The Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School MD program

The MD is competency-based: what you learn maps to eight school-wide competencies, from medical knowledge and patient care to social justice and health equity, and discovery and dissemination. Three themes run through all four years: patient- and family-centered care in the community, evidence-based medicine, and health systems science, the study of how health care is organized and delivered.

The pre-clerkship courses are integrated. Two foundation courses come first, then organ-system courses that build on them, teaching each system's normal function, disease, diagnosis and drug treatment together. Clinical cases are threaded through all 18 months, and clinical experiences, reflection and independent study are built into the schedule.

Every pre-clerkship course mixes large-group lectures with small-group work. Active learning includes dissection, small-group discussion, case-based learning, where a group works through a patient case, and flipped classrooms, where you prepare beforehand and use class time for problems. Lectures are usually recorded, and you decide whether to attend non-mandatory ones in person. Standardized patients, actors trained to play patients, and simulation are used for both learning and assessment.

In the clerkship years, teaching moves to wards and clinics, with bedside teaching from faculty and formats such as the flipped-classroom neurology clerkship and family medicine's Simulated Clinics and case conferences.

The school's orientation site for the class that started in July 2026 describes a year 1 week. Faculty keep scheduled activities at or below 30 hours a week. Orientation week and the first three weeks of courses are fully in person, five days a week, roughly 9am to 4pm.

After that you are usually on campus from 8am to 4pm three days a week, with a possible fourth day during anatomy in September and October. A campus day might hold lectures, case-based learning and lab. On other afternoons you may travel to the hospital from 1pm to 5pm for a PCM-HE experiential activity. Two to three half-days each week are deliberately left free for self-study.

• Sample anatomy week in September: an upper limb lab on Monday morning, then PCM-HE on Tuesday morning and upper limb lectures that afternoon. Wednesday afternoon brings an active learning session on upper limb nerve injuries, Thursday morning lower limb lectures and Friday morning a lower limb lab.
• Sample cardiovascular week: lectures or large-group exercises on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings, PCM-HE on Tuesday morning, a lab or small group on Wednesday afternoon, and a case discussion or exam on Friday morning.
• A formative assessment, a practice test that gives feedback, is released at 4pm on Friday and is due by midnight on Monday.

You dissect in Cells to Structure, a 10-week course in the fall of year 1. You study the gross and developmental anatomy of the musculoskeletal, peripheral nervous, gastrointestinal, reproductive and cardiopulmonary systems, with cadaveric dissection of the back, limbs, thorax and abdomen. Common clinical cases link each region to patients who present with pain or problems in it.

The bodies come from the RWJMS Anatomical Association, a whole-body donation program run by the Department of Neuroscience and Cell Biology, which also teaches cell biology, histology, anatomy and neuroscience to medical students. More than 14,000 people have registered with it as donors.

The 2024-25 student handbook set out how the lab works. You sign a cadaver lab agreement before entering, treat donors with the respect owed to a first patient, keep their identities confidential and take no photos. You read the lab manual and watch dissection videos before each session, and teams work at an assigned table, taking turns in different roles.

Anatomy, histology and embryology are also taught within the cardiovascular and gastrointestinal courses, and year 2's clinical neuroscience includes a wet lab on brain structures alongside matching neuroimaging. Optional extras include the Anatomy Lunch Lectures non-credit elective and, in year 4, a Gross Anatomy Teaching Assistantship.

Clinical skills teaching starts in the first weeks. PCM-HE opens year 1 with a concentrated two-week block, then continues every week of the pre-clerkship phase. It covers clinical interviewing and examination, clinical reasoning, professionalism, ethics, patient-centered care, and the social and economic factors behind health disparities.

The course takes you into hospitals, outpatient clinics and community settings to practice those skills and serve the community, timed to match what your science courses cover. PCM-HE itself is new: Rutgers introduced it in July 2025, and the 2024-25 student handbook, written before then, listed Physicianship courses instead.

CESL runs alongside, guiding you through service projects that meet the needs of the communities around the campuses and building skills in health education, patient advocacy and community-engaged research. From year 1 you can also see patients at the Promise Clinic or join other programs of HIPHOP, the Homeless and Indigent Population Health Outreach Project that two students founded in 1992.

Full-time clinical work begins after the Step 1 study block. A week of transition teaching in mid-April prepares you for the wards, followed by a two-week clinical elective and your first clerkship in early May.

