The UAMS College of Medicine MD program

The 2026-27 catalog describes a student-centered, integrated curriculum. Year 1 opens with three foundational science modules: Human Structure, Molecules to Cells, and Disease and Defense. Modules organized by organ system fill the rest of years 1 and 2, covering health and disease together. Pulmonary and Renal, for example, include their own pharmacology and microbiology.

The applicant pages describe active learning using flipped-classroom, team-based, simulation and case-based teaching. In a flipped classroom you study the material before class and spend class time applying it. Molecules to Cells teaches metabolism through several three-hour team-based learning sessions. Hematology covers anemias in a two-hour peer instruction session, built around questions you discuss with classmates.

Much of years 1 and 2 is taught in sync on both campuses, in person or by video. Staff on each campus check the audio and video links before every shared interactive session. The catalog notes that Northwest students get more open study time, because Little Rock students spend those hours in the dissection lab.

Year 3 clerkships pair supervised work on care teams with seminars, conferences and clinical rounds. Every UAMS student must also complete an interprofessional education (IPE) program to graduate: about 20 hours of team activities with students from the other UAMS colleges. For Little Rock students, these include a workshop in August of year 1, a team project and workshop in year 2, a simulation in year 3 and a practice activity in year 4.

Required hours in years 1 and 2 are capped at 25 a week, averaged across the courses running at the same time. No week should go over 30, though exceptions may be made for weeks with more than two gross anatomy labs or patient-contact sessions. The cap counts class time and required assignments, not optional tutorials, reviews or reading, so the rest of the week is for self-directed study.

An undated history feature on the college's website describes a typical gross anatomy day as a 50-minute lecture followed by a two-and-a-half-hour lab.

Clerkship weeks are longer. Duty hours are capped at 80 a week averaged over four weeks, with no more than 30 hours in a row in the hospital and four 24-hour periods off every four weeks on average. Surgery in Little Rock keeps Tuesdays for teaching: a 7 a.m. morbidity and mortality conference, grand rounds, student case presentations, a quiz review and an afternoon of faculty sessions.

Anatomy is taught in Human Structure, the nine-week module that opens year 1. It covers gross anatomy, the structures visible to the naked eye, with radiology, histology (tissue under the microscope), embryology and acquired anatomic pathology. You work in laboratory teams and discussion groups, and radiologists meet the class weekly to go through clinical cases.

In Little Rock you dissect cadavers in teams, treating each dissection as an investigation. Pathology faculty and residents help you spot visible disease in your donor and collect biopsy samples to study under the microscope. Teams write up their findings as abstracts and presentations for a research conference on the course's final day.

Northwest students do not dissect. They learn from plastinated prosected cadavers, bodies dissected in advance by experts and preserved with plastic, and from a virtual reality system that displays three-dimensional bodies.

The grade has six parts: three written exams, three practical exams, individual quizzes, group quizzes, in-lab dissection assessments and the research conference. Since 1999, students have organized a memorial service each year to honor the donors, and the anatomy teaching complex holds a gallery of artwork presented by the classes.

Year 4 electives include Regional Gross Anatomy, a detailed dissection of every region of the body, and a review course using previously dissected cadavers and plastic-embedded cross-sections. There is also Applied Surgical Anatomy of the Extremities, and Anatomical Scholars, where seniors help teach Human Structure.

Patient contact starts in year 1 through Practice of Medicine I. By the end of the year you should be able to take a full history and do a basic physical exam. You practice on standardized patients in the Clinical Skills Center in Little Rock or the Walker Center in Fayetteville. Practice of Medicine I also includes a required shadowing program once each semester.

In year 2, Practice of Medicine II moves on to focused histories, ranked differential diagnoses (lists of possible causes), case notes and oral presentations. It includes a required clinical preceptorship, time with a physician in practice, three times a semester.

Two student-run free clinics take volunteers: the 12th Street Health and Wellness Center in Little Rock, offering preventive heart care and screenings, and the North Street Clinic in Fayetteville, serving the Marshallese community. In summer 2026, options after year 1 included family medicine preceptorships with community physicians and clinical time in surgery, anesthesiology, ENT and OB/GYN.

Responsibility grows on the clerkships. You take histories, examine patients and enter findings in the medical record, and a resident or attending physician co-signs your notes and orders. Breast and genital exams always need direct supervision, and the supervising attending decides which procedures you can join.

In years 1 and 2 you pass a course with a cumulative score of 70% or more. At least 85% of each module's grade, Practice of Medicine aside, comes from major exams, and the college uses customized NBME exams as a major part of both years. NBME questions are confidential, so you cannot review the ones you missed. Most exams are computer-based and taken on your own laptop.

