The University of Toledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences MD program

Rocket Medicine began as a newly designed preclinical curriculum in fall 2017, and the integrated third year followed in May 2022. The Medical Student Handbook, a web handbook labeled for 2025-26 with sections updated in July 2026, counts four Threads made up of 12 Systems. Each has its own final exam.

Foundational sciences such as anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, biochemistry and radiology are taught inside the Systems and continue through all four years, with clinicians and science faculty working together on clinically relevant content. Principles of Clinical Medicine (PCM) runs alongside every Thread, covering communication and examination skills, clinical reasoning, ethics, patient safety, nutrition, the business of medicine and interprofessional education, learning with other health professions.

In M3 and M4, longitudinal teaching continues in clinical skills and reasoning and in health systems science, which covers topics such as population health, health care financing, value-based care and health care equity. M4 is anchored by a Transition to Residency course that starts with Step 2 preparation and ends with simulation in the Advanced Clinical Care (ACC) Boot Camp.

In M1 and M2, school policy (revised September 2026) sets scheduled teaching at an average of 25 hours a week and no more than 35, with the rest of the week for self-study. A dedicated study day or weekend should come before every major exam. Under the attendance policy revised in May 2025, lectures and other in-class sessions in M1 and M2 are encouraged but not required. You must attend exams, quizzes, patient presentations and any other session marked as required.

Clerkship weeks are longer. Scheduled hours, including on-call time, cannot exceed 80 a week or 30 in a row, and you must get at least 24 hours in a row off each week. You can take no more than 5 excused days in an academic year, and 1 to 3 days per clerkship depending on its length.

The family medicine clerkship's sample schedule shows one shape. It opens with a virtual orientation and has week 5 lectures on topics such as nutrition, dermatology and asthma. It ends on the final Friday with the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) subject exam, a national test known as the shelf exam.

Anatomy is taught inside the Systems, and the curriculum schematic lists it among the foundational sciences that run through all four years. The handbook says the anatomy lab starts with Thread 2, which begins in January of M1, and you may need your own scrubs. Anatomy returns in later Threads, including ECOSystems and a dedicated week of reproductive anatomy in Thread 4.

A fourth-year elective sheet approved in April 2024 describes anatomy lab sessions for M1 and M2 students. It has fourth-year students guiding groups at lab tables through cadaveric prosections, specimens already dissected to display the structures, and, if available, plastinated specimens, real tissue preserved with plastic. The sheet calls these laboratory dissection sessions.

The university has four Anatomage Tables, large touchscreens for exploring digitized human cadavers, in the simulation center and the Mulford Library. Its December 2024 news report says medical students have used them.

The school's course sheets describe two optional electives. SOMN 601 Advanced Dissection in Anatomy runs for 10 weeks with about 10 students, in the fall of M2, or the spring of M1 for students in the Advanced Anatomy pathway. You choose an area to dissect, plan your study with an instructor and spend 4 to 6 hours a week in the Laboratory of Anatomical Sciences.

SOMN 609 Applied Anatomy, a 10-week elective for 10 M2 students in the fall, links anatomy to imaging and surgery. You build five presentations from imaging, diagrams and cadaveric prosections, and present a case orally.

The Advanced Anatomy Scholarly Pathway is aimed at fields such as surgery, medical imaging and anatomic pathology.

Clinical skills start in Thread 1. The handbook says you will meet real patients from the very first day and learn to approach a patient, take a basic history, perform a physical exam and document what you find. Basic Life Support is required in M1.

ICE begins in January of M1 and continues to the end of M2. For each Thread you are assigned a preceptor, a practicing clinician who teaches you, and you work together the equivalent of four half-days, seeing patients in outpatient settings. Across Threads 2, 3 and 4 you get one specialty per Thread: primary care, another medical specialty and a surgical specialty.

The aim is to show why the science matters and help you understand the patient's experience, and the Office of Student Affairs (OSA) notes that many students have found professional mentors through it.

The summer after M1 can add more. OSA's Summer Opportunities program includes preceptorships in family medicine and pediatrics, alongside research and community service. The Pediatric Preceptorship is four weeks in a private office, clinic or hospital, observing history and physical exams and writing notes and prescriptions under close supervision.

You can also volunteer with the CommunityCare Clinics, a student-run organization with free clinics for underserved people in Toledo. Its page, last updated in July 2024, says you help with triage and patient interviews and confer with a physician preceptor, who makes the care decisions. First-year volunteers attend fall training.

M2 ends with Bridge to Clerkships, scheduled across the last two weeks of April. Its roughly 20 hours of teaching and simulation cover presenting on rounds, writing notes and orders, team leadership and communicating with patients.

Preclerkship grades are pass/fail and stay out of your grade point average (GPA), which comes only from clerkships. Each System is graded Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory, with 70 percent needed, and each Thread Pass or Fail, with no curve. A Thread grade combines its Systems, professionalism, the Thread final and the Integrated Clinical Skills Exam. That exam, worth 10 percent of each Thread grade, tests communication, history taking, examination, documentation and clinical reasoning.

