The University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry MD program

Science and clinical skills are timed to line up. In Phase 1, Human Structure and Function and Introduction to Clinical Medicine are aligned, so you learn to examine each body system while studying its anatomy and physiology. In Phase 2, Primary Care Clerkship classes take common complaints, such as chest pain, in step with the organ system being taught in Disease Processes and Therapeutics.

Most courses combine lectures with PBL and TBL, which the school says run several days a week through the first two years. In PBL your small group works through a case and presents its findings at the next session. TBL opens with an individual and then a team readiness quiz, taken on your iPad, on material you prepared.

Meliora in Medicine, named for the university motto, meaning ever better, is a course in Phases 1 and 2 and a thread through all four years. It covers health systems science, including patient safety, quality and the social determinants of health. It also covers technology in medicine, such as the electronic medical record, ultrasound and telehealth, and professional identity, from bioethics to wellness and advocacy.

The handbook caps scheduled time in Phases 1 and 2. Lectures, labs, PBL, TBL, small groups and clinical sessions should average no more than 25 hours a week, with no single week over 36 hours. On average two half-days a week stay free of scheduled activities, and optional review sessions and exams do not count toward the cap.

Attendance is required at PBL, TBL, skills sessions and anything involving patients, while whole-class lectures are strongly encouraged. In Phase 2 the Primary Care Clerkship takes up about three afternoons a week on average.

In the clinical phases, duty hours are capped at 80 a week averaged over four weeks, with one day in seven free. Continuous duty is limited to 24 hours, plus time to hand over patients. On the surgery clerkship at Strong Memorial, students take overnight trauma call about once a week.

Human Structure and Function, the 14-week course that opens Phase 1 in August, teaches gross anatomy, histology, embryology and physiology together. Alongside lectures, interactive large-group sessions, PBL and physiology problem sets, it runs labs in gross anatomy, physiology and histology. You are assessed by multiple-choice and practical exams and on your PBL performance.

Gross anatomy relies on whole-body donations to the school's Anatomical Gift Program, which calls these gifts essential to teaching medical students human anatomy. Donor bodies are usually embalmed on arrival and cremated after use, most commonly two years later, at the university's expense.

First-year students dissect. A spring 2026 exhibit at the Edward G. Miner Library says they enter the anatomy lab with a dissection manual, The Dissector. The 2025-26 Clinical Course Catalog bears this out. On its two-week elective, Teaching Tutorial and Review in Human Structure, third- and fourth-years help with each day's dissection and prepare prosections, specimens dissected in advance for teaching.

The library lists required anatomy e-texts, such as Moore's Essential Clinical Anatomy, and provides Visible Body 3D models and Acland's video atlas of real specimens. A technology plan written for 2022-23 set out an iPad with anatomy apps for each of the 31 lab tables.

Anatomy returns in Phase 2, when Mind/Brain/Behavior runs 14 lab and TBL sessions on neuroanatomy, neuroradiology and neuropathology, using gross brain dissections, brain images and pathology specimens. For fourth-years, the 2025-26 catalog lists Medical Procedures in Anatomy Lab, a one-week elective. In it you practice procedures such as intubation, chest tubes, central lines and lumbar puncture on lightly embalmed cadavers.

Introduction to Clinical Medicine runs through the first 18 weeks of Phase 1, teaching the patient interview and physical exam through lectures, live demonstrations and small groups. You work with standardized patients throughout, and the course is assessed through multiple-choice exams, faculty observation in small groups and graded encounters with standardized patients.

Foundations of Biopsychosocial Practice, a 19-week course, then has you take complete histories and exams on real patients, from infants to older adults, in outpatient primary care, hospital wards and rehabilitation units. Its second half turns to wellness, prevention and health behavior counseling, with both real and simulated patients.

In Phase 2 the Primary Care Clerkship is longitudinal: it runs part-time across 31 weeks rather than as a full-time block. You work with physicians in internal medicine, family medicine or pediatric outpatient practices, and early physical diagnosis sessions focus on finding and interpreting abnormal signs. Assessment includes evaluations from your preceptor, the physician who supervises you, plus quizzes, standardized-patient encounters, graded clinical notes and a customized exam from the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME).

Full-time clinical work begins with Phase 3. Throughout, you never care for patients unsupervised, every procedure is directly supervised, and intimate exams, such as breast, rectal and genitourinary exams, must be directly observed.

Phase 1 and 2 courses are graded Pass, Pass Marginal or Fail. Exams are mainly multiple choice, with practical exams in lab courses and short-answer questions in Disease Processes and Therapeutics. A failed or marginal exam may be retaken once, at the course director's discretion. A course grade of Fail means repeating the course, and you may repeat a course, clerkship or year only once.

