The Rutgers New Jersey Medical School MD program

NJMS describes its curriculum as integrated and organized by organ system, with threads that run through every block. Pediatrics and geriatrics is one: when you study the lungs, for example, you meet cystic fibrosis in children and lung cancer in older adults. Other threads across all four years include culturally competent care, patient safety, prevention and interprofessional education (learning with other health professions).

Most pre-clerkship mornings are lectures or active sessions. The Office of Education also describes dedicated integration and assessment weeks built on clinical case discussions, meant to sharpen critical thinking and problem solving.

In the clerkships, teaching moves to wards and clinics, where you work as part of the team. The school plans structured sessions within clerkships that bring basic science back, such as antimicrobial resistance and clinical pharmacology.

The fall 2026 first-year schedule shows how a week works. After orientation come almost two weeks of full-day PCMHE and a week of MEDD ending in an exam. From mid-August, course sessions fill the mornings, roughly 8 or 9 am to noon, and most weeks include a PCMHE afternoon from 1 to 5 pm. Mandatory sessions include dissections, team-based learning and exams.

A sample week from early October 2026 had Cells to Structure lectures on Monday and Tuesday mornings, thorax dissection on Wednesday and Thursday mornings, and a case-based or team-based session on Friday. Beyond the schedule, the school expects an average of 2 hours a week on MEDD and CESL, and an average of four half-days a week of experiential learning or independent study.

A policy effective from July 27, 2026 caps required pre-clerkship activities at an average of 30 scheduled contact hours a week. That count includes lectures, small groups, clinical experiences and required pre-reading, video review or self-directed learning, but not independent study.

Anatomy is taught by dissecting anatomical donors, people who gave their bodies for teaching, starting in Cells to Structure in mid-August of year 1. There you study gross and developmental anatomy alongside genetics, cell biology, histology and embryology. The fall 2026 schedule has two dissection sessions each for the upper limb, lower limb, thorax and abdomen, a pelvis and perineum session, histology and ultrasound labs, and two lab practical exams.

In the thorax, abdomen and pelvis weeks, a Friday case-based or team-based session follows the lab work. Anatomy returns in year 2, when the gastrointestinal and endocrine courses open with anatomy and histology sessions. Nervous System and Behavioral Health teaches head and neck anatomy through dissection, with gross brain labs that link brain structures to neuroimaging. Its 2026-27 schedule also had anatomy team-based sessions, an anatomy practical, an anatomy memorial and an escape-room session alongside the second gross brain lab.

Clinical skills start in the first week of classes. PCMHE leads off year 1 with a concentrated block and runs through the whole pre-clerkship phase, covering professionalism, ethics, communication, interviewing, physical examination, clinical reasoning, health systems science and health equity. It includes experiences in hospitals, outpatient clinics and community settings.

The 2025-26 first-year spring schedule, the latest the school has published, also ran a PCMHE Community Preceptorship from February to May. A fifth of the class took part each weekday afternoon. The school's page for volunteer physicians, unchanged since at least 2021, describes a student working a half-day a week in a physician's office, practicing history taking and examination.

In year 2, the 2026-27 schedule adds patient interview sessions inside the organ-system courses, plus ultrasound sessions. There are also interprofessional education (IPE) afternoons in groups of about one-eighteenth of the class. Full-time clinical work starts after a Transition to Clerkship Week in April of year 2.

Students also run the Student Family Health Care Center, set up in 1967 and overseen by the family medicine department. It cares for uninsured and underinsured people in Greater Newark and residents of local homeless shelters.

Under the grading policy approved in July 2026, Phase 1 is pass/fail: your transcript shows Pass or Fail for each course in years 1 and 2. The school also records a numerical grade, kept off the transcript, to compare performance within and across courses. Courses are examined mainly through unit exams, with lab practicals in anatomy, and every pre-clerkship course must give you formative feedback, such as practice questions or post-exam reviews, by its midpoint.

Cumulative or readiness exams sit on top of course exams. They include the CBSE, which the curriculum map places at the end of year 2, and cumulative Customized Assessment Services exams from the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME). The school uses them for promotion and Step 1 preparation. You must clear every pre-clerkship requirement before starting clerkships. Only one remediation, the make-up work assigned after a failure, is allowed per course, and failing both foundation courses means restarting the curriculum.

