The Rush Medical College of Rush University Medical Center MD program

Rush describes its curriculum as learner-centered and competency-based, integrating all basic science and clinical components in a flipped classroom without lectures. Before each session you read course notes and watch prepared videos; in class you work in teams on problems within patient cases, guided by basic science and clinical faculty. Rush introduced the format with the class that started in 2017.

Most preclerkship courses take one part of the body, or one stage of life, through its normal function and its diseases. The catalog describes most of them as combining the science with diagnostic tests, drug treatment, building a differential diagnosis (the list of possible causes) and the history and exam for that system. The curriculum also covers biostatistics, ethics, health care economics, humanism in medicine, personal wellness and the social determinants of health.

Clinical experiences, workshops, labs and simulation supplement the case work. Behavioral sciences faculty teach patient communication in years 1 and 2, with intensive training, high-fidelity simulation and feedback on an increasingly complex series of tasks.

Rush's program objectives are organized around six roles a physician plays (advocate, communicator, leader, practitioner, professional and scholar) plus medical knowledge. Every session objective links to a course objective, and every course objective to one of these program objectives. In years 3 and 4 learning moves to wards and clinics, and a year-long course in each year returns to the roles. Students also sit on curriculum committees, including a student-only advisory committee.

Anatomy comes inside the organ-system courses, six of which use the Human Anatomy Laboratory on the fifth floor of the Armour Academic Center. Vital Fluids and Vital Gases use it in the fall of year 1. Later that year come Food to Fuel, Movement and Mechanics, and Brain, Behavior and Cognition. Sexuality and Reproduction, at the start of year 2, completes the set. The lab also serves Rush's other health professions programs and hosts 20 to 25 workshops a year where device companies demonstrate surgical techniques to doctors.

The lab teaches with whole bodies donated for medical education and research, which the Anatomical Gift Association of Illinois prepares and distributes to Rush and other Illinois institutions. Each year Rush University students organize a memorial service to honor the donors. Rush's Section of Anatomy Education, whose faculty teach gross anatomy, histology, embryology and neuroscience, says most of its gross anatomy teaching happens in the lab.

If you are heading for a surgical specialty, the fourth-year Surgical Anatomy elective offers advanced training in anatomy and surgical skills through cadaveric dissection, teaching assistantships, online modules and independent study. It has to be taken in person on campus.

Rush says you start working with patients within the first few weeks of your first year. EXPLORE pairs you with clinical, research or advocacy experiences that reinforce classroom learning. It begins in the fall of year 1 with EXPLORE Essentials, which covers taking patient histories and presenting them aloud, along with mentoring and career exploration.

After EXPLORE Essentials, you are matched with a faculty preceptor and spend 20 hours with them over the semester, on or off campus. You can choose a new experience each term, up to five in two years, or keep one going for two or more semesters.

Bedside Clinical Skills, a required part of the preclerkship phase, lets you practice on real hospitalized patients before clerkships begin. You take histories, examine patients, develop differential diagnoses, assessments and plans, give oral presentations and write up notes, with feedback from clinical faculty. It also teaches the standard structure for presenting a patient, aloud and in writing, that you will use throughout clerkships.

Students in the Family Medicine Leadership Program join the care team at their home practice from the first few weeks of year 1. Outside the curriculum, the Rush Community Service Initiatives Program (RCSIP) runs student volunteer services. They include a free Community Health Clinic, DermConnect skin care for uninsured patients and Rush Street Medicine, which works with the Night Ministry to bring care to people experiencing homelessness.

The 2026-27 Rush University catalog says Honors and High Pass grades are used only for select medical-student coursework and that no grade point average (GPA) is reported for Rush medical students. The interprofessional course IPE 502 is graded pass or no pass, and the catalog's description of the dermatology elective gives final grades of honors, high pass, pass or fail.

If you miss the passing standard on a first attempt, you may get a Deferred designation, a temporary mark while you are reassessed. In years 1 and 2 this applies only to your first two such courses; in clerkships, only to the first clerkship whose NBME subject exam, often called a shelf exam, you fail. After that, a first-attempt miss is recorded as a Fail.