The pre-clerkship phase is pass/fail: your transcript shows Pass or Fail for each course in the first 18 months. Courses set sectional and final exams, and a first-attempt score below 60 sends your record to the Academic Standing Committee for review. Only one remediation, a structured chance to make up a failure, is allowed per course, and failing both foundation courses means restarting the curriculum.

The phase ends around mid-February of year 2 with an OSCE and the CBSE. The 2026-27 Policy Manual also names a Summer Cumulative Exam (SCE): failing it brings a review of your record, and you may sit it no more than three times.

Clerkships are graded Honors, High Pass with Distinction, High Pass, Pass or Fail, and include a shelf exam, a standardized written exam in the clerkship's subject. NBME says schools typically use its clinical science subject exams this way. Failing a shelf exam at the first attempt also sends your record for review. Year 4's advanced rotations are graded Honors to Fail without the distinction tier, and one- and two-week courses are pass/fail.

Every student must pass the Summative OSCE, a seven-station exam at the start of year 4 in which standardized patients present common scenarios from year 3. It tests history taking, writing up the encounter and spotting key findings on electrocardiograms (EKGs) and imaging.

Students at LCME-accredited MD programs such as RWJMS are eligible to sit the USMLE. Step 1 tests whether you understand and can apply the sciences basic to medicine, and 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. You must pass both to graduate.

The school requires you to take Step 1 before starting any clerkship, rotation or elective for credit, and within 12 months of finishing the pre-clerkship phase. You get two attempts, the second within a year of the first, and after a failure you cannot start new coursework until you pass. Step 2 CK must be taken by September 15 of your graduating academic year, and you get three attempts within two years.

• 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 have Step 1 due by about mid-April 2029, at the end of the eight-week study block. That is within a few months after the January 2029 switch. Step 2 CK would be due by September 15, 2030, after the core clerkships. These are deadlines, not exam dates.
• The USMLE program says it is still working out how applying for and scheduling exams will work, and it has asked schools to review rules that limit when students take Step exams.
• Attendance: excused absences are capped at 10% of a pre-clerkship course's mandatory sessions or of a clerkship's clinical time.
• Time limits: six years in total for the pre-clerkship, clerkship and advanced phases, and 10 years from starting to the MD.

Your clinical base is New Brunswick. Rutgers Health describes RWJUH as a 600-bed academic medical center with a Level 1 trauma center. It is the flagship cancer hospital of the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey and includes The Bristol-Myers Squibb Children's Hospital. The school also has clinical affiliations with RWJBarnabas Health and other hospitals and outpatient sites across New Jersey.

Clerkships can take you beyond New Brunswick. Internal medicine runs at the school's hospital affiliates, and Penn Medicine Princeton Medical Center in Plainsboro says students generally do eight-week internal medicine clerkships there. The neurology department lists RWJUH, the JFK Neuroscience Institute in Edison and Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch. Emergency medicine lists RWJUH New Brunswick, RWJUH Somerset in Somerville and Monmouth. The critical care selective uses ICUs at RWJUH New Brunswick, Hamilton and Somerset and at Monmouth.

Family medicine works differently. The department has over 200 volunteer faculty, so your preceptor could be in almost any region of the state. Preceptors include faculty in the Rutgers Network of Affiliated Family Medicine Residencies and physicians in private practice. The department says you also spend half a day each week with a community organization serving the underserved, such as addiction services or schools.

Under the 2024-25 student handbook, third-year scheduling took place in the spring of year 2 through an online system called OASIS. You entered a preference list, and an algorithm set your clerkship order and sites to give as many students as possible their top choices. A hardship process covered needs such as child care or a spouse's job.

You need 20 weeks of electives to graduate, taken across years 3 and 4. Year 3 sets aside six weeks to explore careers, and many fourth-year electives are open to third-year students.

The fourth-year catalog covers a wide range of specialties, many of them at RWJUH: cardiology, infectious diseases, lung and kidney medicine, gynecologic oncology, pediatric subspecialties, radiology, and surgical fields from trauma to kidney transplant. There are subspecialty sub-internships in neurosurgery, urology, orthopedics, plastic surgery, otolaryngology, and stroke and neurocritical care, and teaching electives such as Students as Teachers and a Gross Anatomy Teaching Assistantship.

Electives at other institutions, often called away rotations, count when they are approved electives under the 2026-27 Policy Manual. The 2024-25 handbook let you create an Individually Designed Elective for anything not listed and set no limit on electives elsewhere. It encouraged fourth-year electives abroad or in cities where you might apply for residency, and capped credit for any single experience at eight weeks.

