The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine MD program

In Foundations, most learning is active rather than lecture-based, built around clinical cases worked through in small groups with your longitudinal educator. Medium and large group sessions and review sessions fill out each block, and organ system courses such as Cardiology add patient panels and clinical skills workshops.

Subjects are taught together. Keystone Fundamentals blends anatomy, histology, immunology, genetics, pharmacology, biochemistry, pathology, hematology and microbiology into one case-based course. Each organ system course then joins physiology, disease mechanisms, pharmacology and clinical medicine for one part of the body. Clinical skills, ethics and society, and research methods courses run alongside. Four threads return in sessions across three semesters: clinical reasoning, interprofessional education, social medicine and leadership.

From the clerkships on, teaching moves to wards and clinics. The school's 2024/25 Fact Book gave different, older figures: 1.5 years of clerkships, 1 year of Bridges and five flex weeks.

This picture is built from the school's draft first-year calendar for students entering in 2027 and its workload policy. In Keystone Fundamentals and the organ system blocks, mornings are block teaching. Most Wednesday mornings go to a rotating slot instead: Evidence, Discovery and Reasoning; Patient, Physician and Society; an alliance program session; or a thread session such as leadership or clinical reasoning.

Monday to Wednesday afternoons are either unscheduled or Patient Centered Care, such as interviewing, physical examination or, from January, Introduction to Clinical Medicine. Thursday and Friday afternoons are unscheduled. Most Fridays bring a formative assessment, a practice quiz that does not count toward your grade, and each block ends with a summative exam, usually on its last Friday.

The workload policy caps required scheduled sessions in Foundations at 25 hours a week, or 31 in progress-test weeks. It also guarantees at least two half-days of independent learning time during business hours. In the clerkships and Bridges, duty hours are capped at 80 a week, with at least one full day in seven free of all duties.

Anatomy begins with the Medical Anatomy Immersion, an intensive three-week course in August of your first year, straight after orientation. It covers the gross structure of the body, from the organs of the thorax, abdomen and pelvis to the nervous system, cranial nerves, blood vessels and the bones of the head and trunk. Each day starts with a lab introduction that links your independent study to the session.

You learn through human donor dissection, with virtual dissection software on iPads and other augmented and virtual reality tools alongside. Clinicians from different specialties give demonstrations, and teaching assistants run review sessions and mock exams. Your group also agrees on a standard for treating donors with respect and reflects on it in writing. The admissions page places the anatomy lab on the seventh floor of Scaife Hall, and the 2024/25 Fact Book lists an Anatomage table and Microsoft HoloLens headsets for 3D views in the anatomy suite.

The immersion ends with a cumulative exam, part multiple choice and part lab practical, plus a written reflection. Anatomy then returns within the organ system courses. Examples include the thorax and heart in Cardiology, the upper airway in Pulmonology, joints in Rheumatology, the limbs in Musculoskeletal, the pelvis in Reproduction and the brain in Neuroscience.

Patients appear in your first two weeks: the opening course, Purpose and Practice of Becoming a Physician, includes patient panel encounters. Medical Interviewing begins in week 3 and ends with a Clinical Interview Assessment.

Physical Examination follows in the fall and ends with an OSCE, an objective structured clinical examination. You perform a full physical examination on a standardized patient, scored against a checklist, and must complete 90 percent of its items to pass. The curriculum page says these Patient Centered Care courses take place in hospital and clinic sites as well as classrooms. Full-time clinical work begins after Step 1, with the Preclerkship Course in late January of your second year and clerkships from February.

Foundations is graded Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory. Each block ends with a summative exam, preceded by regular formative quizzes whose results guide your study. Summative exams, OSCEs and other required tests count as benchmark assessments. You get one remediation attempt at each one you fail, may remediate no more than two in a semester, and are referred to the Student Progress and Promotions Committee if failures add up.

The university's 2026-27 catalog says clinical rotations and most electives are graded Honors, High Satisfactory, Satisfactory, Low Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory, with narrative comments. Most clerkship pages match, but the Family Medicine page lists four levels, without Low Satisfactory, and the Psychiatry page uses Honors, High Pass, Pass, Low Pass and Unsatisfactory. Clinical assessments carry the most weight, alongside quizzes and, in some clerkships, an OSCE, a written note, an essay or a project.

Every clerkship page lists an NBME subject exam, a standardized end-of-rotation test from the National Board of Medical Examiners often called a shelf exam, worth 25 percent of the grade. If you fail one, you receive an Incomplete; under the policy effective January 26, 2027, the retake must come within eight weeks, and passing it caps that clerkship at Satisfactory. An Unsatisfactory clerkship must be repeated in full.