Clinical skills are tested in encounters with standardized patients, both in courses and in the ungraded Phase 1, 2 and 3 Assessments. The handbook's recording policy names an OSCE (objective structured clinical examination), an observed exam with standardized patients, as one formal assessment that may be recorded.

Clerkships and acting internships are graded Honors, High Pass or Pass, with Pass Marginal and Fail below. A committee of at least five faculty sets each clerkship grade from evaluations with names removed, aiming for about a third of students at each passing grade. The NBME subject exam, a national end-of-clerkship test often called a shelf exam, counts for 20%, and administrative professionalism for 5%.

The program is accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), which accredits MD programs in the United States. The LCME directory lists Rochester's status as Full, with the next survey in 2031-32. For MD students, LCME accreditation establishes eligibility to sit the USMLE. Step 1, on the science behind medicine, has been pass/fail only since January 26, 2022. You must sit it before Phase 3, with no extensions, and pass it to graduate.

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 first announcement, in June 2026, had named 2028.

On the current schedule, a 2027 entrant finishes Phase 2 on about May 11, 2029 and must sit Step 1 before Phase 3 starts on about June 11, 2029. Step 2 CK, on clinical knowledge, needs a passing score at the school by February 1 of the final year, which is February 1, 2031. Both fall after the switch to designated testing dates, and the school's calendar says its dates may change.

• The USMLE has urged schools to review rules on when students must test, so these timing rules may change.
• If you have not sat Step 1 by the first day of Phase 3, you enter a semester of Independent Preparation for Licensure. You study at least 40 hours a week and cannot start clerkships until the next semester.
• You need at least the 4th national percentile to pass a clerkship's subject exam. Failing it with otherwise good clerkship work brings a temporary To Be Determined grade and one retake.
• Your MSPE is written by your Advisory Dean, the faculty advisor assigned to you for all four years. It places you in one of four groups: Outstanding (about 20%), Excellent (20%), Very Good (55%) or Good (5%), based on seven core clerkship grades, including the Primary Care Clerkship, weighted by length.
• The top 10% of the class in each course earn a Letter of Achievement, kept off the transcript but shared with the selection committee of Alpha Omega Alpha, the national medical honor society. The June 2026 handbook says it is noted in your MSPE for classes entering from August 2022; the 2025-26 catalog says it is not.

Clinical training is centered on Rochester. Strong Memorial Hospital, at 601 Elmwood Avenue, shares the main medical center campus with the school, and Golisano Children's Hospital shares its address. All of Strong's medical clinicians hold faculty appointments at the school and take part in teaching residents and students.

Every medicine student spends part of the eight weeks on a hospital medicine team at Strong. You may also rotate to Highland Hospital or FF Thompson Hospital, join the Medicine in Psychiatry team, or work with subspecialty teams in the Heart Center and Wilmot Cancer Center. Surgery runs at Strong, Highland and Rochester General Hospital, and about 12 students at a time take pediatrics at Golisano Children's or Rochester General.

Neurology splits its four weeks into two two-week rotations on adult and child services at Strong and Highland. Psychiatry follows your preceptor's service, from adult, child, forensic or geriatric inpatient units to emergency psychiatry or consultation work on medical wards. Emergency medicine runs in a high-volume Level I trauma emergency department, one equipped for the most serious injuries.

Every required clerkship must let you state a site preference, but the clerkship director decides. Travel is your responsibility. The handbook requires reliable transportation by January of Phase 1 and says the school cannot guarantee sites near the medical school. It calls carpooling not viable and regional public transit inefficient for clinical travel.

You need at least 23 weeks of electives across Phases 3 and 4. No more than 12 can be in one specialty, and if you reach 12 you must spend six more in a different clinical setting. Non-clinical electives are capped at eight weeks, research electives at six and reading electives at two.

The posted 2025-26 Clinical Course Catalog describes about 150 courses, mostly one to four weeks long, including palliative care, clinical ethics, emergency ultrasound and a psychiatric mobile crisis unit. You can also design an elective with a faculty member and your Advisory Dean, and Rochester students get first choice of places over visiting students.

Away rotations, called extramural electives, open once you have passed the first two years in good standing. You can spend up to 12 weeks at other institutions, in the US or abroad, with approval from your Advisory Dean and a Rochester faculty member in the same field. The handbook advises starting inquiries in January of Phase 3.

