exams will be offered on fewer, designated dates each year, so Penn's timing advice may change for students entering in 2027.

The CSI is a school-run graduation exam taken early in the calendar year after Core 2. You interview and examine standardized patients and write a note after each. The August 2026 slides describe six cases at Penn Medicine at Rittenhouse on about 15 dates from January to April; the MD/PhD program's page describes 8 to 12 stations. A 2025 Core 3 FAQ says it is pass/fail, with separate scores for cognitive and interpersonal skills, and if you fail either part, you must retake the exam.

• A written narrative of your performance is produced at the end of each clerkship. These narratives feed your Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), the dean's letter released to residency programs in the fall of your final year.
• The LCME directory (updated July 2026) lists the school as fully accredited, with its next survey in 2025–26. The school reports full accreditation in 2024, with a follow-up review in 2026. For MD students, LCME accreditation is what makes you eligible to sit the USMLE and to enter residencies accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).

Clinical training is centered on Philadelphia. The Technical Standards (approved 2022) place hospital teaching mainly at HUP, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center and Pennsylvania Hospital, the major affiliates, and at CHOP and the Philadelphia VA Medical Center. They add other affiliated hospitals within 100 miles and nearly 150 outpatient sites. Several major teaching hospitals are within walking distance of the school.

Department pages fill in some clerkships. Internal medicine students rotate at two of HUP, Penn Presbyterian, the VA and Pennsylvania Hospital, across two or three services. OB/GYN students move between HUP, Penn Presbyterian and Pennsylvania Hospital, dividing time among labor and delivery, gynecology services and clinics. A 2021 CHOP article says Penn students do their pediatrics clerkship at CHOP, and the surgery department's student FAQ refers to students at HUP, Penn Presbyterian, Pennsylvania Hospital and the VA.

The family medicine department says its clerkship runs at family medicine residency sites, federally qualified health centers (community health centers that serve under-served areas) and private practices in several communities. Some sites are outside Philadelphia and may provide housing. The Core 2 FAQ adds that outpatient pediatrics can also involve travel.

The 2025 Core 3 FAQ says electives run at HUP, the VA, Penn Presbyterian, Pennsylvania Hospital and CHOP. The Department of Medicine says the internal medicine sub-internship runs on a general medicine service at HUP, Penn Presbyterian, the VA or Pennsylvania Hospital, with primary responsibility for up to six patients. The 2026 course catalog lists the family medicine sub-internship at Penn Presbyterian, the emergency medicine one at HUP and Penn Presbyterian, and the pediatrics one at CHOP.

Electives start in Core 1, in areas such as humanism, the arts and medicine, narrative medicine, nutrition, leadership, advocacy and writing for publication. The school counts about 150 electives in all.

In Core 3, the sub-internship, also called an acting internship, puts you in the role of an intern (a first-year resident), admitting and managing your own patients under supervision. You choose emergency medicine, inpatient family medicine, internal medicine or pediatrics; ACLS certification comes first for internal medicine and emergency medicine. You also need 16 weeks of standard Penn clinical electives and 8 weeks of other electives, such as extra research, away rotations, non-clinical courses or dual-degree coursework.

Electives are assigned by lottery. The August 2026 slides schedule the spring lottery for mid-November, summer for mid-March and fall for mid-June. Most electives last a month, though two- and three-week ones count. Options include consult services, intensive care unit months, dermatology, radiology, radiation oncology and one-on-one surgical preceptorships.

Away rotations are electives at another medical school. The slides say students do one to three, and that they have historically been required in emergency medicine, orthopedics, neurosurgery, plastic surgery and urology, among others. Most students who go away do so in the summer and fall of the final year, often applying through Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO). After two months away at accredited institutions, one month of your Penn clinical electives can also be away.

International rotations run through the Center for Global Health, at partners in countries including Botswana, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Ireland, Japan, Peru and Tanzania, plus Alaska Native Medical Center and Indian Health Service sites. They last at least six weeks unless the partner only offers four. After two away rotations at LCME schools, an international rotation can count toward your Penn clinical electives.

Every student completes a Scholarly Pursuit: at least 12 dedicated weeks, ideally consecutive, of full-time mentored research after Core 2. The project must test a specific hypothesis and can be basic, translational, clinical, social science, health services or global health research. Research done before Core 3 cannot count toward the three-month route, though you can continue an earlier project.

