The Penn State College of Medicine MD program

Phase I teaches the four pillars side by side. Biomedical courses run one after another, mostly by organ system. Longer courses in clinical skills, humanities and health systems science run alongside them, so in the weeks you study the heart you are also practicing history taking and learning how care is financed.

The Bulletin names two formats common to every curriculum option: small-group PBL and direct patient experiences, with lectures as a supplement. The curriculum page adds team-based learning, peer instruction, simulation and lab work. PBL is the backbone of Host Defense/Host Response, and Form and Function uses PBL cases to connect its subjects.

Teaching moves to the wards and clinics in Phase II, through bedside rounds, case-based discussion, conferences and self-study, while humanities and health systems teaching continue. In Phase III you take on more responsibility in acting internships, also called sub-internships, where you function at the level of an intern, a first-year resident.

School guidelines cap scheduled Phase I class time at 28 hours a week, and all required work in and out of class at 34 hours, both averaged over the academic year. Three-year pathway students may spend six more hours a week on pathway coursework.

The MD/PhD handbook describes the weekly rhythm. Medical courses run every weekday from 8 a.m. to noon, and afternoons are for independent study and PBL preparation, with clinical skills sessions on some afternoons. The Bulletin adds humanities coursework every Tuesday morning.

On clerkships, clinical and on-site work is capped at 80 hours a week, with one day in seven free and no more than 24 continuous hours plus four for handoffs and teaching. Call comes no more than once a week in Phase II and every third night in Phase III, averaged over four weeks.

In Phase I, attendance is required at sessions where you work with classmates or patients, or whose learning cannot be recreated. The handbook allows up to two general absence days and five medical absence days each semester. General days cannot fall next to a break or on sessions that cannot be recreated, such as exams, clinical skills exams, simulation sessions and Neurology Day. On clerkships you get at most two excused days in a four-week clerkship, and Phase III allows up to four per four-week rotation for residency interviews.

The 2026-27 calendar marks five Phase I courses as running with anatomy. Cardiovascular Medicine, Form and Function, and Gastrointestinal Pathophysiology and Nutrition fall in Year 1, and Endocrinology and Reproductive Medicine and Neural and Behavioral Science in Year 2. Anatomy therefore arrives in stretches tied to the body system you are studying.

The school's handbooks point to hands-on dissection in the Hershey anatomy lab. The MD/PhD handbook marks anatomy lab sessions as mandatory and names Grant's Dissector as the reference for in-class dissections. The MD Student Handbook's lab rules require goggles and a mask when students use hammers, chisels, bone pliers and saws.

At Hershey, the Education Program on Human Structure runs anatomy teaching, the anatomy lab, the willed-body donation program and ultrasound teaching for medical students. Anatomy graduate students help teach in its cadaver-based labs and lab exams. The Graduate Bulletin's learning outcomes for anatomy PhD students include lab presentations of prosections, specimens already dissected for study. Once you have completed Year 3 you can take Musculoskeletal Advanced Anatomy, and the catalog also lists a one-credit special-topics course in Advanced Dissection.

The Cognitive Skills Program's tips show how the work goes. You preview each session in the Dissector, then meet the same terms in lecture, afternoon review sessions and formal lab and imaging time. It suggests choosing seven to ten structures a day and going back to the lab with classmates to find them on several bodies, ideally five.

Safety training covers allergens and respiratory irritants. If you have allergies or a respiratory condition, or are pregnant or breastfeeding, Student Health can screen you and recommend extra protective equipment, which the school provides.

Students also honor the donors. At the 2022 Anatomy Memorial Service, led in planning by a second-year student, more than 150 family members and friends remembered 97 people who had donated their bodies.

Two Year 1 strands bring you to patients. Foundations of Patient-Centered Care starts physical examination early, under physician supervision, on classmates, standardized patients and real patients, with applied sessions in inpatient or outpatient settings.

The Patient Experience Program then gives you a role of your own. As a navigator at your assigned site you build a relationship with a patient, take a history that includes the social conditions affecting their health, and work with the care team on those barriers.

Contact builds through Phase I. Neurology Day in Neural and Behavioral Science puts small groups with about 14 patients who have different neurological disorders. You can also volunteer at LionCare, the student-run free clinic at the Bethesda Mission in Harrisburg, where each first-year pairs with a second-year under a supervising physician.

Full-time clinical work starts in mid-March of Year 2, after the two-week Transition to Clerkships course in early March. On clerkships a supervisor must be present or readily available while you take a history or examine a patient, and no order goes ahead without a supervisor's approval.

Every Phase I course is graded Pass or Fail under University Faculty Senate Policy 47-45, last revised in February 2026. To move on you need an overall 70% or above in each course, plus OSCE I and OSCE II, or a remediation plan for OSCE II. Courses of four weeks or more must give you practice feedback by their midpoint. In every phase, final grades must reach you within six weeks of a course or clerkship ending.