Reassessments are normally due by the end of the academic year; a Deferred from a spring clerkship in year 3 can be cleared by the end of the summer term of year 4. A passed reassessment becomes a Pass and a failed one a Fail. The promotions committee, the Committee on Student Evaluation and Promotion (COSEP), can set remediation plans and must vote to approve your graduation.

USMLE Step 1 has been reported only as pass or fail since January 26, 2022. For 2027 entrants, the 2026-27 catalog sets the rule: take Step 1 before core clerkships, and pass it to graduate. Rush's curriculum page repeats this and refers you to the catalog for the most up-to-date curriculum information. The preclerkship page puts it more strictly, saying you must take and pass Step 1 before third-year clerkships. Step 2 CK follows in year 4, and you must pass both exams by deadlines the college sets.

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 notice, in June 2026, had named 2028.

On the current schedule, a student starting in June 2027 would reach the dedicated Step 1 preparation late in the spring 2029 term, which runs from January to April. Step 1 would then come before clerkships start that summer, a few months after the switch, and Step 2 CK, in 2030-31, would also fall under the new model.

• To graduate you must also pass all core clerkships and be scheduled for your 24 elective weeks by deadlines the college sets, and finish within 58 months of active enrollment, not counting leave.
• Clinical skills are tested in Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs), where you rotate through stations, each testing a task such as interviewing or examining a patient. Each third-year clerkship has an OSCE, and a fourth-year OSCE checks that you have the skills you will need as a resident.
• Rush says passing Step 1 and Step 2 before graduation makes you eligible for Step 3, the last licensing exam. The USMLE recommends taking it once you have completed, or nearly completed, a year of residency training.
• A Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE) letter is included when Rush sends your transcript for residency applications.
• In its licensing disclosure, last updated in July 2026, Rush says the curriculum meets the educational requirements for medical licensure in every US state.

You are based on the Rush campus on Chicago's Near West Side, in the Illinois Medical District, not far from the Loop, Chicago's downtown. Rush University Medical Center, a 671-bed hospital for adults and children, shares the campus; its butterfly-shaped Tower building opened in 2012.

Core clerkships are offered mainly at Rush University Medical Center, at Rush sites across Chicagoland and at John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County, in the same district. Stroger, a 450-bed teaching hospital, is the main hospital of Cook County Health and the safety-net hospital for many Chicago-area residents who are uninsured or underinsured.

Cook County Health says Stroger's emergency room treats about 120,000 adults and children a year. It also has a Level I trauma center, the designation for hospitals that treat the most severe injuries.

The four-week primary care clerkship uses outpatient sites across the Chicago area. The family medicine department says it prefers community clinics to university ones where it can, since most US health care happens outside universities, and some students rotate at family medicine residency sites alongside residents. Its student education page, which carries no date, lists the sites below, along with four hospitals for the family medicine sub-internship.

First-year electives run alongside the required courses, and you can preview one before committing. The options are Basic or Intermediate Spanish for Medical Professionals, taught in Spanish; Humanities in Medicine, with museum visits, movement and acting exercises and literature; and Basic Biomedical Research. They do not count toward the elective weeks needed to graduate, and students in the two leadership programs cannot take them.

Professional development courses are a required strand you design: one in year 1 (2 credits) and three in year 2 (10 credits in all). With your academic adviser you plan work in one of four areas: academic enrichment, such as concentrated study or tutoring; clinical experience; community service; or research, from a proposal to a poster or manuscript.

In year 3, if eligible, you can use up to six weeks for electives within two of the three super-blocks, including Careers in Medicine electives for trying out a specialty. Only fourth-year electives count toward the graduation requirement.

Year 4 needs at least 24 weeks of electives, 20 of them in direct patient care and no more than 16 in one subspecialty. Rush offers over 80 electives across its departments, or you can design one with a Rush faculty member. Many students spend four weeks on a non-patient-care elective, such as a research elective or a medical education elective, in which you design curriculum and help clinician educators teach preclerkship students.