You register a proposal of up to 500 words, setting out your aims, hypothesis, design, timeline and mentorship plan. The final product is a manuscript draft or a 10-page report, graded Pass, Fail or Incomplete by your mentor and the school's assistant dean for student research.

A Scholarly Year extends your studies by up to a year for at least six months of full-time research, on or off campus, with a Penn mentor. It counts as the Scholarly Pursuit plus two elective months. Funding options the school lists include society fellowships and a Center for Global Health year-out program.

The Combined Degree office lists six formal MD/master's programs and advises students on them: MD/MBA (with Wharton), MD/MBE (bioethics), MD/ML (law), MD/MPH (public health), MD/MSHP (health policy research) and MD/MSTR (translational research). Others can be arranged ad hoc, such as MD/MSCE, MD/MSE, MD/MSEd, MD/MSME, MD/MSNS and MD/JD. Most take five years, with the master's year after Core 2 and six to eight months of Core 3. A master's counts as your Scholarly Pursuit.

The MD/PhD runs through the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), founded in 1958, with 229 MD/PhD students enrolled in 2026–27. In the typical plan, the first two years combine medical school with graduate courses and lab rotations, ending with six months of clerkships and Step 1 in the spring and summer of year 2. Years 3 to 6 go to graduate courses and thesis research. After the defense, usually early in year 7, you return to clerkships, and you apply to residency in year 8.

The Areas of Concentration page lists 15 concentrations that add a notation to your transcript and MSPE. Each combines seminars or courses, an internship or capstone and scholarly work. The Measey Primary Care Pathway, open to students in Years 1 to 3, includes mentoring groups and a primary care externship. That can be a four-week block or PRACTICE, a weekly half-day clinic for 32 sessions in your elective year.

• Seven of the 15 concentrations are Academic Surgery; Bridging the Gaps; Clinical Informatics; Clinical Neurosciences Training Program; Community Health IMPaCT Program; Global Health; and Healthcare Management, Entrepreneurship and Technology. The other eight are Leadership in Healthcare Improvement and Patient Safety; Measey Primary Care Pathway; Medical Education; Medical Humanities; Palliative Care; Public Health in Medicine; Spirituality and Health; and Women's Health.

The Henry A. Jordan Medical Education Center (JMEC) is the school's teaching base. It sits where the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine and the Smilow Center for Translational Research meet, linking classrooms with clinical and research space, and it is designed around small-group learning.

The Penn Medicine Clinical Simulation Center at Penn Medicine at Rittenhouse covers 22,000 square feet. Its six simulation rooms include a procedure room, a labor and delivery room, an inpatient room and an emergency department. It also has 12 standardized patient exam rooms with cameras, task trainer rooms with virtual reality and laparoscopic trainers, and the Measey Surgical Suite.

The Standardized Patient Program launched in 1997 with Penn medical students as its primary clients and now serves more than 4,000 learners a year. The Holman Biotech Commons, the health sciences library in Johnson Pavilion, offers an Anatomage table for life-size digital dissection, anatomy software such as Acland's Atlas and Visible Body, and a 3D printing lab.

When you arrive, you join one of four Houses, Dickens, Mossell, Rhoads or Wood, set up in 2013 to create smaller communities across class years. Each has four advisory deans, 16 in all, who help with transitions, wellness, mentoring, career advice and emergencies. You meet your advisory dean at least twice a semester in Core 1 and once a semester after that.

By the end of Year 1 you draw up an Individualized Learning Plan with your advisory dean, revisited as you progress. The ASCEND office (Academic Success, Community Engagement, Networking and Development) offers peer tutors for each preclinical subject, coaching and workshops, for example on preparing for Step exams. Penn's Weingarten Center adds learning support and disability services. Your Doctoring preceptor is another adviser, with at least one meeting a semester in Core 1 and two or three in Core 2.

Specialty career advisers help with residency planning, and every student meets an associate dean of student affairs in the summer of the graduating year. Wellness support includes free Penn gym membership, a hiking trip for first-years, mindfulness electives and crisis help through Student Intervention Services and Student Health and Counseling. MD/PhD students have their own advisory dean.