Students who started in July 2026 or later can also earn distinctions. Satisfactory with Distinction needs 90 percent in a System. Pass with Distinction needs 90 percent in every System of a Thread and in professionalism. Your Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), the school's summary for residency programs, reports how many you earned.

Quizzes give feedback without a grade. Some Systems end with an NBME Customized Assessment, an integrating exam in USMLE style.

Clerkships are graded Honors, High Pass, Pass or Fail. Each grade has three parts. Preceptors rate you on five competencies, weighted by hours spent with you. The NBME shelf exam is the second part. The third is 20 departmental points, including an OSCE (objective structured clinical examination), a practical exam with standardized patients.

Step 1 has been reported only as pass or fail since January 26, 2022. You must finish the preclerkship curriculum in good standing and take Step 1 by a spring deadline, no later than one week before Bridge to Clerkships. Current students book their own date within the study period. You can start clerkships while awaiting your result, but promotion to M3 depends on passing. Step 2 CK must be passed to graduate, and the OSA guide says students generally take it the month after M3 ends.

In August 2026 the USMLE program announced a move to designated testing dates from January 2029, with Step exams offered less often each year. A June 2026 announcement had named 2028. On the current schedule, a student entering in 2027 would finish the Threads in February 2029 and take Step 1 by about early April 2029, within a few months after the switch. Step 2 CK study would fall around May and June 2030, at the start of M4, also after the switch. These are projections from current calendars.

• A Thread score of 60 to 69 percent allows a re-examination, where you need 70 percent. Below 60 percent there is no re-examination, and a committee reviews you for possible dismissal, as it does if you fail a re-examination.
• You must pass the Integrated Clinical Skills Exam, and any anatomy assessment in a System, on their own.
• Career exploration and preclerkship electives are graded Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory.
• On the school's published rubric, Honors needs Honors-level clinical ratings, the 55th national percentile on the shelf and 17 points. A pass needs the 5th percentile and 11 points.
• Failing the patient care competency means repeating the clerkship. Most other failures, including a failed shelf exam, bring a Defer, a conditional grade until the failed part is remediated, and Pass is then the highest grade.
• A failed shelf exam can be retaken once, before August 31 of M4. A second failure means repeating the clerkship.
• Two Defer or Fail grades in the clerkship year take you off your clerkship schedule and bring review by the Academic Progress Committee.
• A High Pass with honors-level clinical work and departmental points is noted as clinical excellence in your MSPE.
• Every clerkship gives you formative feedback by its midpoint.
• In M4 the acting internship and emergency medicine rotation are graded Honors, High Pass, Pass or Fail.
• You get three attempts at each Step: Step 1 within one calendar year of the first attempt, and Step 2 CK within a maximum of one year. Otherwise you face automatic dismissal.
• Taking more than 36 months for M1 and M2, or six years for the degree, triggers review for possible dismissal, with approved leave extending both, to a maximum of seven years.

Clerkships use UTMC, which has served Toledo since 1964, and ProMedica Toledo Hospital, which the handbook describes as a 794-bed Level I trauma center. Other ProMedica hospitals and outpatient offices around Toledo and northwest Ohio are also used. UToledo's current academic affiliation agreement with ProMedica was signed in May 2024 and runs through June 30, 2033. More than 400 ProMedica-based physicians hold UToledo faculty appointments.

Year 3 schedules come from a lottery. In late winter or spring of M2, the Health Science Campus Registrar asks you to register your M3 track, the order of your clerkships. You may be offered the chance to request a site, but the clerkship offices make the final, binding assignments.

Every student completes at least 8 weeks of AHEC rotations across M3 and M4, in core clerkships or electives. Congress designed the national program in 1971 to train health professionals for underserved communities. UToledo's program has three regional centers, the Bryan, Lima and Sandusky AHECs, plus a Metro AHEC at the Zepf Center in Toledo, and about 250 regional doctors teach students as volunteer faculty.

You list AHEC preferences for clerkship and region when you schedule M3, but they are not binding, and the centers usually confirm your assignment and housing at least four weeks ahead. AHEC housing is generally provided at sites more than 60 miles from campus, and many hospitals offer AHEC students free housing and reduced-cost meals.

Some required clerkships run at partner hospitals in Columbus, Akron and southern Michigan, and school policy requires these alternative sites to match Toledo's rotation length, evaluation and grading. For required clerkships, UToledo provides shared rooms, two students per room, at sites more than 60 miles from campus, at sites offering housing at no cost and at St. Joe's Ann Arbor, but not for electives. The admissions overview says you will need reliable personal transportation to reach clinical sites in northwest Ohio, southeast Michigan and more distant parts of Ohio.

Optional preclerkship electives, graded Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory, go on your transcript once completed. The current list includes Medical Spanish I and II, Art and Medicine, Medical Illustration, Lifestyle Medicine, Child Advocacy, Advanced Interviewing Skills and Centering Pregnancy.

In M3 the two career exploration electives each last 2 weeks in a different specialty, and you meet an advisor about your career direction. The 2026 list includes anesthesiology, dermatology, otolaryngology, emergency medicine, pathology, radiology, urology, neurosurgery and orthopedic surgery, plus internal medicine and pediatric subspecialties.