The Office of Global Health runs programs with partner schools abroad, most for one or two students at a time. Partners include Kobe University and Hyogo Medical University in Japan, Seoul National University, the Medical University of Graz in Austria and Universidad de Los Andes in Bogota. Tzu Chi University in Taiwan waives tuition for the school's students. Third- and fourth-years can earn credit abroad through the Global Health Experience elective.

Before clerkships you can take non-credit electives alongside your courses, from Medical Spanish, Mandarin and Arabic to Music and Medicine, ultrasound, narrative medicine and addiction medicine. Medical Spanish, for example, runs 10 small-group sessions at four levels, plus community service with Spanish-speaking patients, and earns a notation on your transcript.

The MD/PhD is run with the Rutgers School of Graduate Studies and Princeton University, with fellowships and tuition support. The usual plan is two medical school years, including Step 1, then four PhD years, then the clinical years; the graduate school gives eight years as the average length. You can join any PhD program on the Rutgers New Brunswick campus or Princeton's Molecular Biology Department or Neuroscience Institute, and must finish the PhD before your first clerkship.

The MD/MBA with Rutgers Business School-New Brunswick takes five years. You apply in year 1, take 6 credits of management courses that summer, spend the program's second year full time at the business school, then return to medicine while finishing 3 more business credits. The MBA totals 60 credits, and the business school requires the GMAT admissions test.

The MD/MPH with the Rutgers School of Public Health, taught in New Brunswick for RWJMS students, takes four or five years. The MPH needs 45 credits, 6 of them shared with the MD. You can take a concentrated public health year between years 2 and 3 or years 3 and 4, spread courses through the MD, or use a summer plus fourth-year elective time. The MD/MSCTS adds a Master of Science in Clinical and Translational Science: at least one full-time year plus a mentored thesis.

The seven-week Summer Research Program runs from mid-June to mid-August after year 1. It has a fellowship track if you already have a mentor and project and a training track if you do not, with weekly lectures and a closing poster.

The Student Scholar Program lets you take approved time out for research or another project once the pre-clerkship phase is over. In a 2016 Rutgers news story, most students took their scholar year after year 3. Under the 2026-27 Policy Manual, it earns up to nine weeks of elective credit, but you still need the usual 20 elective weeks on top. A master's dual degree also leaves the 20 weeks in place, while MD/PhD students need 16 elective weeks.

The Distinction Programs cover ten areas. They are bioethics, climate health and environmental sustainability, global health, inclusive medical practice (IMPACT), leadership in academic health care, medical education, medical humanities, medical innovation and entrepreneurship, research, and service to the community. You express interest by spring of year 1, work with faculty mentors and present at the annual Distinction Symposium.

The HELIX's first tower, at 20 French Street, opened as the school's new home in July 2026 and welcomed that summer's incoming class for orientation. The HELIX is planned as three buildings, and this first tower also holds a translational research facility for 80 research teams and an innovation hub.

Before it opened, the school's Winter 2025 magazine set out the plan for the school's 165,000 square feet. Floor 5 was to hold classrooms and seminar rooms, and floor 6 a student lounge and wellness space. Floor 7 was to hold a gross anatomy and clinical skills lab, a simulation lab, examination rooms and study space, with a medical library spanning floors 7 and 8.

The school was founded in 1961, and its first 16 students entered Rutgers Medical School in Piscataway in 1966 to earn a two-year master's degree in medical science. For most of its history, students took two years of courses in Piscataway, then did their clinical years about 20 minutes away in New Brunswick. The school still lists campuses in both places.

Every student is assigned to one of three colleges in the College Advising Program, set up in 2011 as learning communities with academic, social and professional roles. Your college links you with peer mentors, alumni, a Student Affairs dean and faculty mentors throughout medical school. The colleges are named after three faculty members from the school's history, Pamela C. Champe, Robert L. Trelstad and Parvin Saidi, and each has its own color, mascot and motto.

From orientation you are also in a small group led by second-year Peer Mentors, who are trained at a retreat. Student Affairs deans give academic and career counseling and run THRIVE, regular sessions on well-being, career planning and equity, from CV workshops to financial literacy. The Advising in Medical Specialties (AiMS) program adds specialty advisers, career fairs and shadowing, built on the Careers in Medicine program of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

The Cognitive Skills Program offers free academic support in all four years, from one-on-one help with study and time management to plans for board exams. The Student Wellness Program gives free, confidential counseling, medication management and 24-hour crisis care, through clinicians who are independent of the school and play no part in grading you. Student Health Services, run by the Department of Family Medicine at Monument Square in New Brunswick, comes at no extra cost.