The Stanford University School of Medicine MD program

Two strands run side by side through the pre-clerkship years. Foundations of Medicine teaches the science in integrated blocks. After a first autumn of molecular and cellular science, later blocks work through the organ systems, taking each one's anatomy, tissue structure (histology), normal function, diseases including infection, and treatment together. Practice of Medicine (POM) teaches the clinical side, from taking a medical history and examining a patient to clinical reasoning.

POM also carries threads on ethics, health policy, epidemiology and biostatistics, evidence-based practice, nutrition, psychiatry and population health, including a year-long community-based project. You practice skills hands-on and are assessed in simulated encounters, interviewing, examining and managing patients in a mock clinic. From spring of year 1, clinical problem-solving sessions move you from complete examinations to focused ones built around a patient's problem.

Across the pre-clerkship years, some courses are taught mostly in lectures. Others rely on small groups of up to about 12 students, clinical reasoning sessions or team-based learning, in which teams apply material prepared beforehand; attendance at these is required.

In the pre-clerkship years, Wednesdays are kept free of required classes, apart from a few exceptions such as final exam week and the last spring quarter before clerkships. Courses may assign at most one hour of required work, such as videos, quizzes and reading, for each hour of class; your own study time is extra.

In the 2026-27 plan, Practice of Medicine meets on Monday, Tuesday and Friday afternoons in winter and spring of year 1. Once clerkships begin, your week follows your team. The duty-hours policy caps it at 80 hours averaged over four weeks, with one day in seven free and in-house call no more often than every third night.

Dedicated anatomy teaching comes in one course, Clinical Anatomy (SURG 203), worth 13 units in the first autumn quarter. Lectures cover gross (macroscopic), microscopic, developmental and imaging anatomy. Labs include dissection of the human body, with imaging demonstrations, working through the thorax, abdomen, pelvis, back, upper and lower limbs, and head and neck. Clinical scenarios and interventional procedures are used to illustrate the anatomy.

The Clinical Anatomy Division of the Department of Surgery teaches introductory anatomy to medical students. It describes a traditional cadaver-based curriculum running alongside a digital anatomy program with 3D visualization and virtual and augmented reality. Its teaching tools include an Anatomage table, a touchscreen table that displays the body in 3D, and a prosection library of specimens already dissected by experts. The division runs its own Anatomical Gift Program for body donation and holds an annual memorial service for donors (in 2026, on November 19).

Anatomy returns in the later Foundations blocks, which review the anatomy of the organ systems they cover. Electives go further, including hands-on ultrasound on classmates and imaging anatomy of chest and abdominal emergencies taught with cadaver material and a 3D anatomy table.

Practice of Medicine starts with a week-one bootcamp, and in the 2026-27 plan the full history and physical examination is taught in the first quarter, practiced with standardized patients. Early Clinical Engagement (ECE) takes you into real clinics in year 1, paired with a preceptor; you list your top five specialty interests, but none is guaranteed. Visits are guided observation with set objectives, backed by seminars and small-group reflection. Before your first visit you complete mask-fit testing, sharps training and patient-privacy (HIPAA) training.

In the 2026-27 plan, ECE becomes part of Practice of Medicine in autumn and winter, and the clinical practicum starts in spring of year 1, a quarter earlier than before. The separate ECE course page, which still describes the earlier format, lists five four-hour clinic sessions and five two-hour seminars between autumn and spring, and its preceptor FAQ says six sessions.

Full-time clinical work starts with the clerkships after year 2. On clerkships you join hospital and clinic teams, and all the patient care you give is supervised by residents or faculty.

You can also volunteer at the Cardinal Free Clinics, run by the School of Medicine and staffed by volunteer physicians and students. Pacific Free Clinic gives free care to uninsured adults in East San Jose, with interpreters in Spanish, Vietnamese and Mandarin Chinese. Arbor Free Clinic closed in February 2026 and moved to supporting Samaritan House Free Clinic in San Mateo.

Every pre-clerkship course is graded Pass or Fail. Course directors announce passing criteria by the end of week two, and each course gives formal mid-quarter feedback on your progress. Small-group courses add narrative comments from faculty. Exams are closed-book, taken in assigned rooms under Stanford's Honor Code.

If you fail a course, you may be offered a remediation plan, normally finished within 45 days of the quarter's end, or be asked to retake the course the next year. Borderline results are tracked so support can start early. The Committee on Performance, Professionalism and Promotion (CP3) reviews every student before year 2, before clerkships, in January of the final year and before graduation.