Third-year clerkships are graded Honors, High Pass with Distinction, High Pass, Pass or Fail. Each ends with an NBME shelf exam, the national subject exam that schools typically use at the end of a clerkship. Your final score combines clinical components with points converted from your shelf result. In 2026-27, Honors needs at least 90 points and the 65th national percentile on the shelf, and High Pass with Distinction needs 90 points and the 40th percentile.

High Pass needs 80 to 89.99 points and Pass 70 to 79.99, each with at least the 5th percentile on the shelf, or the 2nd for emergency medicine. Each professionalism lapse, such as missing a required session or submitting work late, costs a point, and a professionalism conduct form drops your grade a level. Third-year electives are pass/fail. In year 4, two-week electives and courses are pass/fail and other rotations are graded Honors to Fail. Every clerkship and selective also gives you a narrative assessment.

Students at LCME-accredited MD programs such as NJMS are eligible to sit the USMLE. Step 1 tests whether you understand and can apply the sciences basic to medicine. It has been reported only as pass or fail for exams taken on or after January 26, 2022. Step 2 CK (Clinical Knowledge) tests how you apply clinical knowledge to patient care under supervision.

NJMS requires you to sit Step 1 after completing year 2 and before clerkships, by a class deadline. For the Class of 2029 it is April 11, 2027, the day before their Phase 2 orientation. Step 2 CK comes after all third-year requirements, by a class deadline such as December 6, 2026 for the Class of 2027. You get two attempts at each, and passing both, along with the NJMS Graduation OSCE, is required 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 June 2026 announcement had named 2028.
• On the current schedule, a student entering in 2027 would finish year 2 courses around February 2029. Step 1 would be due by about early April 2029, after a dedicated study period whose exact dates are not published. That is within a few months after the switch. Step 2 CK would be due by about December 2030.
• These dates are projections from the 2025-26 and 2026-27 calendars. The USMLE program says it is still working out how applying for and scheduling exams will work, and that it will publish each year's testing dates more than a year ahead.
• Rutgers says assessment and grading decisions for the future Rutgers School of Medicine are under deliberation.
• Time limits: you must finish the pre-clerkship phase within three academic years and the whole MD within six, not counting approved leave, dual degrees or scholars programs.

Clinical training is based in Newark and northern New Jersey, with University Hospital in Newark as the principal teaching hospital. The 2026-27 clerkship assessment form lists four other sites: Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, Jersey City Medical Center and the East Orange VA Medical Center. Rutgers says each campus of the merged school keeps its principal teaching hospital and all its affiliate teaching sites.

Each clerkship sets its own pattern. Surgery places you at two of University Hospital, Cooperman Barnabas, the VA, Jersey City and Newark Beth Israel, four weeks at each. Team assignments are planned so you do not repeat a service. Psychiatry runs at University Hospital and Newark Beth Israel, and the pediatrics department teaches at both and at Cooperman Barnabas.

Family medicine is taught in community practices: the department's page, which still uses the clerkship's older name, counts more than 40. Sites are assigned by lottery in all four years. You can ask the Associate Dean for Student Affairs for a switch, or ask to move at any time over a learning-environment concern. You arrange your own travel to affiliates, by car, carpool or public transit.

Clerkship hours follow a policy effective April 20, 2026. You work no more than 80 hours a week averaged over four weeks, and no more than 24 hours in a row plus 4 for patient handoffs. You get one day off in seven, averaged over four weeks, and at least 8 hours between duties. There is no overnight call the night before an exam, and call rooms are there if you are too tired to get home safely.

Under an attendance policy approved in April 2026, you cannot be excused from more than 10% of the clinical time in any clerkship, with separate rules for illness and approved conferences. The internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology and pediatrics clerkships also allow one flexible day each, approved by the clerkship director, that you do not have to make up.

Electives start in year 3. You can take up to 6 weeks of third-year electives as three two-week blocks; in 2026-27 the two-week windows ran from April 2026 to April 2027. Third-year electives are pass/fail and range from anesthesiology, medical toxicology and an introduction to emergency medical services to tuberculosis, trauma surgery, clinical genetics and a global health elective.