M4's 37 weeks of instruction include at least 24 weeks of clinical electives, counting the acting internship and emergency medicine. At least 12 weeks must be at UToledo or its affiliates, and global health electives do not count toward those 12. No more than 16 weeks can be in any one ACGME core discipline, meaning a specialty you can enter straight from medical school. Another 8 weeks can be clinical or non-clinical.

Non-clinical options include Clinical Informatics, Simulation Education, Teaching Electives at UTMC, and Student Chief roles in internal medicine or pediatrics. Others cover laparoscopy and surgical robotics, or population and public health with the Toledo-Lucas County Department of Health. Research electives last 2 to 8 weeks in M4 and also run in M3.

Away rotations are electives at other schools or hospitals. Each needs school approval before you apply, and you must be in good academic standing with no incomplete grades. You apply through VSLO, the Visiting Student Learning Opportunities system, or on a paper application if the host is outside it. Akron General's 4-week senior electives, on a page last updated in July 2024, are also applied for through VSLO.

The Global Health Program's page, last updated in July 2024, lists 4-week credit-bearing clinical rotations with partner institutions in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Partners include Aga Khan University in Karachi and the American University of Beirut. The page also lists 2-week faculty-led medical missions.

• Flexible time: up to 6 weeks across M3 and M4, plus 10 flexible days in M4 for residency interviews and travel.

For each dual degree you must be admitted to both programs. The 2026-27 catalog lists MD/PhD in biomedical sciences, MD/PhD in biomedical engineering, MD/MSBS (a master's in biomedical sciences), MD/MPH, MD/MSOH (occupational health), MD/MBA and JD/MD. MD/PhD and JD/MD students must keep up clinical training during their graduate years, about 8 hours a month with a faculty mentor. It earns up to 8 weeks of M4 elective credit on the PhD route and 4 weeks on the JD route.

The MD/PhD usually takes seven to eight years and typically admits two students a year. You do two lab rotations in M1 and M2, take Step 1, then join a graduate track such as Cell and Cancer Biology or Molecular Medicine. After a qualifying exam and three to four years of research, you defend your dissertation and return for the clinical years. The biomedical engineering version typically takes seven years.

The MD/MBA is an integrated five-year plan, and on the catalog's sample pathway you spend the year after M2 in the business school. The JD/MD takes six years, alternating between the colleges, and its 2024 overview caps it at five students a year. The MD/MPH shares up to 12 credit hours between the degrees.

The Scholarly Pathways of Excellence, a new offering, add scholarly work beyond the standard curriculum. You apply in the fall of M1 (September 14 to October 4 in 2026) for one pathway plus an alternate. You must be taking M1 for the first time and score at least 75 percent in Human Blueprint, the first course. To stay in, you generally must pass Threads, electives, clerkships and Step exams on the first attempt.

The Medical Student Research Program is a competitive, paid summer project after M1, with a faculty mentor, in basic science, clinical or medical education research. OSA reports nine weeks of summer work in 2025. The Pre-Clinical Pathology Student Fellowship takes two or three students a year for a full year after M2 and leads to a graduate certificate. You can also take a leave of absence for full-time research, which delays graduation.

• Academic Leadership: 5 places, ending in a capstone.
• Advanced Anatomy: 10 places.
• Data Science: 15 places, no prior experience needed.
• Health Disparities: 10 places, with a research project or initiative.
• Humanities: 6 places, using literature, poetry, theater and visual arts.
• Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence: 10 places.
• Medical Education: 5 places, on teaching and mentoring.
• Rural Health: 5 places, built on UToledo's AHEC links.

The Health Science Campus at 3000 Arlington Avenue is separate from the university's Main Campus on West Bancroft Street. The simulation center there is a three-story, 65,000-square-foot building with three linked centers: progressive anatomy and surgical skills, advanced clinical simulation, and virtual immersive reality.

The Ruth M. Hillebrand Clinical Skills Center, in the Center for Creative Education building, began in 1991 as a Standardized Patient Program and took its current name in 2005. Clerkship OSCEs are held there.

The Mulford Health Science Library fills floors four to six of the Mulford Library Building, with group study rooms and walking and bicycle desks. A clinical medical librarian helps with literature searches and research projects.

OSA provides academic advising, personal counseling and career advising, and runs specialty and residency advising from M1 orientation to graduation. If you plan to become a parent during medical school, the handbook asks you to contact OSA early.

The Academic Enrichment Center (AEC), in the Mulford Library Annex basement, offers academic coaching, wellness coaching and peer tutoring, and helps you build a Step 1 study schedule. A full-time student wellness counselor is based there.

The UTMC Student Behavioral Health Center has a board-certified psychiatrist with no teaching or evaluation role over medical students, and a faculty therapist sees students on weekdays. You also have 24-hour telephone access to a counselor.

Rocket Launch PODs are peer-mentoring groups for first-year students. M2 students apply to mentor through the elective SOMN 736, ideally at least two per POD, and meet their group at an opening meeting and at least three more times. Groups also have a faculty advisor.

The Academic Progress Committee reviews any quiz, exam or clinical score below 75 percent and can refer you to the AEC for coaching or to OSA for support.