Clinical skills are tested with standardized patients. Practice of Medicine I to III each end with a performance-based assessment of your interviewing and, from winter, your examination skills, and the winter quarter of year 2 ends with the four-station OSCE. The Mini-CPX in March lasts five hours: four 18-minute encounters with standardized patients plus four inter-station exercises, such as interpreting test results or examination findings. If you do not pass, you are coached through the Student Guidance Program and can start clerkships no earlier than Period 1.

The Clinical Performance Examination (CPX) is a statewide California exam, designed by a consortium of the state's medical schools and run at Stanford once a year, typically in July. You see eight standardized patients, taking a focused history and examination and explaining your thinking, with a clinical reasoning station after each. To graduate you must show minimum competence in history taking, examination, communication and clinical reasoning.

Clerkships are graded Pass or Fail, and since June 2026 none awards distinction on its own. Instead you collect feedback on forms covering 25 Everyday Physician Activities, Stanford's name for Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs): core tasks a new doctor should be trusted to do. A competency committee can then note distinction in your Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), the dean's letter sent to residency programs in autumn of your final year.

Handbook section 5.4, updated August 2026, lists up to six domains for that distinction: clinical reasoning, teaming, advocacy, technical skills, adaptive expertise and physicianship. The handbook's MSPE section, last updated in August 2025, still describes three domains under the older Criterion-Based Evaluation System.

• USMLE Step 1 and Step 2 CK must both be passed to graduate. Step 1 has been reported only as pass or fail since January 2022.
• Step 1 timing: the 2026-27 Bulletin requires a pass within 12 months of starting clerkships.
• Handbook section 3.22 (August 2025) sets it as a deadline to sit the exam: one year from the first day of your first clerkship, and before you complete more than 72 clerkship units. If you fail it or miss the deadline, you are normally withdrawn from clerkships until you pass; pre-clerkship failures can bring an earlier deadline.
• In August 2026 the USMLE program announced a move to designated testing dates from January 2029, with Step exams offered less often each year. On the current schedule, students entering in 2027 would sit Step 1 and Step 2 CK under that model, so these deadlines may change.
• NBME subject exams (often called shelf exams) are written exams in each specialty set by the National Board of Medical Examiners. They are given in emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, neurology, OB/GYN, pediatrics, psychiatry and surgery; each clerkship sets its passing score and may use its own exam instead.
• Fail a clerkship's written exam and you receive a Continuing grade and a retake; after a second failure you face an oral or other exam before the grade is settled.

All ten core clerkships are done at Stanford and its affiliated sites; you cannot take them at another school. Handbook section 4.7 names the settings: Stanford University Hospital, Stanford's ambulatory community clinics, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, the VA Palo Alto system and Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara. Sites vary by clerkship: internal medicine and surgery run at Stanford, the Palo Alto VA, Santa Clara Valley and Kaiser; pediatrics at Lucile Packard, Santa Clara Valley and Kaiser; emergency medicine at Stanford.

Each clerkship decides which of its sites you go to, and the school will not change a site for transportation reasons. You are responsible for getting to sites on time, which can take planning, and for travel costs within 50 miles each way. If a core clerkship assigns you to a site beyond that, it covers your housing and transportation.

The Draw, the annual lottery for students about to start clerkships, sets the order of your cores: you propose a schedule covering both clinical years. In 2026, requests for medicine, surgery, OB/GYN and pediatrics closed in January, and those for the other cores in February. Each clerkship caps its numbers per period, and you can hold up to two periods open in the first round and four in the second. The weekly Shuffle then lets you move a core into an open slot or join a waiting list.

Beyond the cores you need three selectives and at least four weeks of electives. Selective I, Fundamentals of Clinical Care, is a month at least half in outpatient clinics, in an area the cores do not cover, such as dermatology, ophthalmology, urology or geriatrics. One option, the Continuity of Care clerkship, releases you one afternoon a week for nine periods to follow one faculty preceptor's patients over time.

Selective II is a subinternship, also called an acting internship: four weeks, at least three-quarters inpatient, doing much of the work of an intern, a doctor in the first year of residency. You work up new patients, write orders, do procedures, take night call and write discharge summaries. Options range from medicine and surgery to newborn intensive care and community hospital pediatrics in Watsonville.

Selective III, Fundamentals of Community Health for the Underserved, applies to students entering clerkships from 2026-27. It is two full-time weeks, or at least 14 weekly half-day sessions in its longitudinal form. You work at a federally qualified health center (a federally funded community clinic) or a clinic serving mainly underserved patients, with teaching sessions, reflection and a final case presentation.