Each course gives formative feedback, such as quizzes and practice questions, by its midpoint. Failing five or more major exams in year 1 or 2 means repeating that year, even if you pass every course. OSCEs test Practice of Medicine: you take a history and examine a standardized patient with a given complaint in a set time. If the year 2 OSCE is not passed within the first 12 weeks of year 3, the Promotions Committee decides what happens.

Clerkships use shelf exams, NBME subject exams taken by students nationwide. Scoring below the 5th percentile nationally fails the exam; you get one retake within six months, and a second failure means repeating the clerkship. Surgery weights faculty and resident evaluations 30%, the shelf 30%, a case-based oral exam 20% and weekly quizzes 20%. Family medicine weights clinical evaluations 55%, the shelf 30% and assignments 15%.

Practice of Medicine 3, the selectives and all of year 4 are pass/fail. Since the class of 2026, you must also pass an OSCE at the end of year 3 to graduate. It tests advanced history, exam and communication skills and includes a written note giving a detailed differential diagnosis and plan. The college calculates no grade point average; a class rank built from your percentage scores appears by quartile in your MSPE, which also flags the top 10%.

The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), which accredits M.D. programs in the United States, lists the program as fully accredited in its directory updated October 14, 2026. Initial accreditation dates from 1944, and the next survey is due in 2030-31. LCME accreditation is what makes students of an M.D. program eligible to sit the USMLE. Step 1 has been reported only as pass or fail since January 26, 2022, and Step 2 CK is scored on a three-digit scale.

College policy sets your first Step 1 attempt by May 31 after year 2 and highly recommends taking Step 2 CK shortly after year 3; you must pass both 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 notice had named 2028. On the current schedule and the draft 2027-28 calendar, a July 2027 entrant would sit Step 1 by about May 31, 2029, after designated testing dates begin, and Step 2 CK around mid-2030.

• Step 1 deadlines: a postponed first attempt by July 31 if approved, a second attempt by November 30, and a pass within three tries by May 1 of the following year, or dismissal.
• The USMLE has asked schools to review rules on when students must test, so UAMS's Step deadlines may change before your class reaches them.
• Academic work runs under an honor system overseen by a student Honor Council. Professionalism is tracked separately: lapses such as missed clinics bring an Areas for Improvement form, and repeated or serious ones a formal assessment noted in your MSPE.

On the Little Rock campus, the catalog names UAMS Medical Center, Arkansas Children's Hospital and the VA hospitals in Little Rock and North Little Rock as the main teaching sites. Baptist Health is among the affiliates, and the 2026-27 clerkship list adds Arkansas State Hospital for psychiatry. Arkansas Children's Hospital, a pediatric Level I trauma center for patients up to age 21, is a teaching hospital for the UAMS Department of Pediatrics.

Northwest students train in community hospitals and private practices, working more directly with practicing physicians, and partly within resident teams of UAMS-affiliated family medicine and internal medicine residencies. Before 2023-24 the Northwest clinical years used a longitudinal integrated clerkship, where several specialties run side by side over months; they now use the same blocks as Little Rock. Clerkship objectives, assessment methods, grading and patient-encounter checklists are required to be identical at every site.

UAMS Regional Campuses began in 1973 to improve the supply and spread of health professionals in Arkansas, especially in primary care. Its campuses run from Fayetteville in the northwest to Helena in the east and Texarkana in the southwest. Family medicine holds a site selection meeting to explain clerkship options, and its teaching sessions run virtually so you can stay at your site.

The catalog says most students are assigned rotations that mean living away from Little Rock for 4 to 12 weeks, sometimes longer, usually in years 3 and 4. The college makes the assignments but lets you state preferences for clerkship order and sites, and you can ask to move between the Little Rock and Northwest campuses.

Selectives let you sample a specialty for two weeks in year 3. The catalog says the college added junior-year electives in July 2016 so students could explore careers earlier. In year 4, departmental options range from cardiology and palliative care to neonatology, forensic psychiatry and plastic surgery.

Interdisciplinary electives include Culinary Medicine, Leadership and Medicine, Simulation Education, a Toastmasters-based communication course and a course on financial essentials for physicians. You can also earn credit at the 12th Street Health and Wellness Center, Harmony Health Clinic and North Street Clinic, or co-teach a Practice of Medicine I group.

Internal medicine acting internships run on UAMS and VA teams in Little Rock and at Mercy and Washington Regional in Northwest Arkansas. An intensive version adds four to six short calls and a capstone project. Family medicine acting internships run at eight sites from Batesville to Texarkana, with an intensive version for students applying to family medicine. In surgery, only the surgery acting internship and the eight-week Senior Surgery Honors Course earn acting internship credit.

Regional campuses offer a four-week primary care elective at any center, rural primary care rotations, sports medicine and, in Fort Smith, Jonesboro, Pine Bluff and Texarkana, four-week emergency medicine blocks.