Catalog electives range from Medical Toxicology and Emergency Medicine Ultrasound to Palliative Care and Immersive Artificial Intelligence Exploration. Up to 12 weeks can be away rotations at another institution accredited by the LCME or the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), which accredits residency programs. About 60% of Rush fourth-years currently take one, applying through the Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO) service of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

Through the Office of Global Health, fourth-years can take a global health elective: mostly self-study on social determinants, ethics and tackling infectious and chronic disease, plus service learning at an endorsed site. Rush teams make regular primary care and surgical trips to the Dominican Republic; the 2026-27 schedules list six primary care trips and eight surgical and specialty trips. Fourth-years can join them for credit through that elective or as volunteers on vacation time.

Research is open from year 1. The Basic Biomedical Research elective gives you a mentored research experience in a clinical setting: you learn to evaluate medical literature critically, write a research proposal and present your work. Summer Research Fellowship recipients take it in the summer term.

The fellowship is paid, competitive and runs in the summer between the first and second preclerkship years. You find a faculty mentor and write a proposal modeled on a National Institutes of Health (NIH) training grant; Rush says it funded every applicant last year. In year 4, a research elective in a specialty of your choice starts with a plan setting out a hypothesis, study design, timeline and your role.

For a longer break, the 2026-27 catalog allows up to 12 months of voluntary leave, which can be extended by petition to two years. In approved situations you can request a third year. Examples include study for another degree, such as a master's in business (MBA), public health (MPH) or public policy (MPP), or a PhD, at Rush or elsewhere. Research also qualifies, including formal programs such as the NIH Medical Research Scholars Program, and leave does not count toward the 58 months you have to finish.

The Armour Academic Center is the hub of student life. It holds classrooms, laboratories, the McCormick Educational Technology Center, Rush Medical College's offices and the Library of Rush University Medical Center. The library has about 20,000 square feet of study space, open to students 24 hours a day by badge, and online access to more than 120 databases.

The Rush Center for Clinical Skills and Simulation, founded in 2002, occupies 20,000 square feet on campus and is accredited by the American College of Surgeons and the Society for Simulation in Healthcare. It has 12 exam rooms with audio and video recording for standardized patient encounters, a four-bay multi-patient room and copies of real hospital rooms, from a pediatric procedure room to an anesthesia operating room.

High-fidelity manikins, from premature babies to adults, have heartbeats, breathe and respond to treatment. Task trainers cover skills such as IV placement, lumbar puncture, central lines and chest tubes. A surgical skills lab has touch-feedback trainers for laparoscopic and cardiovascular procedures, and debriefing rooms play back recordings of your work.

Medical Student Affairs (MSA) is a team just for medical students, separate from the university's student affairs office. From orientation to graduation you have a faculty adviser, a Rush attending physician who acts as a role model and sounding board. You also join one of six advising communities, groups that mix students from every class year with their own peer advisers, much like the learning communities at other schools.

The communities are named Brainard, Eckenfels, Goodman, Hedger, Herb and Peck, after figures from Rush's history. Among them are founder Daniel Brainard and Isabella Herb. In 1909 Herb became the first woman appointed to the staff of Presbyterian Hospital, which the college had founded in 1883 to give its students clinical training. She served as chief anesthetist there until 1941. Peck honors David Jones Peck, the first African American man to earn a medical degree from a US medical school.

Academic support comes in three tiers: general help for everyone, enhanced support for students identified by an Early Intervention Committee, and remediation for anyone reassessing a block or clerkship. Student support managers advise on study skills, time management and self-care. Second- to fourth-year students teach in the Peer Education Program, and about 14 residents run the Resident Education Program, with strategies for each clerkship and shelf exam preparation.

Career advising runs through all four years, from learning about options for your first summer in year 1 to a year-long interviewing course in year 4. More than 15 student-led career interest groups, each with a faculty liaison, run events.

MSA also runs Doc Talks, where Rush physicians and alumni share successes and struggles, social hours every term, and morning meditation and afternoon yoga twice a month. Rush Wellness offers free, confidential therapy with no cap on sessions, and its team can be paged around the clock, with a reply within 60 minutes. Alumni donations make the White Coat Ceremony possible: in August 2026 they ensured each of the 156 new students received a white coat, a stethoscope and a note of encouragement.