International electives need at least 12 weeks' notice. The June 2026 handbook lists reciprocal exchanges with schools in Poland, Taiwan, South Korea, Spain, Peru and Ireland. The Outreach page instead names affiliation agreements in China, Ireland, Peru, Poland and Spain, and programs in more than 40 countries. Family medicine runs an elective in rural Honduras on its residency program's trips each October and May.

The optional Elective Pathways, which their own page calls certificate programs, run alongside the curriculum. The curriculum page introduces seven pathways but lists eight, the same eight the pathways page describes:

• Deaf Health: Deaf health disparities seminars and American Sign Language in years 1 and 2; no prior signing needed.
• Global Health: lectures, required clinical experiences and an independent project, for selected students.
• Health and Incarceration: caring for patients with a history of incarceration.
• Health, Equity, and Law Policy: work with a community agency and draft a policy response by the end of Phase 4.
• Health Humanities and Bioethics: a mentored Pathway Project; competitive entry, up to 20 students a year.
• Healthcare Innovation and Economics: courses with the Center for Health + Technology and the Simon Business School's Innovation Center.
• LatinX Health: for intermediate or advanced Spanish speakers, up to 12 students a year.
• Medical Education: tutor a PBL group, lead small groups, give a lecture and write exam questions.

Research is optional, with support at each stage. The school's enrichment office awards competitive grants for local, national or international projects: up to $3,500 for eight weeks in summer, and typically $23,100 for a 12-month year out. Funded students then submit an abstract and present a poster.

A year out is a Student Fellowship, generally two terms and up to 12 months, which your Advisory Dean can approve. You keep full-time student status and can take an advanced certificate without tuition, in analytic epidemiology, health services research, clinical research methods, experimental therapeutics, public health or health professions education. Departments add their own, such as the pediatrics department's David Hamilton Smith year-out fellowship.

The Academic Research Track supports students aiming at academic medicine, with lunchtime seminar modules on mentoring, research questions, measurement, data, funding and writing for publication. Two distinctions are earned by application: the MD with Distinction in Research, judged on a five-page synopsis and a mentor's letter, and the MD with Distinction in Community Health. That one asks for 140 hours of service, the four-week Community Health Improvement Course and a community project presented to a faculty committee.

The MD/PhD is the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), funded by the National Institutes of Health since 1973. You take Phases 1 and 2 with the MD class, plus the Scientific Reasoning in Medicine journal club and a 6 to 8 week lab rotation after year 1. After Step 1 you join one of 18 PhD programs, and most students defend in three to five years. Two to four longitudinal clerkships, weekly half-days with a physician-scientist, keep your clinical skills going.

The About page, whose quick facts date from about 2019, says eight MD/PhD students start each year; the Class of 2030 profile puts them at 3%. The MD/MBA with the Simon Business School takes five years: a year of MBA core courses, then four years of medical school with electives from both. An MD/MS in Medical Humanities, now titled Health Humanities and Bioethics, is also offered.

Some students arrive through Rochester Early Medical Scholars (REMS), an eight-year BA/BS plus MD program for University of Rochester undergraduates, begun in 1991.

The Center for Experiential Learning, part of the Institute for Innovative Education, has about 70,000 square feet of teaching space. It includes a simulation center, six large auditoriums and thirteen PBL rooms reserved for medical students. Each PBL room has a mock doctor's office for practicing interviews and exams with standardized patients, and a camera system records sessions for debriefing and self-critique.

The Standardized Patient Program, running since 1999, trains a pool of about 150 people aged 16 to 80, recruited to reflect the Rochester community. The simulation team also works with task trainers, high-fidelity mannequins, procedural trainers and virtual reality.

The Edward G. Miner Library offers about 30,000 square feet of quiet study space, classrooms, group study rooms and a recording room for making videos. Third- and fourth-year students have on-call rooms, and students share a lounge with a kitchen and a music room.

Advising runs through the Advisory Dean program. You are assigned an Advisory Dean for all four years: school pages say one of four, while the June 2026 handbook's staff list names five. You meet in small groups, including required Advisory Dean lunches, and one to one for personal advising, curriculum planning and career counseling.

Your Advisory Dean approves schedule changes, electives and fellowship leave, but plays no part in grading you and does not provide formal personal counseling. For that, students use the confidential University Counseling Center and University Health Service, alongside the school's Wellness and Resilience program.

Career counseling follows a calendar, from specialty interest group fairs each August and summer planning in Phase 1 to a Phase 2 session on studying for Step 1. Phase 3 brings residency application sessions, and Phase 4 a mock interview with a faculty member, alongside the Association of American Medical Colleges' Careers in Medicine resources.

The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning offers study-skills coaching and workshops, alongside tutoring, accommodations and an early identification process. A learning specialist works with anyone who fails a clerkship subject exam.