In total you need 20 elective weeks across years 3 and 4. Fourth-year electives run mostly in four-week blocks from May to April. The 2026-27 rules limit you to 16 weeks in any one department in a year and count no more than 8 weeks of departmental research toward the degree. Forms for fall electives go out in February of year 3 and are processed in lottery-number order; spring elective forms follow in September.

The 2026-27 fourth-year elective book lists acting internships from internal medicine and pediatrics to neurosurgery and urology. Other options include International Medicine, Global Surgery, a Global Tuberculosis Institute elective, Introduction to Correctional Medicine and Health, Plant-Based Nutrition, and boot camps for surgery and emergency medicine. A child and adolescent psychiatry elective runs at Trinitas Regional Medical Center in Elizabeth.

Away rotations are electives at other medical schools, which NJMS calls externships. You can schedule them in the fall (May to October) or spring (November to April) of year 4, and changes must be made at least four weeks before the start.

Every student does a research project through MEDD, and there are several ways to go further. The MD with Thesis program adds a year devoted entirely to your own laboratory, clinical or population research. It is run through the Office of the Senior Associate Dean for Research with the Office of Education. The Distinction in Research can be done during the standard years or with a scholars year.

The school's scholars policy lets a research or scholars year extend your degree while you stay enrolled full time. It can sit within an NJMS Distinction Program, an outside program such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Medical Research Scholars Program, or an approved project you design with a supervisor. A scholars year earns 4 weeks of elective credit at most.

The MD-PhD program has run since 1994 under NJMS and what is now the Rutgers School of Graduate Studies (formerly the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences). You complete the first two years of medical school and Step 1, spend three to four years on PhD research, then return for years 3 and 4. A 2021 survey put the average time to graduate at 7.79 years. Students already in the MD can sometimes switch into the MD-PhD, usually after finishing year 2, by contacting the program's co-directors.

The MD-PhD curriculum page, which still lists the previous MD course names, describes two or three lab rotations before you choose a thesis lab. You then pass a qualifying exam built on a research proposal in the format of an NIH F30 fellowship application.

During the PhD, the family medicine department offers weekly preceptorship shifts to keep your clinical skills going. The mandatory Integrated Clinical Experience is a two-week block 6 to 8 weeks before your first clerkship. You see patients, present them on attending rounds and draw up differential diagnoses and management plans under supervision.

Two joint degrees use other Rutgers schools. The MD/MPH with the Rutgers School of Public Health takes five years, and you must be accepted to the MD first. For the MD/MBA you apply separately to Rutgers Business School, before you start or during year 1, for a 60-credit, full-time MBA on the Newark campus.

NJMS's Office of Education and registrar are in the Medical Science Building at 185 South Orange Avenue in Newark, and University Hospital is at 150 Bergen Street. Rutgers said in July 2026 that educational and research spaces in the Medical Science Building were being renovated.

The Clinical Skills Center trains and assesses students with standardized patients and runs OSCEs. Its web page, unchanged since at least 2021, describes 12 standardized patient rooms and added mannequin-based simulation. Its contact address is now the NJMS Cancer Center at 205 South Orange Avenue.

The Center for Academic Success and Enrichment (CASE) offers confidential one-on-one and class-wide sessions, by appointment or at weekly walk-in hours. Topics include study strategies, licensing exam preparation, and residency applications and interviews. If you hit academic difficulty, the promotion policy requires you to meet a CASE content specialist and learning specialist and agree on a written academic learning plan.

Student Affairs arranges one-on-one tutoring from fourth-year students for shelf exams and first- and second-year material. A newer Peer Support Program offers emotional support from fellow students alongside professional services. Confidential counseling comes from the Student Wellness Program, run by University Behavioral Health Care staff independently of the school.

Careers in Medicine (CiM) guides your specialty choice from arrival to graduation, with a dedicated team and faculty advisors, and its lunchtime sessions appear in the first- and second-year schedules. In 2026-27, Student Affairs also ran a lunchtime Step 1 Series for second-year students.