In Phases II and III, courses offered on a graded basis use Honors, High Pass, Pass and Fail, and all others are Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory. Each clerkship director sets the criteria, including the passing standard, with approval from the curriculum committee. Knowledge is tested with NBME shelf exams, national subject exams in a specialty, or customized versions. Surgery, for example, adds an OSCE, a group case presentation across the four pillars and a health systems reflection.

If you fall short, there is a set path. A knowledge deficiency in Phase I means a Personal Improvement Plan and a remediation exam, and passing puts a Pass on your transcript. Failing a shelf exam the first time also means one remediation exam, with Pass the highest grade possible. Failing a remediation means a Fail, repeating the course or clerkship and referral to the Academic Progress Committee.

You must pass USMLE Step 1 and Step 2 CK to graduate. Step 1 has been reported as pass or fail only since January 26, 2022, and Step 2 CK still gets a three-digit score, with a minimum pass of 218. A committee can place you in a four-week Intensive Review of Medical Knowledge elective if your practice exams suggest you need longer than eight weeks. You must pass Step 1 within three attempts and by December 31 of your study year.

You can sit Step 2 CK once Phase II is complete, apart from Systems-Conscious and Humanistic Medicine. The school urges you to take it early in Phase III, because your score may affect career choice and scheduling. The deadline is the start of Phase III Rotation 7, on or around August 31 of Year 4, and you have three attempts.

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, projected from the 2026-27 calendar for both campuses, a student entering in July 2027 would start the study period in January 2029. That student would sit Step 1 shortly after the switch, before clerkships start that March. Step 2 CK would follow in 2030, with a deadline around August 31, 2030, also after the switch.

• OSCEs test communication, history taking, physical examination, clinical reasoning and medical knowledge. You must pass all of them, including OSCE III, a Phase II requirement. If you fail OSCE III, you go through remediation, and failing that sends you to the Academic Progress Committee.
• From the 2026-27 study period on, students who have not taken Step 1 after 12 weeks go on extended absence and return only after passing, typically in September or the next March.
• The Step 1 result can arrive after clerkships start. If it is a fail, you finish a four-week clerkship first, but you leave an eight-week one, return to study and later repeat it in full.
• A first Step 2 CK failure means a four-week study elective that does not count toward Phase III requirements, and each retake must come within eight weeks.
• The USMLE FAQ, updated August 6, 2026, lists 17 Step 1 and 14 Step 2 CK administrations for 2029, with dates published more than a year ahead.
• The Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), or dean's letter, summarizes your performance for residency programs. The school says it does not rank students.
• To graduate you must also complete the research project and finish within seven years of entering, with separate rules for MD/PhD students.
• The handbook lists grounds on which you can be considered for dismissal. They include a Does Not Meet rating, its mark for falling short, in three Phase I courses, or two failed shelf exams in Phase II.

A lottery sets your clerkship schedule and sites. Right after it you can swap sites with classmates for a set period, and then the assignment is final unless compelling circumstances apply. Hershey students center on Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, the 551-bed flagship hospital of a system serving 15 counties.

Family and Community Medicine spreads farthest, with sites from Hershey and Harrisburg out to Altoona, Indiana, Pittsburgh and Washington, Pa. Community Health Systems Integration lists Cumberland, Berks and Lancaster/Lebanon as regions. Most sites beyond Hershey Medical Center cannot be reached by public transportation, so the school highly recommends a car, and sites are not changed for transportation reasons.

Year 2 students can apply for the Kaiser Permanente Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group longitudinal integrated clerkship (LIC). An LIC is a year-long format in which you stay with the same teachers and patients across specialties instead of moving through separate blocks. This one offers customized schedules, one-to-one teaching from over 60 physician faculty, surgical skills training and a scholarship toward living expenses.

All applicants go through the same admissions process. Once you hold an offer from the college, you can interview for a University Park spot, which carries a partial scholarship each year. The 2026-27 Bulletin says the Hershey, accelerated and University Park options share the same vision, core curriculum, three-phase framework and graduation competencies, by a design that ensures comparability. It lists the same year-by-year courses for both campuses and names this one the University Park Regional Campus.

The campus page describes longitudinal clinical training at Mount Nittany Medical Center in all three phases, and it hosts most core inpatient experiences. The shared calendar and the Bulletin list block rotations and the year diagrams read Clerkship Blocks/LIC, so ask the campus how clerkships run for your class. Trips to Hershey happen for orientation and for sessions and assessments common to all students, and the school highly recommends a vehicle.

The Rural Health Scholars Program, with up to six places in 2026-27, runs across all four years. You have a summer community experience in rural Pennsylvania after Year 1, one core clerkship with a rural clinical partner, then an advanced rural elective and a final capstone project in Year 4. Its 2025 sites were Indiana and Snowshoe, Pa. The program is linked to the LION Mobile Clinic, a student-led, physician-supervised unit launched in 2022 that takes preventive care and screenings to rural communities.