The USMLE is the exam series state medical boards use for licensing. Step 1 has been pass/fail since January 26, 2022, and Step 2 CK follows the clerkships. 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.

Pitt's USMLE policy, approved August 17, 2026, makes passing both a graduation requirement, with at most three attempts at each. It expects you to take and pass Step 1 by January 15 of your second year; if you sit it by then, you may start clerkships while the result is pending. Step 2 CK must be attempted within 14 months of starting clerkships and passed before you can be certified for the residency Match.

On the current schedule, a 2027 entrant's Step 1 comes right at the January 2029 switch, with study weeks from late November 2028 into January 2029 and the school's deadline on January 15, 2029. Step 2 CK, due by about spring 2030, falls fully under the new model. Pitt's USMLE and Academic Progress policies both say the school will review its timelines before the change takes effect on January 1, 2029.

• Three progress tests during Foundations help you and your coach track learning and gauge readiness for Step 1.
• The Clinical Competency Assessment, the school's own clinical skills exam, is a graduation requirement; if you fail it, you remediate with the Assistant Dean for Human Simulation Education.
• Other graduation requirements include the Longitudinal Research Project and training in prescribing buprenorphine, a medication for opioid use disorder.
• The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) accredits MD programs in the United States. 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).
• The LCME directory (updated July 22, 2026) lists Pitt as fully accredited, with its next survey in 2026-27, and the school says its April 2019 visit led to full accreditation until 2026-2027. No outcome of the 2026-27 survey had been published by October 2026.

The whole program is based in Pittsburgh. The medical school sits in Oakland, physically attached to UPMC Presbyterian, UPMC Montefiore and UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital, with UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital a few blocks away, according to the MD/PhD program's overview. UPMC and the school are legally separate organizations; UPMC says it runs more than 40 hospitals and 800 outpatient sites.

Three clerkship pages name their hospitals, grouped below: Adult Inpatient Medicine, Neurology, and Obstetrics and Gynecology, which is based at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital with surgical and office sites around Greater Pittsburgh.

Family Medicine and Adult Outpatient Medicine use offices and clinics across the region, from hospital-based sites to community locations. The Pediatrics department says its student teaching is housed at UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, though its undated pages still list pre-2023 clerkship names, such as Inpatient Pediatric Medicine. The consultation-liaison psychiatry elective sees patients at Presbyterian, Montefiore and Magee-Womens.

For each required rotation, coordinators publish site information and you rank your preferences; a standardized lottery then assigns sites at least two weeks before the start. Swaps are not allowed, but you can ask for a specific site for reasons such as a disability, and conflict-of-interest requests must be granted. You arrange and pay for your own transport, including gas, parking and fares, and car ownership plays no part in assignment; coordinators share low-cost travel and parking options and may help arrange carpools.

Electives fill 36 weeks across the two clinical phases: up to six in the clerkship year and the rest in Bridges. The school's online Course Catalog lists more than 250 clinical and non-clinical options. Two-week electives suit exploring a field, four-week ones go deeper with more rigorous assessment, and longitudinal electives keep you with the same mentors and patients over time.

The school strongly recommends at least one elective in each of four groups: medicine or neurology; a pediatric field; surgery, a surgical subspecialty or obstetrics and gynecology; and ambulatory care, community medicine or psychiatry. The Psychiatry department alone offers more than 20 fourth-year electives, from geriatric and child psychiatry to consult work in general hospitals.

The acting internship is a required four-week rotation on an inpatient service. You take coordinated responsibility for your patients, from assessment, diagnosis and tests to treatment, discharge plans, notes, handoffs and cross-cover, at a level close to a first-year resident. The current Bridges page and the 2027-28 block calendars list eight specialties. They are cardiothoracic surgery, family medicine, internal medicine, the medical and neonatal intensive care units (MICU and NICU), pediatrics, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and surgery.

Other documents differ. The 2026-27 catalog's Bridges section and the Class of 2028 checklist omit cardiothoracic surgery, and an undated note in the Course Catalog says only family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics and surgery count.

The four-week boot camp has seven tracks on the Bridges page and in the catalog: anesthesiology, emergency medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, psychiatry and surgery. The Psychiatry department, though, calls its track one of six.

Away electives at other institutions are registered through the school's AMP-UP Course Catalog. International clinical or research electives need advance approval from the Associate Dean for Global Health Education or for Student Affairs, good academic standing, pre-travel training and State Department travel registration. Travel to places under a level 4 travel advisory is not allowed, and credit requires a passing evaluation and a two-page reflection.