For electives, the clerkships-by-department listing covers 19 departments. Each department's 398A Special Clinical Elective can be one you design with a faculty preceptor's consent, as long as it is clinical rather than research. Selectives and electives can also be taken at other schools, as away rotations. You apply to the host school, through the Association of American Medical Colleges' Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO) service where the school uses it.

Most away rotations count as electives; counting one as a selective needs approval before you start, and substitutions are rarely approved. International electives need your advising dean's approval, a letter from the host on supervision and safety, and a travel checklist at least four weeks ahead.

The Scholarly Concentration is required. You choose one of eight foundation areas: bioengineering; biomedical ethics and medical humanities; clinical research; community health; health services and policy research; medical education; molecular basis of medicine; and a computing area. The 2026-27 Bulletin calls that area Informatics and Data-Driven Medicine, and the concentrations page calls it AI and Computational Biomedicine. The concentrations page also lists ten application areas, such as cancer biology, global health, health equity and surgery.

To finish it you need 12 units of coursework beyond the required MD courses and clerkships, plus a research project equal to one full-time quarter. The project ends in a written report, an oral presentation and a summary letter from your mentor. Handbook section 4.4, updated August 2026, sets the declaration deadline at April 15 of year 1, and students who miss it may not be promoted to year 2. The 2026-27 Bulletin still gives September 1 of year 2.

The three-year pre-clerkship path creates room without stepping out of the curriculum. You apply in spring or summer of year 1 to split the second year's courses into two strands from that autumn. Research applicants need a longitudinal proposal and a mentor's statement, take INDE 267 (Planning and Writing a Research Proposal) in winter of year 1, and get priority if the project is funded. Dual-degree and personal reasons are also considered.

MedScholars fellowships have funded student research, including concentration projects, since 1980, and applications are reviewed competitively. The Physician-Scientist Training Program (PSTP) supports MD students doing laboratory or informatics research. Berg Scholars, a six-year route funded by a Burroughs Wellcome Fund award, adds an MS in Medicine in Biomedical Investigation. You apply once you are on the three-year path, typically at the end of year 2.

The Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), the MD/PhD, admits through the MD admissions process. Other dual degrees include an MD/MPH with a partner institution, MD/MS degrees in bioengineering and health policy, a five-year MD/MBA, an MD/JD and an MD/MPP. You need good academic standing and your advising dean's approval, and normally a Step 1 pass before stepping away. A Stanford graduate degree taken alongside the MD can also meet the concentration's coursework requirement.

The MSTP page says most Stanford students spend an extra year on research, public health or community service. The April 2025 metrics report 39.5% of MD students graduating with dual degrees. The handbook's standard time limits count from the day you start and include leaves and research time. They are three years for the pre-clerkship curriculum and six years for the MD, or eight with a master's and 11 with a PhD.

The hub for simulation is the Goodman Immersive Learning Center, a 28,000-square-foot space in the Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge, run by the Center for Immersive and Simulation-based Learning. Its clinic suite has 10 exam rooms with video capture for standardized patient encounters, and the Mini-CPX and CPX are held there.

The center's simulation suite holds a simulated operating room, a three-bay emergency room or intensive care unit and two acute care hospital rooms. Mannequins range from newborn to adult, and there are skills classrooms and a wet lab.

The Clinical Anatomy Division's facilities include the Lawrence Mathers Main Dissection Lab, an open space with four bays, each with six to eight screens and recording equipment. There is also the 900-square-foot Roy B. Cohn BioSkills Lab with surgical lighting, and the Chase Hi-Tech Anatomy and Surgical Education Lab.

Besides matching you with a faculty mentor, Educators-4-CARE groups students into 18 learning communities, each led by a faculty member. You are also assigned a primary academic advising dean for all of medical school; you must meet at least twice a year, and you cannot switch deans.

Advising deans compile your MSPE, and the Center for Medical Student Career Advising offers specialty-specific faculty advisors and help with residency applications and away electives. The Associate Dean for Wellness and Student Life Advising is a confidential contact for personal matters.

If you struggle, the Stanford Student Guidance Program assesses your needs with your mentor, dean and course faculty, and coaches you in medical knowledge, clinical skills or professional development. A learning strategies specialist helps with study plans, time management and test-taking, including for Step 1.

The Mental Health Team gives School of Medicine students free mental health care, booked through Stanford's counseling service, and Ears for Peers offers confidential peer listening. Before classes start, SWEAT, a three-day camping trip run by second-year students, introduces you to your class. A retreat at the end of the pre-clerkship phase marks the move into clerkships.