Phase II includes the equivalent of four weeks of electives. Phase III needs at least 24 weeks, 12 or more of them at Penn State Health or College of Medicine affiliates and no more than eight in research. Your Longitudinal Academic Counselor must approve your choices before they enter the lottery, and changes generally close four weeks before a rotation.

Medicine alone offers more than a dozen electives and acting internships. Third-year choices include cardiology, emergency medicine, neurosurgery and otolaryngology. Fourth-year choices include addiction medicine at Hershey and primary care sports medicine, with separate Hershey and University Park versions. Social Impact and Community Advocacy in Medicine can use the LION Mobile Clinic as an anchor site.

Recent humanities selective topics include human virtue, jazz and the art of medicine, and graphic storytelling, and since 2009 fourth-years have created comics in the graphic storytelling course.

An away rotation is an elective taken at another institution. Established electives at any LCME-accredited US medical school can count if you file the form at least a month ahead. Other institutions need two months' notice and added review. Independent international electives go preferably through the Global Health Center's partner sites, and others are considered case by case.

The Global Health Scholars Pathway is a four-year track you apply to in the fall of Year 1. You spend two four-week stays at one site, the first in the summer after Year 1 and the second in Year 4. Sites for 2026-27 are in Australia, Brazil, China, Croatia, Ghana, India, Ireland, Nepal, Peru, the Philippines, Vietnam and Zambia.

The Medical Student Research program, set up by founding dean George Harrell, is a graduation requirement except for MD/PhD students. You choose a mentored project in clinical, social, basic science or education research, on or off campus. Students typically work on it full-time in the summer after Year 1, and scholarship awards of up to $2,000 and federal work-study can help.

The MD/PhD Medical Scientist Training Program typically takes eight years and comes with full tuition, a stipend and health benefits. You complete Phase I with some graduate courses, do two lab rotations in the summer after Year 1, and must pass Step 1 within two attempts. Thesis research usually takes four to five years, in graduate programs from Neuroscience and Biomedical Sciences to Anthropology and Engineering Sciences and Mechanics. The MD/PhD handbook places your clerkships at Hershey Medical Center only.

The five-year MD/MPH, which adds a Master of Public Health, puts 27 credits of public health study between Years 3 and 4, at Hershey with several courses online. They include a practicum, an internship on a project at a public health site, and a capstone, a final project presented as a paper and poster. The rest of the 42 credits transfer from the MD.

The five-year MD/MBA, which adds a Master of Business Administration, starts with three years in Hershey. You begin Smeal College of Business coursework at University Park in Year 4 and finish with MD and MBA coursework and clinical rotations in Year 5.

The Clinician Educator Pathway awards an MD and a Master of Education (MEd) in Lifelong Learning and Adult Education within four years. You apply during Year 3 and take the MEd courses in Year 4.

The Clinician Scientist Training Pathway is a year of mentored research, from July to June, open after you finish Phase II and pass Step 1. The pathways page describes it as research within the four years, and the handbook lets students who have completed eight full-time semesters extend into a ninth and tenth at reduced tuition.

The college began with a $50 million offer from the M.S. Hershey Foundation to Penn State in 1963, and it opened to students in 1967. The Hershey campus, which also holds the Medical Center, has grown to 550 acres.

The Clinical Simulation Center is a 10,000-square-foot facility with mock operating rooms, intensive care units and emergency departments, high-fidelity manikins and audio-visual recording for debriefing. It also houses the Standardized Patient Program.

The Library Commons of the Harrell Health Sciences Library is open 24 hours a day and has 12 small group study rooms. University Manor, the on-campus housing, has 248 garden-style apartments in its east section and 31 furnished four-bedroom apartments in its west section.

Every student belongs to one of five George T. Harrell Societies, four at Hershey and one at University Park: Bond, Davis, Mortel, Vastyan and Waldhausen. These learning communities mix students from each MD and physician assistant year with faculty advisors, and they support learning, wellness, leadership and career development.

You are assigned a Longitudinal Academic Counselor, a faculty advisor you meet at least once a semester, who has no role in assessing or promoting you. More than 30 Specialty Advisors can then help with career choice and residency applications.

The Cognitive Skills Program offers workshops and individual help with study plans, test-taking and time management, including for shelf exams. The handbook says the MD program does not pass information about you forward to your next course or clerkship.

The Office for Professional Mental Health offers free, confidential services. COMMpanion, Penn State Health's telehealth-first primary care service, uses clinical staff with no role in teaching or assessing students.

You can report mistreatment anonymously to the Office for a Respectful Learning Environment, or go to one of two faculty ombudspersons, a neutral and confidential service in place since 1991.