For the Longitudinal Research Project, progress reports are due every quarter in the first year and early second year, then every four months in the clinical years. The optional Dean's Summer Research Project, eight weeks of full-time research in the summer after the first year with a poster symposium in September, can count toward it but cannot replace it.

Streams are optional minors that replaced the legacy curriculum's Areas of Concentration, a name some older pages still use. You choose one of four streams (Healer, Advocate, Innovator or Leader), each with focus areas called currents, such as global health or medical education, and apply by the end of the first year. Requirements include flex weeks or electives in the field, workshops, 40 hours of experiential learning in each of Foundations and Bridges, a capstone of at least 20 hours and 150 credits.

Completing a stream earns a mark of distinction on your Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), the dean's letter sent to residency programs. Separate school certificates recognize point-of-care ultrasound skills, 100 hours of community service or 20 hours of mentoring. The Social Medicine Fellows Program, started in 2018, selects first-year students to partner with an underserved community around Pittsburgh, such as Braddock or Homewood, on service learning, research and advocacy, with a three-year commitment.

The MD/PhD and Physician Scientist Training Program (PSTP) curriculum pages still describe the pre-2023 structure, with problem-based learning and Step 1 after the second year. The MD/PhD page and the 2024/25 Fact Book also put eight weeks of clerkships before the PhD. Current documents fit MD/PhD students into the three-phase curriculum instead. Their Class of 2028 checklist waives the Integrated Life Science course and the Longitudinal Alliance Program, and they attempt Step 2 CK within two months of finishing clerkship requirements.

• MD/PhD, the Medical Scientist Training Program: run with Carnegie Mellon University since 1983, linking the MD to 19 graduate programs in basic science or engineering, over about seven to eight years. The catalog says it admits only US citizens and permanent residents.
• Physician Scientist Training Program (PSTP), started in 2007: a five-year, non-degree track. It adds paid research in the summers before and after the first year, a research year between the second and third years, and research seminars.
• Clinical Scientist Training Program (CSTP): a research year between the third and fourth years, usually July to June, earning a Certificate or an MS in clinical research. You apply during medical school, not at entry.
• MD/MBA with the Katz Graduate School of Business: five years, with a year at Katz (33 credits, plus 12 shared with the MD) after two or three years of medicine.
• MD/MA in Bioethics: a 30-credit year away from the MD, usually between the second and third years, with core courses, a clinical practicum and a thesis.
• MD/MPH: the admissions page points to the Multidisciplinary MPH at the School of Public Health, 42 credits including a 200-hour practicum and a final essay.

Classes are held in Alan Magee Scaife Hall, whose West Wing opened as the new curriculum launched. It replaced rigid lecture rooms with smaller, flexible spaces suited to small-group work, and a wet lab spans the width of the building. Keystone Fundamentals and the organ system courses also use the Visual Human Atlas Laboratory for histology, pathology and radiology.

The Standardized Patient Program, based in Scaife Hall, supplies standardized patients for teaching and exams and builds hands-on clinical and communication practice into every year.

The Winter Institute for Simulation, Education and Research (WISER), founded in 1994 and accredited by the Society for Simulation in Healthcare, serves both Pitt and UPMC. Adult Inpatient Medicine students have four critical care simulation sessions there, treating acute heart and lung emergencies. The 2024/25 Fact Book adds WISER training in point-of-care ultrasound that uses HoloLens augmented reality and three-dimensional ultrasound probes.

Advising is organized around Advising Houses, Pitt's learning communities. At orientation a House Reveal sorts you into a house. A house dinner then introduces your advisory dean, your academic coach and your coaching cohort, and house lunches follow in the fall and spring.

According to the current advising page, you are assigned one of eight advisory deans for all four years. They meet you individually and in groups, help plan your clerkship and Bridges schedules, and guide your specialty choice and residency application, but play no part in grading or promotion. An older page still online in October 2026 says seven advisory deans and describes first-year FAST groups.

Since fall 2023, every entering student has been paired with a faculty academic coach, an MD or DO, for monthly meetings and as-needed check-ins through all four years. Coaches help with study plans, goals and balance; they are not content experts or therapists, and they do not grade you. In the BIG/Little program, which replaced FAST, one or two second-year students mentor each first-year coaching group.

If you struggle, the Academic Success Team, including learning specialists, builds study plans with you and can arrange tutoring and practice-exam vouchers. The school's Mental Health Program, running since 1980, offers free, confidential therapy and psychiatric care, with no insurance billed.

Before you start, the optional five-week Prologue to Medicine, from June to early July, introduces the curriculum, faculty and city. Admitted students with a mentor in the Pitt Schools of Health Sciences can apply to the Pitt Med Research Experience for Prematriculants, eight weeks of research before orientation.