Students in the Arkansas Rural Practice Student Loan and Scholarship Program follow a Rural Practice Curriculum. They join a primary care interest group or the Rural Medicine Student Leadership Association. After year 1 or 2 they take a family medicine preceptorship outside Pulaski County, which includes Little Rock, in a rural community if possible. Their family medicine clerkship should include some rural medicine, and they take a primary care elective or acting internship at a regional campus, partly in a rural setting.

Away rotations, electives taken at other schools, are allowed: the catalog lets seniors take off-campus studies at other medical schools in the United States and abroad. It also lists a four-week global health elective in rural southern Costa Rica. UAMS students sign up for senior electives before any visiting students are accepted.

Research is optional at UAMS rather than a graduation requirement. You can arrange a project with a faculty member, take research as a senior elective and present at Student Research Day each March. Six honors tracks add structured scholarly work.

Honors in Research, the longest-running track, starts with 8 to 10 weeks of mentored summer research after year 1. You then add six more weeks of research, a manuscript and a Student Research Day presentation, and many students receive a $3,000 summer stipend. Honors in Pediatrics funds five summer weeks of scholarly work and a senior project presented at a meeting or written up.

Honors in Underserved Primary Care is a four-year, stipend-supported track with cohorts of up to 15. It combines early clinical work with a family physician and a longitudinal project with a literature review. Medical Humanities takes up to five students a class for guided readings and a senior project. Global Health and Service ends with a senior service project and a rotation in a resource-poor local or international setting. Innovation and Entrepreneurship, approved in fall 2023, is run by the UAMS Bioventures office.

The CREST M.D./Ph.D. program, based in Little Rock, received Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) status and National Institutes of Health funding in 2026. It usually takes 7 to 8 years: years 1 and 2 of medical school, Step 1, three to four years on a Ph.D., then the clinical years. It takes four students a year, and current first- and second-year students can also apply.

The M.D./MPH, offered on both campuses with the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health, lets some medical courses count toward the Master of Public Health, in concentrations from epidemiology to climate, rural and global public health. The M.D./MBA adds a year of full-time, in-person study at the University of Arkansas Walton College of Business in Fayetteville, where 12 M.D. credit hours count toward a 45-hour MBA.

You must finish the M.D. within six years of enrolling. That clock pauses only for M.D./Ph.D. students during their Ph.D. years.

Anatomy is taught in the Patrick W. Tank Anatomy Teaching Complex, which fills the basement of the Daniel W. Rahn Interprofessional Education Building in Little Rock. The 19,000-square-foot complex includes a dissection lab of about 8,000 square feet, renovated in 2018, and a cross-sectional anatomy room with a 4K SECTRA virtual dissection table.

Next to the dissection lab, a procedures lab uses lightly embalmed cadavers to practice skills such as ultrasound-guided central lines and nerve blocks, chest tubes and intubation. The Clinical Skills Center, on the building's eighth floor, has 14 outpatient exam rooms with cameras, seven of them with phones for telemedicine cases, and observation hallways behind one-way mirrors.

The Simulation Center adds seven simulation theaters with high-fidelity manikins, five debriefing classrooms and a procedure training room. In Fayetteville, the Pat and Willard Walker Student Education Center has six exam rooms for standardized patient encounters and a skills room with task trainers for heart sounds, suturing and IV insertion.

The library's Active Learning Center in Little Rock seats 192 students at 32 tables of six, and the library is open around the clock by badge. UAMS M.D. diplomas still note that the graduate was taught in the Isaac Folsom Clinic, an outpatient building put up in 1915 for teaching medical students.

Every student belongs to one of seven Academic Houses, learning communities that span all four years. Each is named for someone who improved Arkansans' health, from Lowe House, after pediatrician Betty Ann Lowe, to Compton House, made up of the Northwest students. Its namesake, Bentonville family physician Neil Compton, founded the Ozark Society to Save the Buffalo River. You meet your house faculty advisor twice a year in years 1 to 3 and once in year 4.

Career advising follows the Association of American Medical Colleges' four stages, from understanding yourself in year 1 to preparing for residency in year 4. You choose a career advisor in the fall of year 3, and quarterly class meetings in years 3 and 4 cover the senior-year lottery, residency applications and the Match.

The Educational and Student Success Center has learning specialists on both campuses and offers peer tutoring and help with study skills and test anxiety. Support becomes compulsory if you score 75% or less on two or more major exams in years 1 and 2. You then follow an individual learning plan with a specialist until Step 1.

The Student Wellness Program in Little Rock and the Northwest Wellness Program in Fayetteville provide free, confidential counseling, psychiatric evaluation and medication management. Before year 1, the free one-week MedEd Ready program previews lectures and gross anatomy labs for up to 30 incoming students, with preference for groups such as first-generation students and rural Arkansans.